Elliot Roth | Eating 100% algae diets and building tech in 2023

Elliot Roth is the founder of Spira Inc, a bio-tech start-up at the forefront of engineering algae for industrial applications. 

Over the last few years, Elliot’s team has developed algae products for wastewater treatment, carbon capture, cosmetics, and pigments.

And in this episode of The Paxtier Podcast, Elliot reveals all about his 100% algae diet, building tech in 2023, and important new lessons. 

Where to find Elliot:

• https://www.spirainc.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/thatmre/

Hope you enjoy! Let us know what you think!

Chapters

• 2:05 Introduction to Elliot and his journey into algae.
• 4:05 Updates on Spira Inc’s fundraising journey and his all algae diet.
• 10:33 The fundraising environment for algae tech.
• 12:21 Additional pain-points in the industry.
• 14:10 Bio-mining.
• 16:30 Biggest mistakes.
• 19:45 Lack of profitability in algae companies worldwide.
• 23:06 What cultivation techniques does Spira Inc depend on?
• 24:30 Great algae species we can get excited about.
• 27:20 Algae for bio-plastics and higher value products.
• 33:00 What advice would you tell your younger self?

Transcript

Elliot: 0:00

so the companies that are focused on luxury goods, I think it, it's a long slog, but that's a good start. So if you're like making Rolex watch wrist bands, you know, out of bioplastics, I know Swatch just released a bio ceramic, but it's made with Castor oil or castor beans. So there, there's like some things that are out there that are kind of intriguing where you could see algae as being an input. So it, it just kind of depends on what market you're going after. And I think the higher value markets and the more premium stuff, the luxury goods are gonna be what you see first.

Peter: 0:40

welcome to the Paxtier Podcast. Today we have a very special episode. We brought in Elliot Roth to talk to the Phyconaut and the Paxtier community. We spoke about his company Spira Inc. Which is a microalgae company that's done a lot of different product development over the years, but currently is focusing on pigments. Enrico what was your favorite bit about that?

Enrico: 1:01

I thought it was really cool how Elliot brought a practical side to the talk where he's talking about the diet that he's currently doing, and he goes, Here's some Cystoseira, and here's some, you know, Sea Grapes. And he actually eats it live on camera and you're thinking, wow, like this is a man who is actually putting it to the test? So I thought that was really, really cool. And he touched on some really interesting topics when it comes to different microalgae species. And then on top of that he talks about different approaches. Different uses,

Peter: 1:29

applications.

Enrico: 1:30

Yeah so it is really cool. He touched on all bases there.

Peter: 1:33

It, it was, uh, it was really great to bring in the whole community to actually feed off each other. We had a lot of different questions coming in and he handled them really well, which is great, and I would love to do this kind of thing again. Otherwise guys, Thanks so much for, for listening in. Hope you enjoy it and let us know what you think. Here is the episode. Hey Elliot. Thanks for jumping on. Give us a little update then. Could you brief the folks who don't already know you on what you're up to what you're working on and how did you get into the algae space?

Elliot: 2:05

Yeah, sure. So Elliot Roth, I got started growing algae about seven or eight, seven or eight years ago. And I have a background in synthetic biology and biomedical engineering. I got really interested in algae when I became food insecure, and I started growing spirulina as a means of feeding myself more or less. Providing my, my protein intake when I was a little food insecure. And I've actually worked with people like Stacy on developing different classes on how to grow your own spirulina. I've done everything from creating food products from various strains, microalgae, to creating photo bioreactors and trying to sell those as like hobbyist kits to people. To eventually turning into mostly a biomanufacturing focus. So I now work with 83 farms in 14 countries. We have a total capacity among the farming network of 566 metric, tons of total algae every month. And then we use all that algae to supply various companies. Like in the food cosmetic and textile space. So mostly producing dyes right now, but really open to the possibility of leveraging microalgae and cyanobacteria as a biomanufacturing platform to start replacing petrochemicals moving from pigments to proteins, to plastics in pharmaceuticals. So really it's cited to meet everybody here. I've. Part of how I got started too is I interviewed about 255 different companies and people in algae to figure out why algae hasn't been a thing. Which is kind of a pertinent question, like why did biofuels bust and learned a lot about what not to do? And then that's part of the reason how I designed my business in the first place and how I got started. Bit of brief background on me

Peter: 3:53

Give us a little update on Spira Inc. We called about three months ago as well as texting every now and again, but since then, what's happened and what are you working on?

Elliot: 4:05

Sure. Yeah. So I personally moved from Los Angeles to San Francisco as a means of helping kick off our seed round. We've never really raised any significant outside capital, so this is the first time actually officially raising. So I'm currently in San Francisco raising 3 million to help scale much more of our algae, biofoundry side of things. The actual genetic engineering of microalgae and cyanobacteria is kind of a tricky thing. It's difficult. It's something where there aren't many tools available to do that, so we hope to build one of the first photosynthetic biofoundries either here in the Bay or down in Los Angeles, depending. So yeah, that's the exciting bit. A lot of the other things that I've been doing is like shipping samples testing out new packaging. So this is our red green. I got blue and yellow as well. I've also kicked off a algae diet, an all algae diet. So I'm doing a test run of eating only algae and water for a week. Just that nothing else. And so I have here, I'll show you, I got a lot of my supplies over here. So I got some Chlorella powder right here. I'm also doing macro algae with this, so I got like nori sheets. I have like this big bag of Dulse. I've also went seaweed foraging off the coast. I have some like limited algae oils, so this is like Nordic naturals and iwi, and. I'm gonna be trying out a salad today of Sea Lettuce some Laver and Bladderwrack. And these are some wild harvested algae that I had. So you know, I've just been. I've been staying a little busy doing a couple of things. I've also been helping out mentoring and consulting with a couple of other friends companies too. So if you ever need advice or help or guidance or anything like that I'm your guy. I've seen the dos and don'ts of starting things in algae and or synthetic biology,

Peter: 6:04

we mentioned the algae diet. And you told me dulse was the current favorite. Why was that?

Elliot: 6:10

Cause when I fry it in algae oil, it tastes like bacon, so like that's really great. Especially because my selection is quite limited. It is one of the tastier things that I can eat on a daily basis, so that is definitely a core part of my snacking. I also made some Cystoseira pickles and Sea Grape pickles. So here, let's see if I can pull up, yeah. Here. So I started pickling these I went foraging back in like. I guess it was end of April or so. So these have been pickling for a bit, but they're quite tasty to be honest. These are also another favorite snack of mine, so I might snack on a, a little bit right here. So there's some Cystoseira. I got some Sea Grapes somewhere in here. They have a nice satisfying crunch. Here's, here's a little Sea Grape thing. Yeah. Nice little crunch to it.

Enrico: 7:03

So, leading on from that. What can you tell us about the diet? Have you found any changes in yourself that, that surprised you have there been any, you know, Kind of difficulties with the diet itself. Do, do you think this, the seaweed diet is from what you've learned so far, is it feasible? What can you tell us about that

Elliot: 7:22

yeah, so I think one of the things that I'm recognizing is that, Like number one, like there's such a social aspect of food. And so this past week has been particularly hard cuz I've been just like sitting at dinner, staring at people while they eat delicious things in front of me. And not eating sort of normally means that your other senses are quite enhanced. So my sense of smell has actually been amped up by like not eating conventional things. And so I can smell everything and I'm just constantly interested in walking by good smelling places and like I salivate and all these things. I think some of the other things that I'm, I'm sort of recognizing is that we need better edible algae oil sources. Is one of the key problems cuz that's where humans get the majority of their calories from, is actually from fats. And so I get, I've been getting my protein requirements mostly from Chlorella and Spirulina. And then I was trying to get my oil and fats from Schizochytrium and Nannochloropsis. And I do have some of those, but they come in the form of pills and they're mostly supplements. They're not like cooking oils or anything like that. And so that's one of the difficulties. Bits is that just having them as supplements isn't enough for the caloric requirements. So while I'm getting all my micronutrient requirements completely fine I'm having difficulty getting the macronutrient requirements of mostly calories. So that's, that's been the biggest challenge. The first couple days going into the diet, I also did a water fast, which was kind of challenging, but at the end of the day yeah, it's kind of, it's something that people do and I, I guess anybody can do this for about a week. One of the other joys that I found recently is like a kombu broth. Or a Kelp broth. Yeah. That was awesome. So I did, I had some wild harvested Kelp here and just sort of boiled it, and then that broth is almost like a bone broth, you know? It's very filling, very warm, very soothing, very savory. Yeah, and then I, I tried to make a algae stew of some sort yesterday which is a little disastrous. I also tried to make an algae pancake using like Carageenan as like a thickening agent or like an egg replacement that was also a little disastrous. I'm gonna keep on trying different recipes, but before I publish anything, I've been told that I have to go through an I R B. And that's an institutional review board. It's a third party that'll review any of my methodologies or anything like that. So part of this entire week is to collect data on myself to showcase, hey, this is safe. I'm having metabolic tests. I have a continuous blood glucose monitor on right now. I have, I've been doing gut microbiome tests, so I just did another midweek gut microbiome test yesterday. So yeah, all sorts of really exciting things. Yeah, it's, it's something that's, that's a lot more challenging than I expected. The first couple days I was very lethargic. And then now I, I think I'm okay. I think it's fine. But yeah, if I'm gonna do this for a month, I'm gonna have to change up some things.

Peter: 10:33

So during your time in San Francisco, what were your feelings about the fundraising environment and the market demand? Are there any lessons or learnings from your time there?

Elliot: 10:43

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, part of the reason why I moved to San Francisco is because it's a lot easier to raise capital here. And if you're meeting face-to-face with people that still prioritize and emphasize, you definitely can. Raise money and do the VC thing via video chats and whatnot. But at the end of the day, if you actively want to build connections with people, oftentimes go to the place where they are. And so the other kind of key points to note are the fundraising environment is kind of cooling right now. There is a window of time in the next like year, year and a half where investors have money and they're willing to invest money. Many of the investors that have been around for a while were burned in the past in Climate Tech 1.0. So now that they're investing in climate, Again they want to see positive financial returns and viable business models and all of the things that make for a stable company. It is moving away from prioritizing growth and more into prioritizing profitability, which is I think is really healthy and that's really good. That's what we should be doing in terms of business in general. And then the other kind of key thing to note, Over the summer, people go on vacation. I think like something like France has an entire month off or something like that. Like don't try to talk to anybody in Europe in the month of like July or August. It just doesn't happen. But if you're in the United States people are workaholics here and so it's a little bit better. So I just know fundraising in July and August is a little bit of a headache, but yeah, things I, I'm getting mainly positive responses.

Peter: 12:21

And since we last spoke three months ago, I'm wondering if there are any other additional pain points that you've been picking up on in the industry that might be stalling it that weren't necessarily front of mind three months ago

Elliot: 12:34

I think one of the key, so, so there's, there's a couple of different layers there. I think one of the key pain points is being. Being able to scale or having an idea of how you're gonna scale whatever you're doing. You may be able to prove out something in the laboratory, but unless you have a very solid understanding of how you go to market and how you scale, unless there's a very significant customer, customer demand and very solid unit economics of whatever you're making or producing it's, it's not really a viable business concept. The other kind of things that I've seen that have been problematic or challenging is that oftentimes people launch into trying to build something without talking to customers. So you have to have a lot of customer validation. That's really primary. And then the second is that you gotta be building something that costs less than it does to sell. Otherwise, otherwise your product won't make sense on the market. So I always tell people approach product building like Tesla in the sense that you start really high and you come down the cost curve over time. So start with a very high value product and then move your way down. And then approach service building where you have something that's incredibly premium but small. Like a concierge service and then steadily grow your operation so that if you're building a particular service, like whether it's wastewater treatment or it's I don't know, biomining or if it's something associated with CO2 capture, all of that is in a very particular niche that gives you the ability to expand.

Enrico: 14:10

So talk to us a little bit more about biomining. I know that you spoke to Peter recently about it. Um, what further thoughts have you had on this front and what direction are you taking are you using microalgae and cyanobacteria for things like mine tailings

Elliot: 14:25

Yeah. Yeah. So I think so a bit of background on that. I tried to start a spinoff company. That was focused around biomining from Spira, leveraging some of our genetic engineering technology on algae. And in particular, focus around mine tailing ponds. And so if you look at mine tailing ponds, they already have species of bacteria, fungi, and algae growing in them that are surviving, if not thriving in these very extreme environments. And so what you can do is you can kind of emphasize the microbes that are doing really well and double down on them and use them as chelators and aggregators and metals and minerals. And so they can, they can chelate and grab these metals and minerals from their surrounding environment and thus hyper accumulating, and then being an easier way to actually filter out the higher value compounds from something that would be normally considered as waste. And there, there are a couple companies in the space that are investigating this. I know Provectus had some communication around this, although I don't know what's happening there. And then some Vita talked a little bit about that and they have one of their branches is focused on that as well in Colorado. So there are some algae companies that are toying with and playing with this possibility. It's still super early, but I do think, especially when we're looking at more onshoring or friend shoring of critical minerals and metals some of that involves Looking at how do you actually mine lower grade ORs? And so that's gonna become more and more pertinent over time, and that's definitely in the climate vein. So the, the investment, to go back to your previous question, the investment theses that seem to be doing really well are of course ai, which is all over the media, but it's kind of like a boom bust cycle, right? So every. At like 12 months or so, you have a new trend coming about. So AI is the big trend right now. And then climate is the other big trend, and I think climate's gonna be somewhat evergreen pun intended.

Peter: 16:24

For those of you who've just joined, feel free to drop a question in the comment section and we'll endeavor to pester to Elliot as much as we can today. Elliot, next question for you is around failures or mistakes. What have been some of the biggest mistakes you've made and what have you learned?

Elliot: 16:38

Sure. I used to believe like, idea meant everything. And then at the end of the day to be honest, it really comes down to the people that you're around and the people that you are interacting with. I think team has been where I've made some of the most mistakes and some of the longest mistakes. Because I brought on board people that weren't experts, that weren't really like robust. And so it became really difficult to move quickly or move forward without the right people involved. So that was, that was one of the key things. I think some of the other mistakes that I've had as well were doing too much at once. One of my mentors once told me that you choose to either be a technology or brand. And so at the end of the day, you have to focus on what you are really motivated by and what you're interested in. If you're technology, but you try to dress it up like a brand, then you're wasting your kind of time, effort, energy if you're a brand just focused on the marketing and the selling piece of things too. So it, it just kind of depends on where your attention is. So if you're doing too many things, you should probably say no to all of those things. I think a lot of it comes back to. To be honest, like founder trauma, you know, where whatever your past trauma in your life is really informs whatever decisions you're making. And whoever is starting a particular company or team is normally driving the ship in a certain direction based on what has happened to them. And so it's very important to like, go to therapy and check all of your biases at the door and do all of those kind of things. So, because that can. Fundamentally change the trajectory of whatever you're doing. So I would say take care of yourself first as well. Focus on your personal health. Then really double down on customers. Don't go after investors until you really have a lot of solid customers and you have traction there. Mm-hmm. And then when you're building a product to make sure that there's an actual market for it that kills most businesses. I've had. Seven failed companies in various ways. Some of that comes down to teams. Some of that comes down to founder product fit, founder market fit, right. I'm not the best person for the specific job. Yeah. And then two successful nonprofits. So maybe I should just start nonprofits.

Peter: 18:48

How many customers do you need before you start going to investors with an algae technology?

Elliot: 18:54

That's a really interesting question. I mean, I think it depends on the size of the customers, but you definitely need more than one because if you only have one customer that you're relying on for all of your income then it becomes really challenging to be honest because that one customer can completely like mess you up. Meaning if they pull funding or if they say, Hey, we don't want to interact with you, or We don't wanna like pay for your service, then you're done. So you want a balance of different customers, a variation of different customers. What you're doing though, is you're testing out a hypothesis and you should always be trying to sell something. And so that was a lesson that I learned. During Spra is that we've always been selling something, we've always been making revenue from day one because it's very important to go out and test these like ideas or hypotheses of what could work in algae with, with an actual market.

Saikrishna Pidikiti (Guest): 19:45

I have a question. A, as far as I see, none of the algal companies in the world are making profit, right? Right. From the authorize to anybody, no one is balance sheet is positive. Mm-hmm. What, what is the reason?

Elliot: 20:01

I think it really comes down to prioritizing, well, well, a couple of different things. So, number one many algae companies try to be CapEx heavy, meaning they're spending a lot on capital expenditures and they're investing a lot in infrastructure. When I think that investing in infrastructure is something where, You spend a lot of money in order to make money, but the returns on that take a long time. And so that's one of the challenges is that there's been a lot of money spent on capital expenditure and, and investment in infrastructure, but the actual rate of return on that infrastructure is so, so long of a time horizon that it's really hard to kind of see that over time. The second thing too is that I think that the global demand for algae has been increasing, but it's not increasing fast enough. And it's, it's like part of the reason is that we need to make products that show like a hair on fire problem, something, something that people are like, oh, this is so challenging, or so difficult, and we absolutely need algae to solve it. Yeah, that's, that's another thing too is that many of these companies are struggling with demand side of the equation. Yeah, I think the, the other key point is that like algae in general has been like a farming practice for the longest time, and it hasn't been working in a higher value products or anything like that. So that's a, that's another key point. Yeah, I, I can't speak to the management of some of these businesses, but I do think that like Spira is breakeven, I guess, so that's good. But,

Saikrishna Pidikiti (Guest): 21:36

but my view is different. We are forgetting the fundamental problem. The lab production is very high. For example, 0.5 grams per liter per day. But whereas in the mass cultivation, it's not crossing 0.04 Sure. 1100% variation. Unless, until we reach the lab production in the field production alge cannot be cheaper and mass cultivated and,

Elliot: 22:03

and I don't think we'll ever reach the lab production in the field. Cause like whatever you do in a controlled environment is not gonna happen in the field. I agree.

Saikrishna Pidikiti (Guest): 22:10

Yeah. Cause 95% of research is happening in the labs. Yeah. Nothing, no research is happening in the field. Unless, until the CapEx is low, you cannot make algae more with agriculture or any bioproducts. Yeah, unless, until the product is cheaper, people will not accept algae. Algae has more, can give more than 200 products, but yes, the cost is 10 times more than the normal product. Who would buy it?

Elliot: 22:37

Well, the, the challenge also with scale is that you have to prove demand. And that that's part of the reason to focus on higher value products from the beginning is that even though it's 23 grams per meter squared that means that you're able to actually start turning a profit on that. So yeah, but side, Kris, now I would love to connect with you a little bit further offline. I really, I only have about like 13 minutes or so left. Yeah. Before, before I'm to go. So let's let some other people. Yeah.

Enrico: 23:07

And what about cultivation I know that across your 83 farms, you're producing hundreds of tons a month. Is it a universal cultivation technique that you're using?

Elliot: 23:16

Open ponds and covered greenhouses. Yeah. So what do you wanna do? Is you wanna prevent any like dust or debris or contaminants getting in. But we, we've prioritized extremophiles Oscillatoria strains, cyanobacteria mostly. Like I think about 95% of these farms are farming spirulina as opposed to any other strain. So part of the genetic engineering techniques that I've, I've developed have been focused around spirulina as well. Yeah. So the cultivation techniques are, are low energy paddle wheels or like solar powered paddle wheels. Like, definitely like trenched ponds with liners and covered greenhouses, and that, that's stupid cheap. You can do about 350,000 liters or more for less than$50,000 us. If you build it in the United States, in other countries, it's a lot cheaper than that, and then your output is probably can get up to a metric ton a month. If you are growing it right. And then in terms of media composition we've been using, in laboratory, we use s o t, and then there's like a modified Zarrouk's and, or like a like a low resource Jordan's media that I've, I've also used in the past, and I can probably link it in the comments here. Yes, please.

Enrico: 24:32

Could I ask as well, like, leading on from that, you said 95% is in spirulina. Are, are there any other microalgae species or cyanobacteria that we should be getting excited about or we should be interested in, in your opinion, or

Elliot: 24:44

Yeah, yeah. A couple of different species. So I think that diatoms and Coccoliths definitely have a role to play. Thala. Sora is really interesting and kind of intriguing as a means of producing various di diatomaceous products. The other kind of Eliana Huxley or something like that, I think is, is what the Huxley I is the Is the coccolith that's generally producing like calcium carbonate and other things like that. So those are really interesting from a carbon capture perspective. And they're also fast growing and somewhat extremophilic and can be involved in stuff like marine snow if you really want to. Some of the other algal species that I find really intriguing are anina strains. Also filamentous, easy to de water, easy to process. They do have endotoxins. So one of the key things is producing anina strains with knockouts. For those endotoxins that would be really interesting as production strains, they're let more genetically amenable and they're N 2 fixing, so that's really cool as well. Yeah, stuff like nostoc stock. Also kind of intriguing. Let's see, some of the other different algal strains that I've worked with. I'm trying to remember. Aina. A Porphyridi um is really cool as well, very genetically amenable. Produces a lot of extracellular polysaccharides. There's also this brachii strain. I forget exactly the name of it. Yeah, chlorella is great too. Yeah, it's Sai Krishna. That's, that's very, very true. So chlamydomonas are a little complex to engineer. I think they also as model, more model organisms. They're normally fermented. Those are like, that's fine. I think it's really difficult to scale. And if you're fermenting any sort of organism, why not any sort of algae? Why not just ferment yeast or e coli? So those are kind of some of the, the criteria. Some of the other strains that I, I tend to like are Let me think of, of some of the other stuff. Oh, there's, there's a new volcan strain, I forget the exact name of it, that my friend Max Schubert has been developing that's super fast growing. It's probably the fastest growing cyanobacteria that's been discovered so far. He's about to publish a paper on it. That's really exciting. I really like fast growing protein dense and easy to de water strains. Stuff that's, it's extremophilic in particular is really key. Haematococcus and Dunaliella are really interesting too. I think that Haematococcus has like a challenge associated with astaxanthin production, though it's a little slow and it's a little like challenging, but yeah. Oh, Stacy has a question. Let's see. Hi Stacy. Hi.

Stacy: 27:20

Hey there. So good to see you here. It's been a couple years. I'm so glad we reconnected. but I have two questions. One is, what if we did a super slimy challenge where, Big group of people did this together so that we could focus on recipes and cooking and like, you know, crowdsource the wisdom.

Elliot: 27:35

Cause there's a lot of great chefs. But the other question is a little bit more specific about the markets, which is you know, can LG replace plastics at a mass scale? I know you know seaweeds as well, so that's a big demand. Where are we on that? Processed. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I've had actually a ton of people when I tell them about the diet, they're like, oh my God, I would love to try that. And I'm like, are you crazy? Like, it's, it's very challenging. I, I think like for a week, it's doable. I, I would wanna put in some additional recipe development work. I think it's a good idea to do like a beta test with some people. So I'd love to try that if anybody's interested. I think that the flip side of things when you were talking about plastics p h a and p h b as an input into plastic processes has been being explored. There's a lot of really great companies sway led by Julia Marsh, a good friend of mine. She's been producing bioplastics from seaweed in particular, and they're doing some cool stuff. I think that single use plastic packaging is so cheap right now, especially from virgin Plastics, that it, it becomes really difficult to replace that in a cost competitive way. Some of the business models that I've seen that actually take that on effectively are stuff like There's a group I know that is working in conjunction with an existing plastics company to start replacing and displacing some of the plastic usage, so it becomes a blend over time. That's really intriguing. Some of the enzymes that make Bioplastics more usable right now, they're kind of crappy to use, to be honest. They're not as easy to work with as conventional plastics. They're, they're not, they don't have the same material properties, so enzymes that help treat that, or plasticizers that are found in the natural world those are really intriguing inserts into that. These are higher value as well. Some of the other things that could potentially start displacing these, these kind of plastics or, or doing various things associated with the plastics are also very high value luxury products. I've seen some companies start adopting algix bloom materials, and that's algae foam that is used as a blending agent. So AECOM is a government contracting company that sucks up algae. Using algix's is technology to like grab it from algal blooms, they turn it into pellets, those pellets, then get injection molded and formed into different kind of like styrene replacements. So that's kind of cool too. But I do think from like a cost perspective, we're a little bit far off from being cost competitive with single use plastics. It's really hard going for the companies that are trying to do that. I would like to see more of it, but I think that the key way to go about doing it is, is like little bits at a time and higher value stuff and displacement of like more and more percentage of the plastic as you get scale. People that are doing stuff with the Sargassum Bloom in Florida are really cool as well. So like you see people doing h like hydrothermal, liquifaction, H D L And that's turning all of the sargassum into like liquid crude that you can then turn into other things. Or some people are making like flip flops out of sargassum stuff and drying it at, it's, it's like all sorts of funky stuff, but you got like metric tons washing up on the beach and being really gross and releasing methane and so, yeah. I just love the creativity with it. It's,

Peter: 30:44

Yeah. It's one thing to use a big environmental problem like sargassum, it's another to cultivate microalgae. What are your thoughts on the scalability of using microalgae in this way? Is it possible to create enough microalgae to actually service the bioplastic industry?

Elliot: 30:59

I mean, so, so the companies that are focused on luxury goods, I think it, it's a long slog, but that's a good start. So if you're like making Rolex watch wrist bands you know, out of bioplastics, I know Swatch just released a bio ceramic, but it's made with Castor oil or castor beans. So there, there's like some things that are out there that are kind of intriguing where you could see algae as being an input. We did a project with B M W to replace some of the plastics in their car. With a ocean-based plastic. We ended up using Chitosan and then blending it into this like thin plastic film that we turned into this sort of like chandelier for them. I don't know, I think it was more of a marketing stunt than anything else. But we were working on this bio ceramic using a combination of like spirulina and coccoliths. That was kind of interesting too. So it, it just kind of depends on what market you're going after. And I think the higher value markets and the more premium stuff, the luxury goods are gonna be what you see first. Because that's the only thing that makes cost effective sense. If you're making these like premium crafted materials some of the more like installation based work, like the architectural stuff I think is very futuristic, but it's really one-off right now. It's not replicable. So like in, yeah, I think it's Hamburg has like algae curtains that are growing the algae. There's also liquid trees. Yeah. Algin Air is doing these, these home photo bioreactor systems that are growing algae as means of like purifying air too. So those, those kind of things are intriguing, but they're also. Single use very niche. If you're, if you're starting to get into the broader market, you have to showcase something that has applicability in the broader market. Yeah.

Peter: 32:42

Super. I've got one more question, guys, while I say this. If you, if you have a question, shoot it into the comments section and we can, we can go with it after this final question.

Elliot: 32:52

I'm also in the chat too, so like if you wanna ping me or whatever, that's my number. You can just like send me. You got it.

Peter: 32:58

You've got it on direct line now. Yes. If you want pester him it. Which I do way too often. And final question, Elliot, is on advice. It'd be great to quickly hear some of your, your tips for folks. What advice would you tell your younger self or someone else building in this space?

Elliot: 33:12

Yeah, I think I think three things. So first off, like my fundamental core piece of advice always is keep going. At the end of the day, the only thing that's stopping you is you. If you keep going and pushing forward on a particular idea or concept and then adapting and changing along the way based on the feedback that you hear, then you'll be unstoppable. So you just take, take a while and do that. I think the second piece is go to where the problem is or go to where the challenges are so that you can really like, be boots on the ground, learn from these people. If you are experiencing the challenges and problems yourself, then you get firsthand experience. Like me going on this algae diet is part of how I begin to understand how do you craft recipes? How do you actively understand the health and nutritional aspects? How do you measure these kind of things? I think like growing spirulina and myself and experiencing that, or designing photo bioreactors or like going about doing the genetic engineering side of things. All of that is part and parcel to really understanding the challenges and problems in doing things with algae and in particular these non-model organisms. And then I think the, the third piece of advice is, Be super open, transparent, communicative, and constantly like show your struggles, mistakes, challenges along the way. The more open you are and the more communicative you are about your story, the more other people are likely to join in on your story. And so I would love to see more sharing in our community. I think this group is really a good first step there to start sharing on various things too. And I like the Sai, Krishna. Now what about extracting polysaccharides from spirulina and Yes. There's some interesting polysaccharides in spirulina as well.

Peter: 34:53

Thanks so much, Elliot. I recognize you've gotta run. Guys, thanks for joining us today. Please give us some feedback, send us texts and let's connect a bit more about actually ways to, to grow the community some more. Elliot, thanks so much for your time. Can't wait to catch up with you all later. Cool. See you soon.