The Paxtier Podcast
The Paxtier Podcast
Cultivating catalytic methane reduction partnerships and products with Symbrosia's Eli Etzioni
Eli Etzioni is the Commercialisation Manager at Symbrosia, a start-up which breeds and cultivates fast-growing seaweed strains and develops them into high-value products. Symbrosia has developed SeaGrazeTM, a natural seaweed feed additive that drastically reduces livestock methane emissions.
In this episode of The Paxtier Podcast, Eli reveals all about catalytic methane reduction partnerships and products. He also breaks down various challenges facing the industry and his biggest mistakes.
There's one essay that particularly stood out to me and has guided a lot of the way I work ever since I read it. And I wish I'd taken on the framework sooner. And it's one by Paul Graham, one of the founders of Y Combinator, and it's titled relentlessly resourceful. He says, I was writing a talk for investors and I had to explain what to look for in founders. What would someone who was the opposite of hapless be like? They'd be relentlessly resourceful. Not merely relentless that's not enough to make things go your way, except in a few mostly uninteresting domains. In any interesting domain, the difficulties will be novel, which means you can't simply plow through them because you don't know initially how hard they are. You don't know whether you're about to plow through a block of foam or granite. So you have to be resourceful. You have to keep trying new things, be relentlessly resourceful, and I feel like all my other advice to myself and learnings along the journey are just ways to operationalize that sentiment. It's not about just being persistent, but being creatively persistent. And I just wish I'd taken that framework on sooner.
Enrico:Welcome back to the Paxtier Pod with myself and Peter. How are you getting on Peter?
Peter:Yeah, really good thanks. How are you?
Enrico:Great. We have a very special episode to share with you guys today. We caught up with the, the wonderful Eli Etzioni. Peter, do you wanna give us some more about that?
Peter:Eli is commercialization manager at Symbrosia. Many of you listening, will know Symbrosia. They're an anti-methanogenic supplement company making these feed supplements for cattle, livestock using Asparagopsis, based out of Hawaii, really brilliant team. So We caught up about, his journey into the space, the importance of partnerships and also essentially big challenges and advice. So I, I really enjoyed it. How did you enjoy it?
Enrico:Yeah, I mean, it is safe to say we definitely had a lot of fun whilst we were at it. I think what you said is, is really true. What Eli mentioned about partnerships underlined that this is, a direction that's needed to be taken. Yeah, we grilled him a bit on partnership. I hope not too much. We definitely went in a bit hard there because in this space we need to move together. But it seems at times that people are a little bit reluctant to do that. So, one of the outcomes of this chat was to really understand how Symbrosia's approaching that problem and eli's thoughts, definitely echoed some of our own, which was fantastic.
Peter:All right guys. Enjoy the episode. let us know what you think. let's dive right in.
Enrico:Okay. I think we're in business.
Peter:Yep. Sweet as. Great. Eli, thanks for joining us today. I think something I wanted to touch on today was your awesome journey into the space, because looking at your profile and your resume, You've done so many interesting and, and cool things including surf instructing. So it'd be great to hear a little bit more about, if, hopefully it's not too far back in your memory, but how did you go from PPE and comp ski all the way through to a commercialization manager at Symbrosia?
Eli:Yeah, absolutely. I will try to connect the dots for you all, and it is true. I have had a love of surfing coming out of my degree, studying a mix of philosophy, politics, and economics. Had a lot of counterparts thinking about law school and thinking about various other pathways with that degree, and I was really just interested in finding a way to help people. So I wasn't quite surf instructing, but my first job was as the first employee of a grassroots surf therapy nonprofit down in San Diego doing fundraising and development for them, and that essentially ended up sparking my connection to algae because it initially came just from a love of the ocean and from surfing my fair share. When I was down in San Diego doing the fundraising for the surf therapy group, I also ended up interning at an Ocean Technology industry Association. When I was working there, one of my responsibilities was actually just to keep a finger on the pulse of ocean innovation. And as part of that piece of my work, I came across Symbrosia. They were super early on their journey. They were at that time, I think just a couple of people and still focused on growing asparagopsis taxiformis, red seaweed, symbiotically with shrimp and having it benefit from, and Biore remediate their effluent. I just kind of came across them and thought, wow, this is amazing. This is, feels like a startup to keep one's eye on. From there, I ended up ultimately moving on from the fundraising for surf therapy and right as 2020 came around, I was coming up to speed on and reading a lot about how the 2020s were going to be the defining decade for tackling climate change and really getting a feeling like. This is something that I want to work on. This is a issue that feels like the defining one of our time and one that I wanna find a way to be a part of. And naturally we kind of start with what we know as I'm sure you're all aware. So I remembered this startup called Symbrosia, and I thought, well, how cool would it be to try and get involved with something like that? Ended up reaching out to Symbrosia and saying, sending them an email saying, Hey, this is who I am. Is there any way I can help out and support you all on your journey? And their founder and ceo, Alexia, who's now my boss, happened to be coming to San Francisco that weekend at the time where I was living. So Alexia and I met and got coffee and I basically said to her, look, this is what I can do. I'm so excited about what you're building. And I ended up essentially starting to consult for Symbrosia zia on communications, early fundraising efforts, early business development efforts, and that ended up being the most fun thing I'd ever taken on, and gave me kind of an on ramp to learning about this space. I also then actually wrote about seaweed for a publication called Eat Blue. I wrote a couple different articles about the multifaceted uses and potential climate saving role of seaweed and eventually that kind of consulting and interest in role with Symbrosia ended up growing into me joining full-time as their first business hire as commercialization manager. And that was about two years ago. And since then I've really only gotten more kind of enthralled and impressed by algae and obviously very deep on asparagopsis taxiformis, which we can talk more about. But that's my journey to date.
Enrico:I have to say it, it kind of sounds like the, the classic slippery slope that we will seem to get onto as soon as it comes to seaweed it just seems to do everything, especially as it's is is the un decade for ocean regeneration, right? Is that what got you into it in the first place? Is that the kind of thing you were reading about?
Eli:I don't remember exactly the wording of what I was reading, but I think it was more on the just- we only have 10 years. Yeah. From 2020 to 2030 to meaningfully shift the arc of global emissions as we prepare to, you know, reach sustainability goals by the end of this decade. And you know, ones that come further along than that and just thinking, wow, we're really running out of time here. I'd love to try and be a part of doing something. Yeah, so ocean regeneration, climate saving, they're all so intimately connected, but the main theme was just, we're running out of time. What can I do now?
Peter:Yeah. And what does, what does the day in the life of a commercialization manager look like at Symbrosia?
Eli:Yeah. One of my favorite things about being a commercialization manager and being on the commercial side of an innovative early stage startup is that no two days are alike, which maybe you hear from a lot of people on this job One day I am heads down in developing our carbon credit project because we're trying to be the world's first asparagopsis, seaweed company to enable farmers and ranchers to generate registry approved. Carbon credits by feeding our seaweed feed supplement, which we call sea grays to livestock, to reduce enteric methane. The next day I'll totally kind of context shift and be in the weeds with one of our pilot partners thinking about and hearing about how feeding sea grays on farm and monitoring enteric methane reductions are actually going, and what that is looking like practically and how that may improve. The next day I'll be kind of shifted again and thinking about things like regulatory approval for Asper, Opsis tax deforms products, where and when and how we can generate the data we need to kind of advance that in the United States. So commercialization I've come to think is very much about. What can I do to remove the obstacles to market and just accelerate this company's pathway? And I think that necessitates doing a variety of things and being ready to do whatever needs to be done.
Peter:We touched on a lot there. I know Enrique's a huge fan of data in particular with relation to MRV and methane reduction. But on the topic of the industry as a whole, I think you mentioned you speak to guys on the ground and you are always wondering where's this industry going, antimethanogenics, methane reduction industry for cattle Specifically, how, in your time in the job, how have you seen that evolve and where do you see that going in the next 10 years or so?
Eli:Yeah, I mean, I think that. And I'm biased because I'm on the commercialization side, but I think in the last three plus years since I have started consulting with Symbrosia and ultimately joined on the commercial front, we really have seen asparagopsis go from promising science to compelling business. And we still have a ways to go. And there are differences in the status of regulatory approval between different countries and geographies. But I do think that the asparagopsis space has been and is reaching an inflection point where the question is no longer if these feed additives are coming to market, it's just when and where. And who can scale high quality product the fastest. I mean, already in Australia, especially Australia is out on the forefront of this, where asparagopsis is broadly legal. We're seeing collaborations between aspa, Opsis companies and fast food restaurants and other players. And I am extremely confident that we are. We're seeing this in Europe as well with Volta Green Tech, bringing low methane beef to market. I'm extremely confident that the US is going to be next and that the question is no longer if, but when. And that's exciting for us on the inside.
Enrico:Yeah, that's, it's, it's interesting that, cause I always imagine that you guys would be partnering directly with the cattle farmers, but is it more that you're focusing on making deals with say McDonald's or something. Is that how it works?
Eli:Yeah, I don't wanna make it more complicated than it is. Our product is a feed additive that needs to work well for farmers and producers, and that's the bottom line. If it's not easy to use for the producer and it's not ROI positive in a compelling way, they're not going to use it. But that said, we do our diligence to do the best we can on the commercial side to talk to every single node So that means talking to producers and understanding how it can work. But also we've found incredible partners at the CPG slash brand level who are doing everything they can to actually advance in setting in their supply chains and meet their sustainability goals. And also have the ability to kind of point us to places and producers in their supply chain where it might be best to pilot and, and look at first implementing this, you know, we're also talking to distributors and trying to understand how distribution would work. Of course, we're also talking to consumers to understand what they wanna see out of a low methane beef and dairy product and what they might be willing to pay extra for. So ultimately, we need this to work for the producer and we need to find and unlock as much support as possible.
Peter:how do you approach partnerships in general? And is there a framework that you've developed you personally or Symbrosia around partnerships and I identifying teams that would be really, really valuable?
Eli:Yeah, it's a great question and it's one that we think about a lot. I think I've learned that when it comes to partnership and relationship building, especially in this space, especially when you have any early stage climate technology with a lot of potential, but still sa some kinks to iron out or some iterations to go through, it's really important to find. A partner who is well suited to be an early adopter, and you, it's, it's difficult to put that into a precise box, but you know it when I see, when you see it. I think you're the right. Early adopters and first partners are those who are motivated to be on the leading edge of commercializing and innovative technology. For their own reasons, who see the value and the advantages in being the first to market alongside with you. Mm-hmm. And are ready not just to use your product, but to understand it and to help shape your direction and to give you feedback along the way and who see those things not as negatives or as burdens, but who see those things as positives and opportunities. It's also great to have a partner who. In doing that is able to be nimble, but also able to to grow with you and, and give you, and also allow you to give them a whole bunch of upside. So I'll make this concrete by just saying that our first kind of larger commercial partner has actually been another startup. They've been absolutely incredible. So I'll take a second to just give them a shout out on here. Yeah, good. Maybe we can tag them in the show notes or something. Or In the promotions they're called Neutral Foods. They're a breakthrough energy backed venture bringing carbon neutral milk and soon beef to market nationwide in the United States. And they're doing everything they can to drive on farm carbon reduction in order to. To enable as much of that reduction through actual insetting at the farm level as possible. Totally shifting the paradigm in agriculture, and when we first got in contact with them, there was this incredible sort of connection and understanding of, hey, Symbrosia and C guys would fit really, really well as an implementation partner in your portfolio of on-farm reduction solutions. But I mean, it can be that on paper, but still not be a great partnership. But the level of kind of close collaboration, the neutral foods brought, the willingness to kind of review and tweak pilot proposals with us. The willingness to bring in an incredible regenerative rancher named Cory Carmen and Carmen Ranch from their supply chain for a first pilot. That's what really made the partnership pop off the page and, and become catalytic. I think not just for us, but for everyone involved and. When you find partners like that, even if you didn't have a perfect framework for looking for them, they shift your understanding and help you realize who it, who it works with the partner first, and we have other amazing partners as well. But I just wanted to shout neutral foods out as an example of what I'm talking about.
Peter:That was an amazing answer. That was so much more than I was expecting. anyway, Eli, the next question I had with you was actually on awareness. Because particularly in the US, regulation has popped up a few times with regards to supplements. Are they drugs? Are they, you know, because they're from seaweed, are they natural? Just feed additives? What's the actual state of play with that topic? And if it is a problem, I know you guys are quite heavily interested in bringing awareness, right? So spreading the message to farmers, doing interesting content plays on your products, how important is that and what sort of solutions are there for spreading that awareness to attracting regulators and top government officials?
Eli:It's a multi-part question. Let me take it one part at a time. First, just kind of state of play for asparagopsis with regards to regulatory approval. Second, how that manifests and what we can do now to drive that forward. So in terms of regulatory approval, I touched on it briefly. Aspa Opsis is legal to feed to animals and then take those animal products and sell them on the open market slash feed them to humans in Australia. And in the European Union with a little bit more of a constraint or two on it. The United States is in a strange spot on the regulatory front because historically there has not been a pathway to regulate feed additive slash feed ingredients that have environmental benefits. Any feed additive or feed ingredient that does something like reduce enteric methane. Essentially ended up being taken down a livestock drug pathway in the United States to date because of the way that those environmental benefits like reduced methane qualify as a kind of structure slash function claim and take even a natural feed ingredient like seaweed down a livestock drug pathway, which is a much longer and more involved regulatory pathway than you need or should need for something like seaweed. So there's work going on at the federal level. The FDA actually realizes. There's a gap here and has been hosting listening sessions and trying to modernize and create a new pathway specifically for environmentally beneficial feed additives like Sea Graze. While that's in the works, we're kind of in this limbo zone. We're waiting for guidance, waiting for what would still be an extremely thorough, but more expedited pathway in that interim. We are able to run sort of on-farm pilots and more constrained one-off implementations where we coordinate either with federal bodies or others to make arrangements for how to utilize those products. And that's kind of where we find ourselves with some of our earliest partners. There are also individual states that have taken on the regulation of asparagopsis themselves through their state agriculture departments. California being the most notable. I think the C D F A, the California Department of Food and Agriculture is doing incredible work to say here in our state, we have an enteric methane reduction target for the dairy industry by 2030, and we will review safety data packages ourselves and issue pronouncements and classifications, enabling companies to sell asparagopsis here. So we're in progress on that in California and monitoring the situation closely at a federal level as it continues to evolve. I think that this necessitates as a company, you don't have an infinite timeline. You can't necessarily wait for these things, which we hope will happen soon, and we're pushing to make happen soon. So. I do think advocacy comes in and just being thoughtful about your go-to market strategy and recognizing the places like California where you do have more ability to move through regulatory pathways in a timely manner, and and concentrating on those kind of friendlier geographies. I'll just say,
Enrico:if. You had public support to eat it, would that then kind of boost the regulatory pathway? Would that the speed up the process or is it just being held still at like a bureaucratic level?
Eli:Yeah, some of these bureaucratic developments and evolutions to regulatory pathways are a bit of a black box. It's hard to know what exactly reaches the folks making those decisions. There were a whole bunch of companies from across the. Algae, seaweed and other feed supplement industries, as well as just dairy advocacy groups and industry groups that came to those listening sessions and made their case for why the FDA needs to act on this. I think public support is always beneficial and at a certain point we at Symbrosia are focused on. Just moving forward in the ways that we know we can and making a plan for, regardless of how this progresses, here's how our business is only gonna accelerate. So public advocacy can never hurt, but mm-hmm. It's not the crux of you have to do what you can. Yeah.
Peter:have you got Any data points on the scale of the problem from cattle and how much you can reduce it by?
Eli:Yeah, there are varying numbers floating around there, and I think that the Breakthrough Institute actually published a report, which I have been meaning to read on what exactly Cattle's global contribution to climate is. But we are talking about roughly 1 billion cattle. Each emitting multiple metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions in terms of CO2 equivalent just through their enteric methane and through their methane burps. And we're talking about being able to at scale, eliminate the majority of that problem. So we're, we're talking about multiple gigatons of CO2 equivalent reduction. Once you are able to scale this up to the world's billion cattle, And I do like to try to think about that in terms of what percent of our global carbon budget is that, or our global carbon emissions. And we're talking about being able to mitigate simply from this innovation two to 4% of all of humanities manmade CO2 equivalent emissions. And that feels huge to us. Anything that can do gigatons worth of impact at scale, I believe is something worth pursuing. And we're very much in that kind of top shelf category.
Peter:And that comes back to the question of supply, right? And it also comes back to your partnership with Cyanotech Can you tell us more about that and what that means for you guys and what's exciting about that particular partnership?
Eli:Yeah, absolutely. I think one of my learnings from being in the algae industry is that I feel that the algae industry as a whole is only limited by the amount of high quality supply of product that can be brought to market. I think demand for algae innovations, which are almost always inherently more sustainable than their counterparts. Is large and only gonna continue to grow. And when I read about a promising algae startup or see a new funding round or talk to folks in the industry, one of my first questions is always, how much supply do you have and how are you going to be able to scale that while ensuring quality? Because again, I'm on the commercial side, I see the demand is there. Where's supply at? So I appreciate you asking. I think it's a great and super important question, one that we think about all the time, which is why even from early on we were thinking this is going to have to be collaborative. We at Symbrosia are doing everything we can to do cutting edge science, unlock what can really be described as the deep secrets of asparagopsis taxiformis But we're, we know we can't scale supply alone, which led us early on to start having conversations with folks like CyanoTech about, hey, where can we utilize existing algae infrastructure in order to find ways to grow much larger quantities of our product? Now, you know, we are also in the process of building our own facilities, but we really see. Partnerships with with CyanoTech, which are still exploratory and are still kind of growing into what they fully could be. But we really see those kinds of exploratory partnerships as ways to kind of bend the scaling arc and scale more product up now. So it's hard to put precise numbers on it because it's early on, but we are. Incredibly excited to have this relationship with CyanoTech and have that opportunity to kind of work with them as a stepping stone to the kind of scale that we need to see. And I am, I can say that they're not going to be the only partner that we bring on in this space. We're very bullish on opportunities for manufacturing partnerships to, to scale what we're doing.
Enrico:Super, this company that you are working with, then, is this what, what kind of cultivation is this? Could you expand a little bit on that?
Eli:Yeah. Cyanotech is the largest algae grower in the state of Hawaii. As far as I'm aware. They've been around for 30, 40 years and they produce. Two micro algae products as supplements for humans. They have, I believe it's 96 or over 90 acres of raceway ponds and algae production facilities. And we've been in conversation with them for some time and announced an exploratory partnership to find ways to collaborate on essentially what would be co-production and co-development partnerships to utilize. Their facilities and their expertise along with our innovation to, to scale Sea Graze production.
Peter:And, okay, moving swiftly now onto the, the next questions what are three biggest failures or mistakes that you've made in your journey so far in seaweed or maybe beforehand? What did you learn from these failures?
Eli:Yeah, that's a fun question. I was thinking about this a bit and it really took me down memory lane. I guess I have a couple that are a little bit more general for you. I think the first is just that the journey from surf therapy fundraiser to seaweed feed additive Commercializer has been a windy one, and I am not ashamed to admit that. Along that path, I have kind of burnt out slash stalled out a couple times in an in a really kind of significant way that did not feel good and was tough to work through. And I think I made it harder for myself by feeling and being stuck in a situation and trying to just kind of push through that situation and keep going. Whether that was a specific job or a specific. Set of projects and responsibilities within that job. And I wish that I could kind of talk to my former self and encourage him to be more willing to acknowledge that a change was needed and more willing to take action to pursue that change. Because when I did do that a bit too late, multiple times, I never regretted it at all. It always ended up being very, very catalytic for me. And so I think I'd sum up what I learned by saying essentially, Don't be afraid to accept that you might need to significantly change something about your situation to achieve your full potential and to keep moving forward. And that could be kind of a change, like modifying something within your job or finding a new mentor, someone to give you advice that could be leaving to find a new job that could be kind of making a lifestyle change or something entirely outside of your job. But don't be afraid to make some sort of change. Super. And when, that's the first one.
Peter:When you do that Enrique and I was talking about burnout today because Enrique Sure. Enrique had a crazy final, you know, the dissertation projects where you end up spending all nighters trying to finish your thesis. He has a personal experience with this this year. But on this point when you're trying to identify the main problem, why you are feeling a bit burnt out, And then CR creating some kind of solution. What's, what's the sort of approach to really getting into the root of the, of the problem and then finding a solution and picking a solution or way out? Is it about brainstorming loads of actions and then picking one? Or is it about just doing anything slightly different and then seeing what arises from that?
Eli:I think you can definitely gain a lot of clarity by, Thinking about and being honest with yourself about why you're feeling stuck. I think in my experience, more often than not, there has often been a reason that I can deduce for why I'm feeling this way. Yeah. That said, I also think that sometimes just creating space in your life and and taking something off of your plate can give you the bandwidth to do something new. I will say that in my case, and just bringing it back to Symbrosia and making it a bit more concrete, finding a kind of job and role and space in which I am trusted to take things on and in which the projects that I am doing day to day are enabling me to kind of learn and build the skills that I want to use for the rest of my life. That's gone a really long way. I don't think I've had that duality in previous roles before, and that has truly been the gift that keeps on giving. So that's kind of a heuristic I use now for, for what a fulfilling work life can and should look like. Yeah.
Enrico:And, and on top of all of this, don't forget to go surfing.
Eli:Of course. Not always Find time to do the things that you love and find ways to exercise that you, that you enjoy and that you're incentivized to do and don't feel like a burden. That's one of my biggest pieces of advice. Unrelated. Yes.
Peter:And so the other. Biggest mistakes, if you have any?
Eli:That, yeah. I have one other which I'd thought through, which is that I've made the mistake multiple times of expending an enormous amount of kind of time and energy and effort on a project or on an undertaking. Pushing towards a goal only to realize that if I had paused and sought out just a little bit of kind of advice or guidance from someone who had solved those same problems before, I could have saved myself an enormous amount of time. I think a really good example is a major project we took on at Sambria last year, which was. We submitted a 5 million grant proposal to the United States Department of Agriculture as part of their Climate Smart Commodities grant program, and we put together an incredible program. I think we ended up with like 18 letters of support from different partners around bringing sea grays to underrepresented and small producers, and then scaling from there and doing market development. We had a really robust program, but we didn't end up getting the grant. It was very, very competitive. But what I pretty quickly noticed was that there was at least one extremely big winner who had not just won one grant, but they had been part of six different winning grants that totaled nearly$7 million. And that was a company called Yardstick. And what Yardstick does is they have developed a technology for monitoring the levels of carbon and soil. And so what yardstick essentially did, as far as I'm aware, is. Sort of got a sense of who was putting together coalitions and applying for this grant and joined six different coalitions, probably more as the soil carbon measurement implementation partner. And that was a total lightning bolt moment for me of Wow. Sometimes less can be more. And if we just kind of taken a second to pause and evaluate and talk to who else were being experts, like there were climate smart beef projects that got a lot of funding. There were climate smart dairy projects that got a lot of funding. We could have had a really interesting role. As the enteric methane reduction implementation partner, and it all could have come from just taking a second and thinking about who can we talk to to accelerate this work? And so that's something I really try and make a habit out of. Now, whenever I take on something new, I try to ask myself. Who has walked this path before and how can I find a way to learn from them? And it's not, cuz I don't know anything, it's not, cuz I don't have any ideas myself. And it's not because I'm not confident in what I can do, it's just because there's no substitute for, for that kind of advice.
Peter:Actually that's brings up another interesting point, which is about moving together as a unit instead of trying to go alone. How do you see that partnership model or moving together model versus trying to win at all costs alone?
Eli:Yeah. I think it's gotta be moving together and I think going back to my answer and thoughts earlier on neutral foods and finding the right early adopters. Yeah. When you kind of take the broader view, I just think. That partnerships can be so incredibly catalytic for both sides. I think you talk about Symbrosia plus neutral foods, or Symbrosia plus Cyanotech. We're not talking about one plus one equals three, or even one plus one equals five. I truly believe that we're talking about one plus one equals 10 or one plus one equals a hundred, right? We're talking about the world's first carbon neutral foods brand, finding an innovative way to reduce enteric methane on farm by 80%. We're talking about one of the world's oldest micro-algae growers. Having the potential to, you know, help scale up and diversify into an extremely promising new use of macro algae. Like we're talking about things that wouldn't ever have been possible without the partnerships, and so, I truly think that if you're a startup and you're not thinking outside the box on these kinds of things, you are going to lose. You're not gonna be the fastest, you're not gonna be the best you can be, and I, I am yet to see a counter example to that point.
Enrico:Is that something that you kind of apply to advice that you give it to your younger self that you should, you should look around for help before you jump into anything? do you have any other similar things that you would love to tell yourself,, five years ago, 10 years ago?
Eli:Yeah, absolutely. I think that I would absolutely give myself that advice. I would couch it in the terms of one of my favorite books now that I recommend to almost anybody, which is the book Atomic Habits by Jane Clear, James Clear. And one of his quotes in that book, which applies directly here, is you do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. And I think that's a really, really powerful point that I've taken to heart, which is that. You're going to be, in many ways defined by what you do habitually, and that is both a challenge and your greatest opportunity to kind of codify the routines and habits and systems that are gonna drive you to the next level. So to map that back to this, my advice to my younger self five years ago would wouldn't be. Try to find people to talk to and get advice from who can potentially help you cuz they've solved these problems. Before it would be whenever you take on a new project, make it a habit as the very first or second step of that project after you've scoped it to just work into your progression. Always looking around for one or two people who you can talk to for that kind of a conversation. Mm-hmm. So I'm a big believer in habits and systems now, and I don't think I had that as strongly when I was younger.
Peter:Every time I read that book, I come away with something that's actionable. Yeah. Big fan
Eli:Yeah. And I did wanna flag one other thing for my younger self, while we have a moment, which is I feel like. There's one essay that particularly stood out to me and has guided a lot of the way I work ever since I read it. And I wish I'd taken on the framework sooner. And it's one by Paul Graham, one of the founders of Y Combinator, and it's titled relentlessly Resourceful. And it's just, it's so, it's quick and concise. I see you guys nodding with, you've read it and it's powerful. I just wanted to take a second to read a sentence or two from it yeah. He says, I was writing a talk for investors and I had to explain what to look for in founders. What would someone who was the opposite of hapless be like, they'd be relentlessly resourceful, not merely relentless. That's not enough to make things go your way, except in a few mostly uninteresting domains. In any interesting domain, the difficulties will be novel, which means you, you can't simply plow through them because you don't know initially how hard they are. You don't know whether you're about to plow through a block of foam or granite. So you have to be resourceful. You have to keep trying new things, be relentlessly resourceful, and I feel like all my other advice to myself and all my other kind of learnings along the journey are just ways to operationalize that sentiment. I think, especially in the work that I do, but in, in so much that we do, it's about not just. Trying new things, but doing that relentlessly. And it's not about just being persistent, but being creatively persistent. And I just wish I'd taken that framework on sooner.
Peter:Yeah. Paul Graham oftentimes reminds me of everything that I don't know about entrepreneurship. And I think his book Hacks and painters as well was just like a mind opening. Read and there was essays again, every time I read one it's like, oh gosh. Yeah. There's a lot more to learn. Great answers. Absolutely. And, and finally, I think there was something else about challenges I wanted to ask you. Generally, maybe not for Symbrosia, but more wider for the anti-methanogenic supplement market, what challenges, big challenges exist still for, for this market and how, what do we need to do to overcome those
Eli:challenges? Yeah, absolutely. I think there are kind of a couple of different bottlenecks in the space, some of which we've kind of touched on, one of which is regulatory approval, and I think the solution there is continuing advocacy and Ricoh, as you pointed out, Continuing to just generate a body of data, particularly on the safety of asparagopsis text performance. We have a strong body of peer reviewed studies, but we just need to do more. And so at Symbrosia, we're very focused on adding to the global body of literature on asparagopsis through our work and partnership with academics and farmers and with our brand partners. So we're continuing to work through kind of regulatory approval and, and consumer confidence. That's one. The second is very much, I think I touched on it earlier, but it's making carbon monetization and monetization for enteric methane reduction reachable for our customers. There are kind of methodologies and guidelines put out by registries for how to generate carbon credits from feed ingredients and companies in the asparagopsis space. I think. Should follow them and benefit from the credibility of third party registries and from generating high quality kind of carbon credits and high quality verification of the methane reduction piece of what they're doing. And then the third is just scaling production, which we've talked touched on. I think our partnership with CyanoTech can be and should be catalytic in that space. And the whole asparagopsis space needs to continue to do. The innovative and cutting edge r and d that, that we're doing to unlock the secrets of asparagopsis taxiformis and, and figure out how to scale supply as fast as possible. So I think those are the major bottlenecks to keep one's eye on.
Enrico:I'm so intrigued by the secrets of asparagopsis. I, it just makes me wanna know everything.
Peter:Have you, have you guys tried it as a, as Limu as food yet, as snacks, asparagopsis? Is that, is that on the agenda?
Eli:Yeah, that's a great question. Limu. asparagopsis taxiformis reforms. Its Hawaiian name is Limu Kohu, which actually means I believe the royal seaweed and it has a lot of cultural legacy and his rich history in the Hawaiian Islands. And we try to be very cognizant of and respectful of that. And we maintain very open relationships with kind of community groups and local LIMU growing associations. And LIMU has been, A delicacy in Hawaii, often eaten with poque, kind of added as a garnish for centuries now. So we don't hesitate to have a little nibble every now and again as part of our quality assurance process. And we had partners and investors who enjoy doing the same thing. So you didn't hear that here? But
Peter:I didn't even know it was uh, seasoning until like earlier today. When Enrico mentioned it. That raises a great point in general with these types of biomass that they have so many different facets. Listen, Eli, we've touched on so many amazing things today. I dunno if there's anything else that you guys wanted to talk about, but I mean, yeah, bring it up. Otherwise, Thanks so much for taking the time today. I mean, really enjoyed this chat.
Eli:Yeah. Thank you guys so much. I just wanna say thank you both so much for the work you all are doing to spread the good word about what we're doing, and just champion the algae industry. I just wanted to end on the note of I really am bullish and optimistic on this space, and I think there are so, so many different avenues for utilizing algae to mitigate climate change. Obviously, there's all the companies in the ax reformist space. There's brilliant planet and running tide sinking algae. There's all the bioplastics companies like Knot Plus sway and Lolly Ware. There's algae pigment companies like Spira. And of course, I wanna find as many ways as possible to eat algae. So there's companies like Akua doing kelp burgers and Triton algae innovations. I just wanted to name that. I really do think we are onto something here with algae for mitigating climate change. And it's not just one avenue or product use. So, I hope to continue to see more content from you all and more innovation from the space. And I'm just excited
Peter:And, where's the best place to find you guys and you in particular?
Eli:Yeah, you can reach at eli@symbrosia.co or connect with me on LinkedIn. I tried to be pretty quick on there. And yeah, go to our website. Go to our Instagram, we. Have a great, fun brand and a lot of good stuff going on there. And try to catch us on TikTok as well.
Peter:Super Enrique, anything else?
Enrico:No, I think that you've wrapped it up very nicely and yeah, Eli, it's an absolute pleasure to meet you and to, to learn about Symbrosia and about your life So thank you very much for being on here.
Eli:The pleasure was truly all mine guys, this was so fun. Thanks