{"id":341629,"date":"2017-05-23T04:25:11","date_gmt":"2017-05-22T20:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/?p=1494048"},"modified":"2017-05-23T04:25:11","modified_gmt":"2017-05-22T20:25:11","slug":"impossible-foods-ceo-pat-brown-says-vcs-need-to-ask-harder-scientific-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/impossible-foods-ceo-pat-brown-says-vcs-need-to-ask-harder-scientific-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"Impossible Foods CEO Pat Brown says VCs need to ask harder scientific questions"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Impossible Foods<\/a> has raised more than $200 million to make a burger engineered from plants that tastes at least as good as ground beef. Patrick O. Brown<\/a>, the CEO of the five-year-old food startup, is a famed Stanford geneticist who previously started the nonprofit Public Library of Science.<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s many backers<\/a>\u00a0(among them Bill Gates, Li Ka-Shing, UBS, Khosla Ventures and Viking Global) aren\u2019t just betting on Brown \u2014 they are hoping to disrupt the massive \u201canimal products\u201d industry with food that is not only appealing and affordable, but produced in an environmentally sustainable way.<\/p>\n

Traditionally, making \u201cprotein\u201d requires massive feedlots, slaughterhouses and medicines and chemicals to treat and process animals.\u00a0Although Impossible Foods has stated ambitions, and raised funds, to replace an array of animal products with those\u00a0engineered from plants, success with just the one category of ground beef could bring it outsized returns.<\/p>\n

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service<\/a>, consumers purchased 25.67 billion pounds of beef at restaurants and groceries last year, and around 5 billion of that was ground beef for hamburgers, spaghetti and other popular restaurant items.<\/p>\n

Impossible Foods is on target to open its Oakland, Calif. factory this summer. The factory should produce 1 million pounds of \u201cplant meat\u201d per month, the company has confirmed, to be sold only to restaurants<\/a> and prepared by\u00a0professional chefs<\/a> for now.<\/p>\n

We interviewed Pat Brown at a StrictlyVC<\/a> event this month and asked how Impossible Foods is putting its capital to work, and whether or not VCs really know what they\u2019re doing in food. We also asked what Brown thinks of \u201cclean meat\u201d companies using\u00a0synthetic biology to grow meat from a few animal cells in a lab.<\/p>\n

Brown didn\u2019t pull any punches.\u00a0Interview excerpts follow.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

TechCrunch\u2019s Lora Kolodny and\u00a0Impossible Foods founder and CEO Pat Brown<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

TC: What you make at Impossible Foods has been called a \u201cfake burger,\u201d a \u201cvegan burger that bleeds\u201d and \u201cplant meat.\u201d How do you think of your product?<\/strong><\/p>\n

PB:\u00a0We think of it as meat made a better way\u2026 Meat today basically is made using pre-historic technology, using animals to turn plants into this very special category of food that is defined by a particular kind of delicious flavor, sensory experience and nutritional profile with general affordability and accessibility.<\/p>\n

But to your typical consumer, like your hardcore American burger lover, the value proposition of meat has nothing to do with its coming from an animal any more than the value prop of transportation 200 years ago had anything to do with its being a horse\u2026<\/p>\n

Unlike the cow \u2014 first of all, it\u2019s not even trying to be delicious! And it stopped improving at that a million years ago. We are able to optimize our meats for deliciousness, sustainability, nutrition and affordability. And we are able to keep getting better and better.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Impossible Foods plant-meat burgers are photographed by a first-time taster<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

TC: Why not try \u201cclean meat,\u201d or lab-grown meat from animal cells?<\/strong><\/p>\n

PB:\u00a0<\/strong>The simple answer is because that is one of the stupidest ideas ever expressed. First of all, it\u2019s not true you can do a better job that way. Because then you buy into, at best, the same limitations that a cow has. And it\u2019s economically completely un-scalable.<\/p>\n

If we could grow tissues that were a meaningful replica of animal tissues at an affordable price from stem cells, it would revolutionize medicine. Look around you. It\u2019s not happening.<\/p>\n

TC:<\/strong> Venture investors have backed some of those companies. So I\u2019m wondering what you think about VCs in food. Do they know what they\u2019re doing?<\/strong><\/p>\n

PB:\u00a0It\u2019s not about VCs in food actually. I love VCs, and particularly the ones that invested in us. But it is truly astonishing how little diligence they do in terms of the actual science that underlies some tech companies.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

I\u2019m talking to these guys saying, \u2018Ask me a hard scientific question. Dig dig dig!\u2019 It doesn\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u2014 Impossible Foods CEO Pat Brown<\/span><\/div>\n

Sometimes, some of the VC firms we work with will ask me to take a look at a company. But it doesn\u2019t really matter what I say because sometimes I\u2019ll say, \u2018If I were you I\u2019d just flush my money down the toilet because it is faster and easier.\u2019 But it doesn\u2019t matter! They\u2019ll do the deal.<\/p>\n

TC: Would it help for venture firms to have scientists in-house?<\/strong><\/p>\n

PB:\u00a0\u00a0Yes! It certainly would. Not only that but to listen to them and to really look critically \u2014 sometimes it\u2019s just like, do the math!<\/p>\n

Anyway, and I\u2019m not being ironic here, I also think one of the great things about the venture world is that people will make wild bets on things that they see as highly risky, like a science-based product they haven\u2019t done diligence on, but it has the potential for a huge payoff.<\/p>\n

We would have never gotten any money if that wasn\u2019t true.\u00a0We have raised more than $200 million and have amazingly great investors. We don\u2019t let anyone invest. We are very psyched about who they are. They have to understand this. And if they are looking for a quick exit, look elsewhere. We\u2019ve told them we are not going to be acquired. Forget about that.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Impossible Foods CEO Pat Brown<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The market we are going after is a $1.5 trillion global market based entirely on a prehistoric technology that hasn\u2019t improved materially in a million years. So that\u2019s like a no-brainer in a certain sense from a financial standpoint. But we look for people who see the financial gain and really believe in our mission.<\/p>\n

We will never put anything on the market that we don\u2019t believe, based on all the science, is healthier than what it replaces. That\u2019s table stakes, if you\u2019ll pardon the phrase. But we also don\u2019t accomplish anything from a health or environment perspective if nobody buys our product. So we have to make products that sell primarily on deliciousness.<\/p>\n

Photos by Dani Padgett.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"\" Impossible Foods has raised more than $200 million to make a burger engineered from plants that tastes at least as good as ground beef. The company’s many backers are hoping to disrupt the massive “animal products” industry with food that is appealing, affordable and produced in an environmentally sustainable way. Read More<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

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