Spark of Ages

Making Better Food from the Plant Up/Tony Martens - Alternative Meat, Texas, Superfoods ~ Spark of Ages Ep 23

• Rajiv Parikh • Season 1 • Episode 23

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Can the future of our food systems be saved by a humble aquatic plant? Join us as we sit down with Tony Martens, co-founder of Plantible Foods, who believes it can. Plantible's innovative plant protein, Ruby, derived from the sustainable Lemna plant, may hold the key to revolutionizing agriculture and food production. Tony shines a spotlight on the pressing environmental issues of our current food systems, from greenhouse gas emissions to water consumption and biodiversity loss. 

Discover the fascinating journey of Rubisco protein, a nutritional powerhouse found in leafy greens, which Plantible has harnessed to outperform traditional animal proteins. Tony shares their pivot to a focus on sustainable food production, unveiling the health benefits and their innovative extraction process of Rubisco. We also explore the transition from traditional agricultural methods to more efficient crops like Lemna, alongside broader market trends demanding better labeling and ingredient transparency in plant-based foods.

Scaling a startup is no small feat, and Tony's story is packed with entrepreneurial grit. From early days in a small R&D facility to navigating the pandemic's hurdles and securing significant commercial agreements, Tony's experiences offer invaluable lessons.

Tony Martens: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonydmartens/

Plantible Foods: https://www.plantiblefoods.com/

Producer: Anand Shah & Sandeep Parikh
Technical Director & Sound Designer: Sandeep Parikh, Omar Najam
Executive Producers: Sandeep Parikh & Anand Shah
Associate Producers: Taryn Talley
Editor: Sean Meagher & Aidan McGarvey

Website: https://www.position2.com/podcast/

Rajiv Parikh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajivparikh/

Sandeep Parikh: https://www.instagram.com/sandeepparikh/

Email us with any feedback for the show: spark@postion2.com

Rajiv Parikh:

Hello and welcome to the Spark of Ages podcast. In this episode, we'll be exploring Plantible, a San Diego based food technology company with our guest Tony Martins, who co founded Plantible. Plantible Foods is a B2B food technology company, which is in the process of developing the most functional and applicable plant protein in the world, helping to transition our world to a better place. As usual, we'll discuss what fascinates me most, and in Plantible's case, it's their technological innovations, their vision of change to the world, and especially, I'm going to be interested in their go to market strategy and how they bring that dream to reality. Tony is going to introduce us to Lemna, a leafy, green aquatic plant which Plantible uses to produce the nutrient dense, complete program Rubisco, also known as Ruby Protein. It requires 10 times less water than soybeans and 100 times less water than beef. So Lemna is incredibly sustainable. So this is going to be my new chia seeds. Like it's going to be on everything. You're going to have this. You're going to mix this in every one of your drinks and it's not going to affect the taste. That's the part that's interesting. Important. Some of the key takeaways you can expect from this episode. What's wrong with our current food systems? The challenges of getting to scale in the food industry. How Plantible is implementing their go to market strategy and what can we learn from that? And finally, we're going to learn a lot about Tony and what got him to start this company in the first place. As always, I'm your host, Rajiv Parikh, the CEO and founder of Position Squared, an AI driven growth marketing company based in Silicon Valley. I'm fascinated by how big, world changing movements go from the spark of an idea to an innovation that reshapes our lives. In every episode, we do a deep dive with our guests about what led them to their own eureka moments, and how they are going about executing it, and perhaps most importantly, how they get other people to believe in them so their idea can also become a spark for the ages. Welcome to Spark of Ages. So, uh, Tony, you and Moritz van de Ven came out to the U. S. from the Netherlands with the idea of starting this company. What was the problem that you felt that gave you that burning need to leave that amazing country that you came from? To come here.

Tony Martens:

Yeah, it's a good question. I think, like, if you, you can break down the food industry or the agricultural industries problems in 4 sections, right? So I think the 1st 1 is obviously it's a large contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions. I think that's responsible for nearly 25 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Obviously. Alongside with that, number one consumer of fresh water and number one factor impacting biodiversity. So there's a lot of, let's say, environmental and sustainability issues with our food system. At the same time, the majority of our crops are all seeded and harvested, uh, once a year, uh, meaning that they're also very much influenced by climate change, uh, because obviously you need to, you have a year to recuperate, right? So in between you don't have any crops or your, your crops might have been of lower quality. So I think that's a big issue where you have this. self fulfilling downward spiral where it's contributing to climate change and then climate change is contributing to, let's say, or affecting the quality and yield of underlying crops. And to put things into perspective, like 60 percent of our global calorific intake is coming from four crops, corn, soy, wheat, and rice, and they're all seeded and harvested once a year. So as you can imagine, It's almost like having 60 percent of your wealth invested in four stocks to generate revenue one month out of the year, if something goes wrong,

Rajiv Parikh:

it's like Christmas time, but in a very short Christmas time for e commerce firms. Yeah. Why do you have to call it my portfolio like that? That hurts. Wait, don't you have just basically NVIDIA and more NVIDIA

Tony Martens:

And then, you know, I think what's starting to happen as well is that because of the over indexing on only a select set of crops are nutrient sources. You're starting to see a widespread outbreak of diseases, once again, affecting the yield and quality of these crops and then getting back into that negative loop of having annual harvest cycles. And then I think lastly, I think this is becoming a more prevalent risk is the fact that you have these food supply chains that are highly concentrated in a couple of regions around the Where You're now starting to see the impact of geopolitical risk, right? I think you've had this in during the Trump administration where the United States prevented China from importing soybeans, whereas China is the largest consumer importer of soybeans. And then suddenly you have to go to somewhere else, obviously against elevated prices. Or most recently with the war in Ukraine, the grain shed of Northern Africa and Sub Saharan Africa with, you know, the war they're affecting the supply and availability of mainstream commodities for people that are already living difficult situation. Like Sub Saharan

Rajiv Parikh:

Africa, right. It was totally affected because of the pandemic, uh, India. Uh, India stopped, um, rice exports, right? They said, nope, we're going to keep it here. So, because we want to make sure we feed ourselves first. So

Tony Martens:

yeah, huge issues. And so I think like those issues then triggered like, okay, how can you disrupt the agri food supply chain? Right. And I think what hasn't gone well in the past when people try to do this, because don't forget, I think truly agriculture and food production is probably one of the last, if not the last. That hasn't gone through a fundamental disruption, right? So yes, there's been optimization. Yes. There's been mechanization, but the crops that we grow and the foods that we produce have been the same for hundreds of years. Yeah, exactly. And so I think truly, uh, so that's our philosophy. And I think what hasn't gone right in the past is that people fall in love with the or novel organisms. So plants or whatever they grow. Instead of thinking about what's the product that I'm selling and do people care about my product besides sustainability or decentralized supply chains. And I think what we try to do is find, let's say that common ground where we create something that people want to use and then create the most sustainable and resilient supply chain. You weren't

Rajiv Parikh:

looking at, Oh, let's go find a use for duckweed.

Tony Martens:

No,

Rajiv Parikh:

right. No. You went in with a problem set. Yeah. Right. You're, you were saying, Hey, how can I solve this problem about, uh, protein in foods today? Right? Because as societies get wealthier, they want more and more protein. Um, yeah. I have this resource problem. I have this, uh, climate issue. I have wars. How, how do I deal with this issue of getting to protein? And then you looked at what is gonna enable me to build the kind of protein that can be. Sustainable enabled at scale, et cetera. And you probably saw the substitute substitute meat market as our plant based meat market as a way to go.

Sandeep Parikh:

I think he just went to whole foods. He moved to the U S he went to whole foods. One saw his grocery bill and he's like, I'm going to start a whole company. So that it's cheaper, this is too expensive. I can't, I can't raise a family like

Tony Martens:

this. Yeah. I did move to LA first and then I went to, I went to Erewhon and Lessons. Whereas like, Jesus Christ.

Everyone:

You emptied out, you sold all that NVIDIA stock and you were able to get a meal. And he can't, and he did it

Rajiv Parikh:

before NVIDIA was huge. It was a

Everyone:

thing, exactly, exactly.

Rajiv Parikh:

No. So, so were you looking at the solution and then you, you came upon this notion of coming to duckweed and using the notion of what is Plantible? This is the question. Yeah. What is Plantible about? How did you get, what got you to start?

Tony Martens:

Like Moritz, uh, so we've been friends for 16 years, uh, although obviously the past six years, it's been a little bit more intense than friends. Uh, but I

Sandeep Parikh:

think, uh, yeah,

Tony Martens:

don't tell my wife, uh, my wife keeps on telling me that she's my mistress and Plantibles, my actual wife, but I think, uh, anyway, Moritz and I, we've always been contemplating starting a company together, right, like ranging from. Anything you can imagine. And then I think slowly, but surely we started to gravitate towards like, you know, how can we develop a company that actually puts the, leaves the planet in a better place than the way we found it. Right. And so how can we do something that's more impactful than creating another app? No, no disrespect to apps. And then we started to think about like renewable energy, right? But renewable energy, I think the value add besides cost reduction, I think that is. Not necessarily that abundant anymore. I think everything, the output is always the same. So you're in this downward spiral to create cheaper and cheaper energy in a more efficient way where you already have, let's say, 2 or 3 sources, like sun, wind and nuclear that are very, very efficient and affordable. And that then, and I was working in agricultural commodity trading, so that really drove us towards the food system as a whole, as a whole. That's when you start to think about like, okay, you know, it is so resource intensive. Why is it so resource intensive? Why are we relying on animal proteins or why are we relying on these handfuls of commodities, right? So the majority of the commodities that we grow all end up as animal feed. One way or another,

Everyone:

right?

Tony Martens:

And then these animals we use a, because they provide a certain level of nutrition, but B, because they also create textures that we like to eat. Right? So if you think about food, you know, you have flavors and then you have textures, right? If you eat a chip potato chip, you want it to be crispy. You don't, you would be unpleasantly surprised if you. Think it's a chip, but then you bite it and it's tofu, right? So soggy potato chips don't have

Sandeep Parikh:

a great market.

Tony Martens:

Yeah, exactly. So actually, and so animal proteins, they play like a critical role. And the reason why is because they have certain functional properties like foaming, emulsifying, gelation. Um, and then we started to think, okay, if that's fundamentally the reason why we're using, let's say these animal proteins in commercial scale food production, Why don't we find something in nature that can nutritionally and functionally compete or even outperform these animal proteins? And then soon we landed on this protein known as Rubisco, or as we prefer to call it, Ruby. And Rubisco, funnily enough, is in every leafy green. So it's one of the most abundant proteins, uh, on the planet because it's the catalyst in the photosynthesis process. So it captures CO2 and then converts it into sugar so that plants can grow. Um, and what makes Robisco so special and why it's been considered the holy grill of proteins for the past 60 to 70 years, is that it's actually functionally and nutritionally superior to any of the animal proteins currently on the market.

Rajiv Parikh:

Really? Oh, why? Well, in what way?

Tony Martens:

Yeah. So if you think about it, so from a, uh, like your body needs a certain amount of essential amino acids on a daily basis, right? And if you, if you think about just food as efficiency, because don't forget that human bodies. aren't perfect. And if you eat X amount of protein, depending on the source, your body might only take up X percentage of the protein that you're consuming and the rest that discards. Uh, right. And so if you can find more efficient protein sources that the body fully absorbs automatically, the human body needs to consume less. Right. And so what makes Robisco so unique. Is that you need the least amount of grams of protein in order to provide you with your recommended daily intake of essential amino acids, because it's so digestible by the human body. It's obviously also allergen free. So it's super cool where we did this study with like a third party laboratory to really assess, let's say the health benefits and the digestibility of Robisco compared to beef. Chicken, eggs, dairy, and whatnot. When you say

Sandeep Parikh:

you came to Rubisco, are you, that's like where you landed? Is it like, like how, when you are a wedding tasting, uh, for, for your, for your wedding and you're just like sampling all these different potential superfoods, like how did you land upon this, you know, previously unused duck weed, uh,

Tony Martens:

to find this? Like, it's like I told you the story before, no, just kidding. But I think, uh, the way, like, so my co founder Moritz is, uh, Uncle is a professor at the University of Wageningen, which is an agricultural university in the Netherlands. And so he went to his uncle saying like, Hey, okay, we have this idea. You know, what do you think? Where should we start this and that? And then it's like, okay, well, you know, there has been some precedent research on rubisco from a health benefit, as well as from a texturizing agent perspective. That's when we started to look. And if you look at all of the research paper and all the research that has been done. It all shows, uh, super promising and, and, uh, and great. Right. And so me and my co founder were just ignorant. They were like, wow, if this is so great, why has nobody ever commercialized this before?

Rajiv Parikh:

Yeah. My, my understanding from, from some of this is that it's, it's inside the leafy green or it's inside the plant. And then once you expose it, it degrades really quickly. Yeah. Right. And that's why a lot of other folks who have been trying to do something similar, they're having to put in all these masking agents and they're going, they have to, they have to process it in particular ways. Whereas you folks have found a way to extract it from the source. Is that?

Tony Martens:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, you're getting there. In the end, what it comes down to, like to have high quality Robisco, as you mean, where it's neutral flavor, neutral in color, neutral in odor, as well as super functional and nutritional. There needs to be a very short window in which you harvest the plant. And then convert it into, let's say your final product in your Robisco protein. And so Lemna, because it's like this continuous growing plant that can harvest it, we harvest it every day of the week, every moment in time, you can perfectly time it with your downstream process, which then maximizes the quality and maximizes the yield of your Robisco protein on a fresh biomass basis. And so that's how we connected the dots. That's amazing. So then

Rajiv Parikh:

you, you went, you went with this notion, you thought that you can create this process that would enable you to extract. And then you came upon the notion of duckweed and it was that also part of this thing. Well, here's the most efficient way of doing this and you can do this in, in a, in a pond or like when I see your videos, I see this, this image of this green item on a pond, right? Is that how it sort of, you're like, Hey, how could I be super efficient with this?

Tony Martens:

We soon like realized that existing supply chains or agricultural side streams just don't make economic or food safe sense. And so that really got us to. Diving into the world of novel plants or hibiscus containing organisms. And then, you know, the thing that popped up immediately was algae, which has been like the poster child of the food industry for the past decades, but never really anything happened to the algae. And, and, and the reason why it didn't work in our techno economic model. Is that algae is like a three dimensional organism, right? So it grows in the water. And so what that means is that if you want to harvest the algae or move the algae, you need to move a lot of water constantly, which then really inflates the amount of energy that goes into your production process. Now here comes Lemna, which is a two dimensional organism, right? So it's a small leaf that floats on the surface of the water. So you can leave the water in one place and just skim the surface and harvest the Lemna that way, instead of moving a lot of water around, which really reduces the overall energy balance and your unit economics when it comes to cultivating these organisms. And so then it's really rich in protein. That's a very efficient and sustainable, uh, growing organism. And that's how we got started. And then, you know, we got in touch with this German professor who was the appointed successor of the Godfather of Lemna, which was an Austrian professor named Andreas Landolt. Uh, we got in touch with him to really learn more about Lemna, what strains work, because it's a, it's as a, as a plant consists of over a thousand different strains, all with different compositions, sizes, growth rates. So, you know, once again, whole black box that we dove into. And, um, that's how we got started. We sourced a couple of strains, found a deserted greenhouse in the Eastern part of the Netherlands and, uh, quit our jobs. And before we knew it, we found ourselves a knees deep in a, in a pond in an Eastern Greenhouse.

Everyone:

Yeah.

Rajiv Parikh:

Skimming leaves out of a

Everyone:

pond all of a sudden. It's an absolutely incredible journey.

Rajiv Parikh:

So I'm going to share some numbers and you can tell me about the industry and, and, and correct me if you, if you will. So from what we're reading, according to spins and the good food Institute. So us sales of plant based foods or plant based protein foods went from 4 billion or 3. 9 billion in 2017. To 8.1 billion in 2023, but it declined a little bit from 2022, but it's still projected to grow to about $35 billion by 2030. I think maybe my team can correct me on this, but it's supposed to grow substantially. Now, this is in a market where the overall, uh, retail sales of total meat, all types of distribution systems is about $170 billion. Right. So it's small, but growing, it has a lot of attention. And so when you're looking at the overall problem set, right, you have this notion of a fast rise for protein alternatives, you have some, some bit of, I guess, some stagnation right now in the market, but overall, there's a projection of growth. Is that, is that because do you feel like things have slowed down a bit because of, um, kind of going from the early adopter to the, to the To the early majority kind of thing, or do you feel like it's a, some of the problems with it and that you have to add a lot of ingredients, a lot of processing to it, you know, like the beyond beat beyond meat stock, right. Was at one point like 150 it's 6 today. It's less than one times revenue in terms of its market cap. It's just interesting discount. Yeah.

Everyone:

Good question. I think it's a, you want

Tony Martens:

No, no. It's, it's good.

Everyone:

Not that you want, it's, it's, it's highly, it has a lot of umami to it. It's tough to digest.

Tony Martens:

Yeah. It's almost like a plant-based burger. A lot of ingredients in, uh, yeah. Ingredients. No, I think, I mean like on that point, right? I think it's. Like in the end, what happens? Like if you, if you think about meat production, right. And whether you use plants or whether you use an animal as the catalyst, I mean, it's a little bit of an unfair comparison because like a cow, you can feed anything, right? So you can, you can feed a cow, whatever you want in the end on the label. It just says cow, right? But if you feed the same ingredients to a machine. Suddenly you need to label all of the ingredients that you, that you fed to the machine. Right. So like to give you like, like a, like an anecdote, it's like, um, a couple of months ago, you read like art, like obviously avian flu is now an annually recurring thing. And there was a reason, there was a news article about like, Hey, avian flu now also affecting cattle. And I was like, okay, like, how is that possible? Right. I was, I was always under the impression that it's like a bird specific disease. And then I learned that in the meat industry, they take like chicken litter. You know, um, which is, let's say covering the floor and, uh, chicken farms and then they feed that to cows, right?

Everyone:

But

Tony Martens:

yeah, basically spoon

Sandeep Parikh:

feeding them avian flu. I'm like, you have some more avian flu with your meal.

Tony Martens:

You don't go to the grocery store and pick up, let's say a piece of steak and it says like fat chicken litter or something like that. You know? So I think

Sandeep Parikh:

that's like, they do have like grass fed free range. So I think we are paying a little bit more attention, right? To some people are, Yeah. Okay. Maybe it's just my household. It's just LA or something, but we are paying attention to what is beat, but yeah, no, to your point, it's not the same thing,

Tony Martens:

right? It's like the nice thing to say it's grass fat, but then at least it's probably not only grass fat. Some grass,

Rajiv Parikh:

some grass, some grass, some grass, some maybe a chicken lizzard.

Tony Martens:

Lobsters are, I think, um, Why do I think there's some, some headwinds right now? I think the biggest issue would you've seen is that there was like also in COVID when all of like the beyond and impossible, they all came to market, they raised billions of dollars and people were at home, there was a lot of marketing push, of course, uh, I think supply chains were under pressure. Uh, and so people were more experimental trying to find different ways and, and, uh, to, to feed themselves. But then the repeat purchases were never there. Right. So they tried it once, maybe they tried it twice and then they were like, it's not the way my, uh, you know, black Angus burger tastes or something like that. And so then people were like, you know what? Sustainability alone is, is not a key, key enough driver for people to shift their dietary patterns, which brings me to my point, I think, for some reason, as an industry, people adopted the word alternative, right? And, um, you know, but if you think about it, when Tesla. Uh, launch deck roadster. They didn't say, Hey, this is an alternative car or when they launched, let's say the iPhone, they said like, Hey, this is an alternative phone because alternative automatically implies like, Hey, not plan a, but no,

Rajiv Parikh:

you actually want the other thing, but here's something else.

Tony Martens:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. It's the desirable

Rajiv Parikh:

item, but no, I'm stuck. Yeah, exactly. And so, and, and,

Tony Martens:

and so I think if you think about it as well, once again, from a bigger perspective, right? So when Tesla, and I had a conversation funnily enough earlier today about somebody, like, if you look at Tesla and Tesla's branding, nowhere do you see like leafs or environmental expressions, you know, it's like green. They don't have green as a color in their, in their selection. It looks great. You know, exactly. You're right. It's like, it just looks cool. It looks designer ish and most importantly, the cars look nice and they're super fast, right? So they provide some value to the consumer that buys the car and then, and, and, and has fun with it. Whereas the Nissan Leaf, you know, slightly less, slightly less

Everyone:

popular car than the Tesla, right? That sort of implies, it

Sandeep Parikh:

like implies a sacrifice. Yeah, you're making for the alternative as opposed to, you're right. Like, but at least, you know, pre Musk being Musk, uh, buying the Tesla was like, it was like all those cool things you mentioned and on top of that. And it's greener, like, like that was the sort of, it was not, it was not the

Tony Martens:

primary decision driver. Right. Right. So, you know, and I think it

Sandeep Parikh:

was better than, you know,

Tony Martens:

It was like, that's

Sandeep Parikh:

what I'm saying is like on top of the, like I can go as fast as a Porsche and it's, it's, and I'm saving money on gas and saving the environment and

Rajiv Parikh:

I can make a fart noise with my horn,

Everyone:

different, different, different, different purchasing drivers, I guess. You know what I mean? Ideal customer profile. Yeah,

Tony Martens:

Anyway, but I think, so if you think about going back to like two things that I think were the primary issue, there was no direct value for the consumer besides ethical or sustainability drivers, right? Right. It was just like, okay. Uh, but then at the same time, they had to compromise on, on the final quality or on the experience, and I think the latter. If you look at most successful CPG companies, right. They're primarily like sales and marketing organizations that have found some kind of food scientists somewhere to develop just a delicious product that consumers want to consume over and over and over again. And they, and they grow up. Testing that product at like farmers markets, immediately getting feedback from the local consumers, um, and then refine their product to make sure that it constantly follows. Let's say the feedback that they're getting. If you then go back to the plant based meat industry, just as a bunch of scientists going into the lab, raising hundreds of millions of dollars, not starting off and probably they had some fancy consumer panel feedback, but consumer panels, you know, they don't go to the grocery store and make the purchases. Right. They just eat something and then give you feedback. Whereas at the farmers market, people actually buy your product. And swap money in exchange for your product. And so they skipped that whole early stage consumer validation and just immediately went to large scale expansion, which comes with venture dollars. And so I think the issue was that the quality just wasn't there and then, you know, there wasn't any value beyond being ethical or sustainable. And it's a great answer.

Rajiv Parikh:

Is that becoming your market that you're going to replace either the soy protein or the, or the pea protein in, in these burgers, or do you see this a whole different level of functional usage? Like in one of your articles, it talks about. How, uh, this could be a replacement for egg whites in McDonald's hotcakes.

Tony Martens:

Yeah.

Rajiv Parikh:

Right. So is this part of adding more protein in your diet and scaling from there? Or is it both? You asked

Tony Martens:

me that question. Oh, you asked me that question earlier and I don't think I answered it back then. It's like, what kind of company are you? Right. And so I think, um, it's a great question because I think you're constantly transitioning as a, as a company, and maybe initially when we started Plant to Boy, you're like, oh, we're a plant-based protein company. Right? But now what we're seeing is like, okay, actually what we're doing is. We're developing a new agricultural manufacturing platform that allows us to create next generation food ingredients for food or feed and maybe for other industries like cosmetics, right? And I think

Rajiv Parikh:

that's a whole thing that you probably never thought of. Yeah, no,

Tony Martens:

no, exactly. And so I think like. What's interesting about that. So if you think like, are we competing with soy and pea? No, because I don't think like soy and pea are necessarily bad for the environment. What we want to do is we actually want to reduce our reliance on animal based ingredients, right? Or synthetic ingredients that are causing, let's say a lot of health issues, uh, today in the United States, um, because they're used in ultra processed foods and whatnot. And I think that's where we really want to focus as Plantibles. Like, Hey, You know, we're not here to replace, you know, plan based because, you know, that's not where the market is. And I don't think that's the problem that we're trying to solve. But the problem that we're trying to solve is reduce the reliance. On animals in our food system. And I think so

Rajiv Parikh:

new, new use cases as you're going through, or this is part of an entire growth story. Cause as we talked about, this is only what a couple of percent of the market. Today. So there's a huge market to grow into and enable. Yeah. So let's talk about your scaling. So you, you raised a, you raised a series a, you went early stage, you raised your series, a, uh, you Got some supplemental funding along the way, because people saw your progress. And as you're scaling up, you need additional capital. Now you're getting close to a series B or maybe you already have a series B. Like talk about how you've worked with scaling and the challenges of scaling and building a business like this.

Tony Martens:

Yeah, it's, it's super tough. So it goes back to. Like when we start like, Hey, we're obviously very lucky because we found like this two acre R and D facility in San Diego, uh, for free. And so we already started off with like a little bit of a headstart from a, from a skill perspective. But I think, uh, then in 2020, we raised our, our seed round after developing a lab based process for two years in a breaking bad trailer on our farm in San Diego, as, um, we, uh, Just underwear

Sandeep Parikh:

with plant based food

Tony Martens:

on Sundays, on Sundays. That's how we started. And, and then in 2020, we raised our, our, our seed round. And this was with the idea to build a pilot plant, right. Uh, by the pilot processing plant. So we literally raised the money two days before governor Newsom announces lockdown. Um, and so then, wow. Then we're like, okay, happy this and that. And then suddenly go for a nuisance. So it was okay. Non essential businesses got a close shop. And so we're like, Oh shit, what are we going to do? And, uh, we went that same night, we went on the cracks list. We found two RVs, 6, 000 each could barely make it to the farm, but we found them. And, uh, we lived on our farm for like nine months to build out our pilot plant. Right. We had some of our colleagues live with us back then we were a small team, six people. So we were living with, uh, with the four of us on our farm for like six to nine months using the garden houses as a shower and maybe too much information. But, um, anyway, um, and so we built a pilot plan, which then put us like, like, obviously that gave us a huge headstart, right? Because a lot of other companies, they were like, okay, we need to do like different schedules for people coming into the office so that we've minimized contamination. We just said, okay, we're just going to be one family. We're living on the farm and let's go. You had your own pod.

Everyone:

We

Tony Martens:

had our own pod. So like where we worked was where we lived. All right. So I think, um, that then gave us a huge of

Sandeep Parikh:

musk living in the factory room. So, yeah,

Tony Martens:

I mean, I think that's getting

Rajiv Parikh:

a low cost factory, right? I mean, he got, yeah, he got the former Numi factory for nothing, essentially. 25,

Tony Martens:

000 that sounds pretty comfortable. Right. I mean, I'm quite sure they had some of these safety showers in those factories, right? So like, yeah. I know, but I think it's our, our, our Google garage story. Right. So anyway, we were living, uh, we, so we were living there and so that gave us a huge headstart because we were able to develop a pilot plant. And candidly, when you build a pilot plant, everything that you did on the bench. Goes out of the window if they really start from scratch again, because there's just way many different reactions that take place. So anyway, but that put us on an accelerated track for two things. A, we were able to produce larger quantities of sample material that can help our customers accelerate their evaluation and get to a commercial commitment faster. But at the same time, it also really allowed us to accelerate the de risking of our core technology, which then, you know, allowed us when we were going to, to the market raising our series a to a show that commercial traction, but also communicate to the technology, the risking and setting us up for building out a commercial facility, which is obviously where I think we started to diverge maybe a little bit from the rest of the market. That was still, let's say more of R and D mode. And we just took a very bold decision with our series. I raised it. So like, Hey, you know what, we're going to build a commercial facility, which then over the past year allowed us to start to ship out commercial quantities to our early stage customers and really generate some revenue, but also set us up for, let's say, Larger quantities of commercial agreements and putting us now on a trajectory to achieve cashflow positivity, right? So I think from a scaling perspective, we took quite some risks and obviously a lot of things also went horribly wrong, but it's now put us in this position where. We're at a point in time where we can de risk, we can claim that we've de risked our technology and it's more a matter of scaling out versus scaling up, which is an exciting time to be in.

Sandeep Parikh:

What's like one thing that went horribly wrong that you had to figure out?

Tony Martens:

We're building out. Greenhouses in the size that have, have never been built ads like this before, including like,

Sandeep Parikh:

cause you're dealing with ponds, right? Like this isn't your typical greenhouse.

Tony Martens:

No, it's not like a fancy greenhouse. Right. It's a, it's like a combination between, uh, let's say very cheap and somewhat reasonably affordable, you know? So I think, um, And you can imagine, so we, like what happened in the beginning is she would maybe attach, let's say some of the poly to create an insulated greenhouse system. And, you know, one wind gusts would come by and it would just tear off everything, everything that was on the greenhouse and you could start from scratch again, you know what I mean? So these things, uh, these things happen, uh, and you learn the hard way. Uh, but I think, this

Everyone:

was already in Texas. This was already in Texas. Oh, you had already moved to Texas. Yeah. Okay. So this is elder.

Sandeep Parikh:

This is Eldorado.

Tony Martens:

Yeah. Eldorado.

Sandeep Parikh:

What is it about Eldorado that drew you there?

Tony Martens:

What drew us to Eldorado? So I think overall you think, um, you know, there are certain areas that have the right climate factors to grow plants. Right. And so there is a certain, Uh, relationship between hours of sunlight, temperature, uh, et cetera. Uh, you need to have, uh, land can be arable, non arable and doesn't matter. And you need to have some access to fresh water. And, uh, so we started to look, um, Arizona, New Mexico, California. I was immediately scrapped off the list because it's California. So everything's expensive and it takes a very long period of time to get any form of approval. And so. Louisiana, whatnot. And then we landed on the, we found this plot of land here in, uh, in, in West Texas that is on top of an aquifer. So giving us direct access to fresh water, it's part of a 20, 000 acre black Angus ranch. So the story there is that you're slowly converting this black Angus ranch into a. Uh, it's super flat. You have an airport 40 minutes drive from here and you have, let's say the two 77 interstate that is makes it very easy to provide, uh, or get equipment to and from the facility, uh, and. And then lastly, it's Texas, right? So you build first and you ask later, so, uh, you can just, uh, start from scratch. And that's what drew us to this place. So from an environmental and, and a building or construction perspective, it made a lot of sense. Yeah. Now we've been in this community for the past two, two and a half years. Um, and, uh, are the proud sponsors of the local high school football team, the Eldorado Eagles. They have finished, uh, they finished last in the past two seasons. So we need to have some, uh, hard conversations with the management. Now, why don't you change

Sandeep Parikh:

them to the, to the Eldorado Lemnos or like, yeah,

Tony Martens:

I like this. I like this. I think this is the longterm plan. We can't go in with brute force. Uh, that's right. That's right. You got to get them to

Rajiv Parikh:

want to change. Yeah. They have to talk about how they're going to eliminate. The competition. There you go.

Everyone:

Wow. Wow. Wow. This is okay. This is good. This is good. Lemonade. I like it. To put

Tony Martens:

things into perspective. So when I just moved there, so, or when we just relocated here, we went to the local cafeteria, which is like a, you know, like a small trailer with the kitchen inside of it. And there was a person sitting there with a t shirt, don't California, my Texas, and he was wearing a revolver on the outside of his pants. And here I was walking in like this. Tall six foot eight Dutch guy with a hat wearing plentiful. And he's like, Oh, are you with

Everyone:

plentiful? I was like, Oh, I was like, Oh, maybe it depends on

Tony Martens:

who's

Sandeep Parikh:

asking. Depends on where your hand is over that.

Tony Martens:

And then he's like, thank you so much for coming to west Texas. You know, we're so great. We're so glad to have you here. And like, I must say, you know, We had to pull some additional power cable, which was going to cost quite a lot of money, which we hadn't really budgeted for. And the local power company assumed all of the costs. So the amount of support that we've been getting from the local community has been really, really, uh, phenomenal. And I can tell you from the six years in San Diego, we've never received any of that type of support. That's

Everyone:

amazing.

Sandeep Parikh:

Yeah. I love that you guys were, it seemed like you made a conscious decision to be a part of the ecosystem that you were setting up shop in, right? Like, and then ultimately that meant. Interfacing with the people, the community, figuring out what their needs are. How do we fit into this? How do we make sure this is a coexisting situation, right? Yeah, it makes it beneficial. So not just, it's not just about like plant based food, but

Rajiv Parikh:

it's also

Sandeep Parikh:

about like,

Rajiv Parikh:

you know, supporting, supporting someone that's come to your community to offer jobs and offer, uh, you know, innovation and if, You know, as they succeed, they all succeed with them and they feel part of

Tony Martens:

it. I think like, you know, like the, like, obviously this, this is like one of these towns. So you probably have plenty of them in the United States where they used to generate a lot of income because of oil and gas, but as those wells and fracking starting to dry up, you know, the relative amount of income is starting to decline or decrease. The amount of economic opportunities are also decreasing.

Rajiv Parikh:

And they're looking for diversity in their economies. So, okay. So let's switch to like, you have this, I'm sure these food companies are not just sitting there saying, Hey, what's the next cool protein. You had to find some initial buyers and you had to go talk to people and say, yeah, I'm a startup and I'm sure they're used to working with bigger companies. So how did you find your first few, who are your buyers today? Um, maybe you want to talk about how you found some of those buyers and where do you, how do you see your go to market scaling as you go?

Tony Martens:

Uh, great question. So I think the majority of the customers that we're working with today all came in as inbound. I think realistically, if I look about Plantible, we've never really had to worry about market demand. We've always had to worry about, can we create enough product to meet, let's say, the customer's demand. And, um, I think that's been great. What we did differently, Compared to many, some of the other companies in the industry. And this was one of the best pieces of advice we got was when we had our first board meeting ever, uh, after our seed round and like, you know, it goes, you raise a seed round for some reason, people find it interesting. So you post how much money you raised and Decker runs, write an article. And then suddenly you get people reaching out to you like, Hey, can I get a sample of this and that? And the best piece of advice that we got was during the first board meeting. It was not from Manan, by the way, just to clarify that. But, um, I think, uh, Manan's been great. He's become my personal therapist. By the way, those, those guys

Rajiv Parikh:

are amazing. They will do anything they can to support you.

Tony Martens:

They are the best. They're like my favorite investor on the cafe table, for sure. Um, uh, but I think like now, so this was somebody else. Um, and, uh, she said, Oh yeah. Instead of like focusing on like these smaller. Companies, right? So you saw a lot of, let's say these, uh, plan based companies going with, let's say food service restaurants and whatnot, uh, to just focus on the largest companies you have in your, uh, in your funnel at the moment, because they're slow, but you're also very slow, right? And whether you can sell to a restaurant or a small bakery or whatever, nobody really cares about it because it's not really meaningful revenue. If you want to justify that you need to build out a large commercial facility. You need to work with these large multinational food companies in order to get their approval. And so, so we did. So if you think about our go to market, it was a little bit counterintuitive where we didn't really focused on the fast and early adopters. We actually focused on working with, let's say these large multinational behemoths. That are super slow, but so are we, because we had to go from lab to pilot and then from pilot to commercial. And I think to re really focused on that scaling up and the technological uh, development, we de prioritize those, those maybe sexier customers, uh, from a small scale perspective and really prioritize them. Like the largest food companies in the world. And that then,

Rajiv Parikh:

they're going to give you all the requirements that you need to really grow and scale with them. The smaller ones, like you say, this is a, this is a thing I went through in my own company's evolution, right? You go to a lot of startups and they will criticize you, but a lot of the criticisms is really a reflection of themselves as opposed to what it takes to make the market. Sometimes people are like, they're overconfident about what they can achieve and when you don't achieve what they expect. Because they're unrealistic, they then reflect upon you, right? Whereas if you go to some of the bigger ones are more likely to use your product at scale, they're going to tell you what here's really what it really takes, especially if they, if they buy into your solution.

Tony Martens:

Yeah. Well, like, I mean, don't forget also, but a lot of, let's say these, these smaller food companies, right. The, the, the, the one who created the first product is still running the company. And so for you then to come in and say like, Hey, listen, product has some flaws, but we can help you to like, wait, what are you talking about? It's like a personal front. It's personal. Yeah. It's personal. So. So, so what we did there, it's just like really focused, like I said, on these large food companies and, you know, that eventually paid off into long term, uh, a multi million dollar, uh, commercial off day agreements that we're now starting to fulfill from our facility in Texas.

Sandeep Parikh:

I'm sure the barrier to entry to them was higher, right? Like you had a bigger hurdle start out with, so how do you like swallow the pill there to do that?

Tony Martens:

You know, Yeah. It's a good question, right? Or maybe,

Rajiv Parikh:

maybe your investors, uh, helped you get introductions to them too. I mean, that can happen. Yeah.

Tony Martens:

It just depends. I mean, like, like in the beginning we had a lot of just natural organic inbound, which probably came along with some of the PR that comes, uh, with, with you fundraising and whatnot, or maybe participating in a certain accelerator or something like that. Yeah. So sparking

Sandeep Parikh:

conversation about you is really what drew curiosity for these folks to, to Yeah,

Tony Martens:

for sure. Like, especially like these larger food companies, they have whole research divisions that also need to have something to do. Right. And so they're just scouting, looking for new ingredients and like, okay, can we do something with that? And, um, yeah, that then. You know, to your point, they have very strict standards. So, you know, you do it in the lab. They're like, okay, cool. Show me that you can do it at pilot scale. Then you're like super proud. Hey, look, I made this at pilot scale. And they're like, okay, great for you. Good for you. But now do it at commercial scale, right? So you have to jump through all of these hoops in a relative, uh, short timeframe. But. You know, to your point, like all of the certifications, uh, that come along with being able to sell to a large food company, you're preempting that by closely working with them and not shying away from those conversations.

Rajiv Parikh:

That's amazing. Great. This is so much fun to learn about. So. Sunday, I think you want to move us to Yeah, speaking of

Sandeep Parikh:

shying away from things, let's test your mettle right now. You're, we're about to have you enter the Spark Tank. Okay, this is, uh, the, uh, show game that I produced. Stakes are incredibly high. So, welcome, Tony. And welcome back to our listeners, our fellow entrepreneurs and digital hustlers to the spark tank where two founders enter and one realizes that their revenue reports are so foolish that they should be compost. Um, today we are putting your knowledge of super foods and nutrition to the test. All right, so in one corner we've got Tony Martin, the co founder of Plantible, that is creating a plant based protein that's going to make Popeye ditch his spinach. And then we've got my brother Rajiv, who thinks Spirulina is the latest Disney princess. It's not? Yeah, it turns out it's not. So what we're doing for this game, we're going to be serving up three statements about superfoods. Two of them are true. One is a fabrication. That's spicier than that one surprise shishito pepper. Uh, so let's see who can separate the wheatgrass from the chaff. Uh, all right, so we're gonna do three rounds here. Two truths and a lie, all about superfoods, Tony. And, uh, frankly, I'm rooting for you. Okay, you ready? Any questions?

Tony Martens:

All good, let's go.

Sandeep Parikh:

Number one, this is all about unlikely superfoods, okay? Aloe vera. Did you guys know that Cleopatra herself used aloe vera as part of her beauty routine? It's been said that she even bathed in it. It's not just for sunburns. Aloe vera is packed with vitamins and minerals that promote healthy skin and digestion. So number one is Cleopatra used aloe vera in her beauty routine. Number two, during the renaissance, radishes were believed to contain a rare mineral that enhanced cognitive function and memory. And scholars and artists would often consume large quantities of radishes in hopes of unlocking their full intellectual potential. Wait, radish? You're just saying that's, oh, as a superfood. Yeah, these are just like historical superfoods. Number three is the beetroot. This vibrant root isn't just for borscht, people. In ancient Rome, beetroot was considered an aphrodisiac. And even today, it's known to boost blood flow and stamina to all over the body, to certain parts of the body. Plus, it contains nitrates that may help improve athletic performance. Alright, so, which of these is the lie? Is it the aloe vera plant all over Cleopatra, the radish, or the beetroot? Here we go, on the count of three. One, two, three, hold your fingers. Okay, Rajiv went with aloe vera, and then Tony went with radish. Tony, you are correct. That's right. There was no radishes in the renaissance helping them, you know, helping the scribes scribble Yes, so well done. You're out to a great start Yeah, you're leaving my brother in the dirt so to speak. Here we go round number two. All right chia seeds These tiny powerhouses were staple foods for ancient Aztecs and Mayans who believed they provided superhuman energy and endurance So their warriors could run for days Kombucha this fizzy fermented drink isn't just a hipster trend It's been around for centuries with origins tracing back to ancient China or was prized for its health benefits and called the quote Immortal health elixir or number three during the Black Plague cinnamon was believed to be a potent cure for the disease. People would wear cinnamon filled pouches around their necks or burn cinnamon incense in their homes to ward off the plague's deadly effects. Which of these is full of fertilizer? Chia seeds, kombucha, or cinnamon? On the count of three. One, two, three. All right. Rajiv said kombucha. Tony is saying cinnamon, Tony is two for two and has pulled way out ahead here. Now I can't win. It's over dying on the vine, buddy. You're dying on the vine. I'll try to make good on one of

Rajiv Parikh:

these.

Sandeep Parikh:

Yeah. I mean, well, luckily this last round is double the points. Yeah.

Everyone:

I just decided to make it like double jeopardy. Yeah. All right, here we

Sandeep Parikh:

go. You ready?

Everyone:

Yes. Okay.

Sandeep Parikh:

I mean, and by the way, have you like researched all these things? Like, do you, do you actually know this stuff? Cause you, you're very confident in your answering so far.

Tony Martens:

Like what I'm doing is I'm just going, let's say you go to like a juice bar, like, and you get a juice what's in those juices. Right. And like cinnamon, It's not radishes for sure, but it is beetroot. It is beetroot. And cinnamon, even though it has a pleasant, you would think if cinnamon would be a superfood, right? They would like make everything cinnamon, but because it's not an unpleasant flavor. Uh, but, uh, yeah, but they

Sandeep Parikh:

don't do it. Wow. Okay. So revealing the secrets to you, Reggie, we'll see if you can come back. I think be tough to apply it to this third round, to be honest, because this is about the strange, but true. Number one is about Kasu Marzu. The Sardinian cheese, infamous for containing live insect larva. The larva's digestive processes breaks down the cheese, giving it a soft, creamy texture and a unique, pungent flavor. It's considered a delicacy by some, and it's also illegal to sell commercially due to health concerns, even though they claim it is packed with protein.

Everyone:

What is this

Sandeep Parikh:

called? Kasu Marzu? Kasu Marzu. Yeah, no looking it up on your, on chat. I see what you're doing. Okay, number two. In traditional Korean medicine, Regurgitated, this is a bird, swift lipped food. Okay, regurgitated swift lipped, so literally mama bird food. It possesses potent rejuvenating properties that are dissolved in a special elixir, which is consumed to improve skin elasticity and slow down the aging process. Or number three, kopi luwak coffee, okay? I'm just reminding you that two of these are true. Uh, kopi luwak coffee. The Indonesian coffee is renowned for being the most expensive in the world, and its unique flavor comes from coffee beans, and I'm not kidding, that have been eaten and excreted by civet cats, and then sifted through and harvested. Apparently the digestive process is said to alter the beans, creating a smoother, less bitter coffee. So, which of these is the lie? Is it the larvae processed kasu marzu cheese, the Korean medicine regurgitated from swiflet birds, or the kopi luwak coffee, which is literally pooped out by civic cats and consumed by people that have a lot of money, that want to drink coffee, the most expensive lattes in the world. One, two, or three. Here we go. Three, two, one. Let me see it. Well, Rajiv said it's the larva. That's, that's BS. Tony said it's the swiftlet. Regurgitated maba birding aging remedy. And Tony, you are three for three. You did it. You are clearly in the right field. Uh, I'm investing in Plantible as soon as it goes public. I mean, I'm staying in well done. Yeah.

Rajiv Parikh:

Don't don't eat a meal with Reggie. I'm just going to keep eating.

Everyone:

Did

Sandeep Parikh:

you know those? How, how come you were so confident about the, uh, the last one.

Tony Martens:

I mean, like, I thought like the Korean one, if it would be true, I must have heard of it, right? Cause like, we have like a Korean investor and I kept it on, I went out for dinner and I, they would have told me like, Oh, we have this specialty in Korea, you don't want to believe what it is, right? Not that I've ever heard of this larva cheese, but I

Sandeep Parikh:

will say this. You can do a little research, Tony, because there is in fact that they do use Swiftlet. Nests which are which are hardened built by hardened saliva and that is used in certain korean medicines Uh, I just changed it a little bit to be about the mama birding thing because I thought that was funny And what was more of a lie so there is an actual element of truth I figured the mama

Rajiv Parikh:

bird. I figured the mama bird feeds the her babies Yeah. So people would be like, Oh yeah, exactly. There must be some health benefit to this. Whereas I knew number three was definitely a choice. So you guys knew about that? I did not. Yeah. It was a 50 50. So congratulations, Tony. That was awesome. Well done. Well done. Well done. We do have a couple of questions. A couple of quick questions for you. So did you know, you said you did some agriculture, you used some commodity trading before. Did you like growing up always know you wanted to start a company or a technology company and how did you discover that passion? Was it someone in your life?

Tony Martens:

Um, well, like both my parents. So I'm more or less grew up in like my grandfather was an entrepreneur. So I'm more or less grew up in like an entrepreneurial family. So I think from the beginning, I always aspired to start my own company. Right. Did I know where I wanted to do it? And not really. So after I graduated business school, I didn't really know what to do. Um, so I joined like a boutique consultancy firm. And, uh, I started to do projects in, in the food and ag space, uh, which then, you know, we developed like a, at one point in the 2020 strategy, uh, for a Southern German commodity company. And then, uh, they hired me to, to execute, uh, or help execute this 2020 strategy, um, which then really gave me. Hands on experience in, in, in, in the field of agricultural commodities. Yeah. So, and then I, you know, I was doing that, did that for three years, grew the company from one to 7 billion, uh, which was an exciting time, but then afterwards it really started to consolidate and become just a large, large multinational company with nothing wrong with that. But

Rajiv Parikh:

yeah, so, and

Tony Martens:

I think. You know, as you realize the importance of commodities in day to day life, I mean, it's quite cool if you can really innovate and build something that can, can, can make a long lasting impact. Right. And I think what's funny is that the journey is in the beginning, you're excited about the impact you can make by creating a new ingredient. And then you walk the grocery aisle and you see your ingredient and all kinds of stuff. But I think now, After building the Ranchito, it's much more about enabling rural communities to go through, let's say a, or be part of the green green transition as well. Right. That it's much more about being able to give these people. New opportunities in life and make them part of the transition instead of having to fear about the transition itself. And I think that's become much more of a greater cost, uh, for me, at least personally, is there a

Rajiv Parikh:

family member that said to you something that helped spark you or drive you as their motto?

Tony Martens:

To start a company

Rajiv Parikh:

to, to, to just inspired you,

Tony Martens:

uh, you know? Yeah. Like, I find that really hard to say, I think like, you know, if I go back long enough, I remember being like early teenage years and I would always read a lot of books. And I, for some reason I bought like this autobiography of Jim Rogers, um, it was like this old school. trader and forex and then also commodities later on. And he was talking in his book about, let's say, agriculture and land ownership and how it's going to become such an important asset class because of, you know, the urbanization sort of move from people going from rural farmland to cities, who is going to go left produce food. And so I think maybe that always stuck in the back of my mind. I was like, okay, this could be like a very impactful. Industry considering all of the threats and, but also positive opportunities that are there. Like if I look back at my time, maybe that's what got me eventually into this space. Uh, uh, and then, yeah, from like, to give you an idea, like my mom, she had her own advertising agency. Then she sold that and then she decided to own up, open up her own fresh pasta store chain in the Netherlands. And then she was like, okay, I'm done with this. Now I want to become a yoga teacher in Spain. And so then she became a yoga teacher in Spain and then she's like, okay, now I want to become, let's say an interior designer in Portugal. So then she went to Portugal and then now she, now she's decided she wants to become a chef. So anyway, so that's more of like the entrepreneurial journey that I grew up with in my household, just food

Sandeep Parikh:

and health and stuff like that was, you know, big in her life and sort of made its way down to you.

Tony Martens:

Yeah, I think so, but like more like, like more just like, if you just go do your own thing and, and, and, and, and, and create, create your own degrees of freedom. I think that's probably what then triggered me doing, you know, something entrepreneurial. I like, no, but it was like, led me to building a Lemna farm in Texas. I don't know, but it definitely inspired me. That's an amazing army

Everyone:

and it

Rajiv Parikh:

keeps going. So, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs, they have a certain thought in mind as to where they want to take the company. What do you see this as?

Tony Martens:

Yeah, good question. Um, you know, I think if I look at Plantible, I think our vision from the beginning was to create like a new form of agriculture, right? So we're doing two things. On the one hand, we're creating, let's say a way of cultivating novel aquatic plants that goes beyond, let's say the, the amount of plants we're growing today. Uh, I think we're growing. You know, around 128 plants out of a 30, 30, 000 edible plants in the planet. So as you can see, there's like a huge white space to tap into novel, novel plants or specifically in the aquatic space. Uh, so we're trying to unlock that. And then at the same time, we're trying to develop processes that allow us to, uh, unlock these valuable components that can be found in these novel plants. Um, and so if I think about Plantible, um, our first focus is obviously on creating a product that. Food companies or consumers want to eat or consume or use. And then the second step is actually becoming more of that manufacturing platform developer that then allows us to create. Let's say almost like this blueprint, or let's say Ikea building package of building the cultivation systems, building the processing systems, and then copy and paste that all over the world, really allowing regions across the world to develop their own supply chains and thereby unlock access to macro micronutrients, uh, regionally, instead of being prone to climate, uh, prone or, uh, geopolitically centralized food systems. And finally, if you want to give

Rajiv Parikh:

If you were to give your, some advice to the next budding entrepreneur, yeah, the next Tony, other than being born to two amazing entrepreneurial parents, what would you give them?

Tony Martens:

You know, I think like one of the, the, the, one of the quotes that I really liked that I heard a couple of years ago, like fortune favors the bold, right. I think like when we, uh, When we started with this idea in the Netherlands, you know, in the Netherlands, we have a saying act normal and you act crazy enough. So when we went out with our pitch, everybody's like, yeah, what's going, what's going on in your mind and, uh, what's wrong with you. And especially with the aspect of moving to the United States, leaving friends and family behind, you know, but I think if you truly want to accomplish something, I think just go at it and give it everything you've got and, and don't look back. Right. Uh, don't doubt yourself because in the end, you know, I think, um, If I look at where we are today, I don't think, you know, it would have been possible if we gave in to all kinds of distractions or doubt or fears. It's just, you know, we jumped on a plane, started reaching out to random people on LinkedIn, telling them that we were growing duckweed at a desolated farm in San Diego. And yeah, and now here we are, you know, so I think my, my feedback is that. As a human being, there's always a lot of doubts. There's a lot of, always a lot of anxiety. Am I the right person? Can I do this? Yeah. I think I'm not a scientist and here I'm running a scientific company. You know what I mean? And so, yeah. Going through every stage. How do you

Sandeep Parikh:

say that? How do you say that in Dutch? The phrase? Do

Tony Martens:

maar normaal, dan doe je al gek genoeg. Yeah. So now you. Yeah.

Sandeep Parikh:

Okay. Ready? Uh, yeah.

Everyone:

Yeah. Perfect. Yeah, not that I love that. How

Rajiv Parikh:

about

Everyone:

that? Yeah.

Rajiv Parikh:

I love our turn that on. So Tony, thank you for joining us today. I thought it was fantastic. You're really illuminating super fun to learn about the innovation you're creating with Plantible and just learning about who you are as a person. Uh, I will not hold it against you that you beat me roundly today. Uh, I will still have a beer with you at any time. So when you're in the Bay Area, please, please come up and say hello.

Tony Martens:

Awesome. Likewise, if you guys are in Eldorado, Texas, uh, let me know.

Rajiv Parikh:

All right. I'll be in Austin, Austin

Everyone:

in

Rajiv Parikh:

October. So

Everyone:

I'll see you there. I'll bring my own revolver. This is lovely. Thanks, Tony. Thanks, guys. so much. All right. Cool conversation with

Sandeep Parikh:

Tony. I am now hungry. I'm hungry, too. So I need to eat some

Rajiv Parikh:

food. But what are you, what are you feeling? What's

Sandeep Parikh:

your takeaway from

Rajiv Parikh:

it? Well, I'm going to go get myself a bag of rubisco and mix it in with my edamame crunchies and enjoy myself. No, but I, I really learned a lot from Tony and what he's up to and how he went about it. Thank you. Building his business. And he had prior experience. He had this incredible entrepreneurial set of influences on his life. And he turned all that into, into this great company. And I think his advice, you know, the, the Sun Tzu thing about burn all your bridges or burn all your boats and go for it and don't look back. Don't regret, don't second guess. I think it's just fantastic. That's fantastic advice for anyone and for myself especially. So I appreciate the thinking behind it and how he's transforming, really transforming a field where there's a lot of competition and a lot of Maybe information that isn't clear.

Sandeep Parikh:

So, yeah. And I love that you like, I mean, you obviously had experience in this field, but you don't have to like necessarily be the scientific expert to want to just dive in and end up leading a company that, like you said, it's a very, you know, scientifically based company. I think that's really cool. I feel like there's also this element of, um, making use of, of like being an opportunist, making use of the, like when you talked about having free access to this. You know, spot down in San Diego and just kind of like figuring out ways to make use of, uh, of what sort of the, the rivers bring into you to get a little jumpstart for, for whatever your mission is. Tony Robbins, one of his quotes is like, you know, you don't lack resources. You lack resourcefulness. That's finding opportune ways. And I think that was, yeah, I

Rajiv Parikh:

mean, that was a great. Story about the pandemic where they use that as an advantage for them to get ahead of their competitors where others had to go slower, they could move faster because they created a pod. So a lot of rich. Interesting responses. And, and, uh, this is another immigrant. It's another great immigrant entrepreneur story. And I love hearing about it and learning about it. And I hope it gets into many of our foods, many of the time. And from what he was telling us, we're not even going to know it half the time. We're just going to know that our food is better and really exciting. So thanks for listening. If you enjoyed the pod today, please take a moment to rate it and comment. You can find us on Apple, Spotify, and everywhere podcasts can be found. This show is

Sandeep Parikh:

produced by Sundeep Parikh and Anand Shah, production assistants by Taryn Talley and edited by Sean Maher and Aiden McGarvey. I'm your host, Rajiv

Rajiv Parikh:

Parikh from Position Squared. We're a leading AI centric growth marketing company based in Silicon Valley. Come visit us at position2. com. And this has been an effing funny production. We'll catch you next time. And remember folks, be ever curious.