Paul Davenport:
Hello and welcome to What The Tech from Boast AI, where we talk with some of the brilliant minds behind new and exciting tech initiatives to learn what it takes to tackle technological uncertainty and eventually change the world.
Today, I'm thrilled to welcome Natalie Duncan, co-founder and CEO of Bug Mars, a smart, scalable, and automated insect farming startup that uses computer vision and machine learning to increase yield and profitability of insect farms for food, feed, and organic waste reduction.
Bug Mars is unique, not just because they're building AI software for alternative protein, that is bugs, but because their mission is to find ways to feed humans and livestock better and more sustainably. It's an incredible mission that encompasses a lot of really big stuff impacting future generations, food security, and, of course, our climate.
I'm thrilled to chat with Natalie and about the unique innovation she's driving at Bug Mars, her experience in the startup world, and her plans for the future. So without further ado, welcome to the show, Nat.
Natalie Duncan:
Hi. Thank you, Paul.
Paul Davenport:
Starters, could you tell me a little bit about your background? What got you into the space to begin with, and yeah, why bugs?
Natalie Duncan:
I wonder how many times we'll say bugs in this podcast.
Paul Davenport:
Can't wait.
Natalie Duncan:
Yeah. My background is actually in fine arts, conservation, and material science. I also have experience insect farming, specifically cricket. I got pretty good at killing them, and that's how Bug Mar started. Yeah, I was always interested and curious about agriculture and technology. Never expected that I'd be merging the two of them, but that's what we ended up doing.
Paul Davenport:
That is so interesting. So I'd love to know if you could tell me how did you get from fine arts into the agriculture space. Was there an opportunity that you latched onto? Was there somebody in your network who was like, "Hey, Nat, I know you're interested here?"
Natalie Duncan:
Sure. Yeah. No. I found it by accident. I was studying art abroad. While I was in Glasgow, Scotland, I came across someone who was promoting insects for human consumption. Because I had always had this interest in sustainable agriculture, I realized, "Oh, this is it," as I did my research.
So I came back to Canada, realized that there weren't many farms in Canada breeding insects, so I decided to try it for myself, and then I failed every single time. At that point, I reached out to my current CTO. We were friends at the time. I brought up my issues with him. He has the background in technology. We do everything from ship to cloud, and he said, "We can use AI to solve some of these issues."
Paul Davenport:
That is amazing. Now, could you tell me a little bit about the AI that you're using today? I know that I mentioned in the intro computer vision, which I have a little bit of familiarity with just from my past work experience, but also just tenets of ML, all the above. How are you applying that to the bug agriculture space? Going to start taking tabs, by the way, on every time I say bugs.
Natalie Duncan:
Yeah. So the computer vision component really is cameras that we have inside insect farms. They're monitoring 24/7 watching these insects around the clock. We have a somewhat joke about it being like a bug panopticon. We basically are big brother for these insects. We watch everything they do, every move they make, and then the machine learning component really analyzes the input that we feed it from these images, from the sensors that we have in there. And it starts to understand what's going in, and it can start to make predictive recommendations and provide analytics to these farmers.
Paul Davenport:
I love that you said bug panopticon. That might be title of episode. That was great. So I'd love to know, as you've developed the technology to and as it's come into market, how have your goals maybe evolved? My initial takeaway might be one of scale because you were trying to start your own farm yourself, and then you came to the heart of a problem and you look to find a solution from it. But as you enter new markets or as you expand and grow the business, what's kind of changed from your original marching orders to now?
Natalie Duncan:
So much, and also nothing at all in some ways. We were really focused on human consumption when we started this. I had a dream of having insect farms in every home. Everyone was going to be growing their own insect. We were going to make that possible. As we did our research, we learned that the industry was much greater and that livestock feed, pet food, and waste reduction were also areas that we could really support and honestly make a greater impact. Then we got involved with accelerators, which was probably the single most important step we made as entrepreneurs to get to where we are today.
Paul Davenport:
So a couple of questions from there. First off, I'd love to know a little bit about the accelerator programs that you got involved in. Why were those specifically so helpful?
Natalie Duncan:
Networking is... It's not only important, it's absolutely critical. I wish I had known that from the start. I really stumbled into it by accident. I was doing research, saw that there was a local accelerator. There were accepting applications in three days, and I thought that's like some free resources and expert advice. None of us have ever exited a startup before, so we got involved with them, and I think there've been, I don't know, maybe 15 accelerators at this point.
Paul Davenport:
All right. Now, I'd love to know too, what does the team at Bug Mars look like today? I know you mentioned you partnered with your CTO at the early stages, but is it still mostly a two-hander right now, or what's the team makeup?
Natalie Duncan:
Yeah. This is exciting because we just had a big change yesterday, but because I don't know when this will be released. We'll leave some of that out. Right now, it is a FEMA 4. It's myself, my co-founder, Seth Hardy, our developer, Michael Townsend, and our entomologist, Dr. Lee Bess. And then we do have a new member who, I guess, if people follow our socials, we'll get the news about.
Paul Davenport:
Oh, that's fantastic. And I'll make sure that we have all their socials in the show notes too, so that people can celebrate alongside Natalie and her team. But that is awesome news, especially to hear that things are expanding. And now, you had mentioned too that you have the doctor on the team, and you also have a developer as well as yourself and the CTO. Is that correct?
Natalie Duncan:
That's correct.
Paul Davenport:
All right, awesome. Now, I'd love to know how are you leveraging SRED funding for any of these roles today, or is that in the cards, or is that something that you've explored in the past even?
Natalie Duncan:
We have started to explore shred in a way. We are both fortunate and unfortunate. We received so much grant funding in the first two years that the SRED credits actually don't apply to us just now because of that grant funding. But going forward, absolutely, we will be taking advantage of that.
Paul Davenport:
Yeah, that is good to hear because I immediately thought when you were talking about how you've had this good news about expansion too, a lot of companies at the phase exactly where Bug Mars is. This is when SRED starts becoming valuable because you use those grants to get the product off the ground. They help actually fuel the ideas and the innovation that you have in your mind, and then it's when you're starting to actually make those expenditures start bringing on people to develop and actually work on the scientific research and experimental development that SRED can start kind of covering the costs of even having entire employees on the payroll at some point. So I'm glad to hear that that's on your roadmap. But I'd love to know in general too. We talked about working with accelerators, but are there any other kind of partnerships in the ecosystem that you want to talk about or that you've cemented since building Bug Mars?
Natalie Duncan:
Oh yeah, I'd love to take an opportunity to talk about them. We've partnered with Carleton University, and McMillan and Bertram Labs there. They have been some of the most impactful relationships we've made to date. They researched this full-time with their students. They're experts in the area, and they believe and understand the potential of Bug Mar's technology. So you really can't get more validation than what they've given us. And we've also got a pilot partner, Infinite Harvest Technologies, and they're just extremely sincere people. And their commitment to sustainability and their innovative approach for decentralizing insect farms is this just incredible.
Paul Davenport:
Now, I think calling back the bug panopticon of it all, I know that your original goals were taught, thinking about there being an insect farm in every home. Do you still see something akin to that being on the roadmap in the future? I know it's a bit of an abstract question, and I think the realities of what goes into actually cultivating these kinds of environments will get in the way of it maybe happening on the short term, but do you think that's still reasonable goal, or is it more of a moonshot these days?
Natalie Duncan:
Yeah, I mean, I do, but I'm someone who suffers from the belief that the only barriers really are systemic. And if you can work within those systems, really anything is possible. My team, we get so excited. To be honest, I don't even share some of my ideas with my team because once I get them going, they'll find a way to make it happen, and we have to stay focused with it. And I think that there are ideas that every home will have a bioreactor in it for cultivated or cellular meat in the future. So I don't think that having an insect farm in your home is that far off either.
Paul Davenport:
Like you said, it's kind of the systems in place that are your only inhibitors to success in that realm, especially when you have been raised to really think creatively and outside the box in that way.
Natalie Duncan:
Of course, innovation doesn't live inside a vacuum. You really do. It's like machine learning. It needs new input, right? In order to get somewhere with innovation there. And insects are the largest terrestrial biomass. Let's use them.
Paul Davenport:
Such a good point, too. Now, I'd love to know, thinking maybe over the next year, what's on the roadmap for Bug Mars? What can we look forward to? And it sounds like you're hiring some more folks. Is it going to be a little bit more of that?
Natalie Duncan:
Yeah, we're going to be hiring some more folks. We're going to be expanding. Certainly, we're going to be bringing on quite a few farms. We've got our pipeline set there. We have a few different models that we're hoping to launch. Right now we currently have our working cricket model, and in January we're expecting to launch our black soldier supply model.
Paul Davenport:
Awesome. So lots of good stuff to look forward to. Happy to hear it. Now, thinking broader too about the current startup ecosystem, I'd love to know, just as a founder, what is some advice you might give anyone looking to come up with a new idea and bring it to market in today's current climate? I know we did talk at length a little bit about accelerators and about finding the right partners in the ecosystem, but are there any specific tips, or strategies, or just takeaways about starting a business that you think founders should bear top of mind today?
Natalie Duncan:
Yes, absolutely. And I guess in order to get into that, I'll have to speak about the current state of things. So I believe that startups really do have an immense responsibility. There are some extreme global challenges on the rise, and innovation really is key. Large corporations can't pivot and innovate the way startups can. They rely on us. They have too much bureaucracy to actually innovate. So I think that startups have the potential to really take the lead. I hope it continues that way.
I also think capitalism and consumerism of the past just isn't sustainable, strategic, or even interesting anymore. So my advice, then, would be really stay true to your vision. Know that you will have to continuously adapt and pivot, but really know your vision. You're going to get so much input from so many people, and too many opinions are not good. Collaborate network and the less interesting, harder if really have more capital than you expect you'll need if you're going to bootstrap, especially if you're an underrepresented person. I think the bootstrapping is long and hard, but hopefully it won't be that [inaudible 00:12:06].
Paul Davenport:
I think that's fantastic. I love, too, that you emphasize know your vision and stick to it. Too many influences can really chip away at what might've been a great idea that could really move the needle. But when you have so many voices coming in the echo room, it's one thing to collaborate with those voices. It's another thing to have them drying out your original idea. So I want to draw a fine line under that. Know your vision and stay true to it.
Natalie Duncan:
I guess I just want people to look into this industry. It's growing rapidly. Pay attention. We're not trying to make anyone eat bugs if they don't want to, but if you want to keep eating chicken, pork, cow, and fish, you really need to care about this industry because fish meal and soy are not sustainable if you want to keep eating meat.
Paul Davenport:
Absolutely. That is a great point. And I also do want to call back to a point that you made earlier about. Startups are really the ones who are going to be driving the innovation here. There's a lot in the way of taking down the other structures in place that keep us acting not necessarily as bad actors in terms of climate responsibility, but not changing our ways when it's very evident that we need to. So love hearing that we have startups like you in the game who are actually pushing this innovation and taking the lead where maybe bigger corporations are reticent too. Love that you're at the front lines of it, and I can't thank you enough for joining our show. And hopefully, you'll be part of the Boast community soon.
Natalie Duncan:
Wonderful. Thank you so much for including us in this call.
Paul Davenport:
And thank you, listeners, for joining us. Please subscribe to What The Tech from Boast AI wherever you get your podcasts.