While other cultivated meat companies are collapsing, this one turned a profit | E2317

This Week In Startups is made possible by: Every.io https://every.io MongoDB https://MongoDB.com/ai Agree https://agree.com Today's show: *Most lab-grown meat companies have already gone under. It's expensive to produce, and there's little demand from real-world consumers. But Tokyo's IntegriCulture is still standing after selling their proprietary serum to cosmetics companies. On Episode 3 of TWiST from Tokyo, Jason sits down with Dr. Yuki Hanyu, an Oxford-trained chemist who started a DIY meat movement out of a comic convention and turned it into Japan's first cell-cultured protein company. PLUS why the cultivated meat market stalled out, why producing a "slurry of cells" is more efficient than jumping right to muscle tissue, the regulatory framework in Japan vs. the US, and… is it fair to call this "meat"? Or is it something else entirely? Guest Yuki Hanyu on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuki-hanyu-b860bb34/ IntegriCulture: https://integriculture.com/en/ Relevant Links: AG Funder News: "IntegriCulture turns a profit": https://agfundernews.com/cell-ag-picks-shovels-pioneer-integriculture-turns-a-profit-but-cautions-that-as-long-as-cell-ag-remains-so-capital-intensive-it-will-be-difficult-to-take-off Vegconominst: Cultivated duck liver coverage: https://vegconomist.com/cultivated-cell-cultured-biotechnology/cultivated-meat/japans-integriculture-products-cultivated-duck-liver/ Cellament skin care ingredient: https://www.cellament.jp/cellament-en?lang=en Medium: Shojinmeat Project: https://medium.com/shojin-meat Cellular Agriculture Institute of the Commons (CAIC): https://cellagri.org/en/about-us Japan Association for Cellular Agriculture (JACA): https://jaca.jp/en/ Upside Foods: https://upsidefoods.com/ Vow: https://www.eatvow.com/ Impossible Foods: https://impossiblefoods.com/ Fast Company: "Inside the stunning collapse of Believer Meats": https://www.fastcompany.com/91462102/believer-meats-stunning-collapse-600-million-cooling-cultured-meat-industry AG Funder News: "FDA clears Wildtype's cell-cultivated salmon": https://agfundernews.com/fda-clears-wildtypes-cell-cultivated-salmon-for-us-debut Food Navigator: Parima gets green light for cultivated duck: https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2026/04/15/parima-gets-regulatory-approval-for-cultivated-foie-gras/ Protein Production: "Japan publishes first draft safety guidelines for cultivated meat…": https://www.proteinproductiontechnology.com/post/japan-publishes-first-draft-safety-guidelines-for-cultivated-meat-as-regulatory-debate-advances Stateline: "Texas bans lab-grown meat": https://stateline.org/2025/06/30/texas-becomes-seventh-state-to-ban-lab-grown-meat/ TODAY: "Japan's Coca-Cola Plus has an unexpected ingredient": https://www.today.com/food/japan-s-coca-cola-plus-has-unexpected-ingredient-t121047 Timestamps: 0:00 Why founders should visit Japan 1:48 Intro of cultivated meat pioneer, Dr. Yuki Hanyu 3:19 Why don't consumers want lab-grown meat? 10:05 Every.io - For all of your incorporation, banking, payroll, benefits, accounting, taxes or other back-office administration needs, visit https://every.io 10:26 DIY meat manuals at comic conventions 15:37 Flavors that don't exist in nature 19:35 The Wagyu Hot Dog 21:38 MongoDB - AI-assisted and agentic coding is helping you build faster than ever. Start building at https://MongoDB.com/ai 24:23 Why chicken nuggets are the hardest problem 28:28 Beachhead markets, waypoints, and surviving early 30:25 Agree.com - Stop chasing invoices and automate your entire contract-to-cash stack. Go to https://agree.com and tell them Jason sent you to get 50% off for life! 35:57 Q&A: Commercializing an open source project 37:56 Q&A: Growing protein in space 40:07 Should this be called "meat"? Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Alex: X: https://x.com/alex LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Let me drink a hot cup of tea.

• 0:05Speaker 00

  Show. That didn't get picked up on the mic, did it? How's it going, Joe? You okay?

• 0:13Speaker 00

  Okay, everybody, welcome back to This Week in Startups in Japan.

• 0:19Speaker 00

  It's great, great to be back in my favorite city in all the world. After my hometown of New York, my new hometown of Austin, that's Tokyo. Man, I love coming here. It's always so inspiring. If you're a founder, if you're an investor and you haven't come to Japan, I highly recommend coming because you get to see people building and working with extreme pride and trying to get better at building their product or service every day of their life. It's called kaizen, is the art of constant improvement. The founders here in our second cohort of Founder University have been incredible. I was telling my team, the first cohort, we had so many great companies, but very raw. We were just getting started.

• 1:00Speaker 00

  And the second cohort, we saw a lot more companies that were ready to go global and that were, had their company formation in the United States. So I think we're actually going to find some really great investments or candidates to come to our accelerator. If you want to find out about this Founder University program, we run it twice a year in Tokyo, twice a year in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and then twice a year in the United States. Founder.university is the webpage where you can see all three programs. The sun never sets on Founder University and you don't even need to be incorporated. It could be you and two of your friends. You've built a project, you've got a prototype, you've vibe coded something in lovable or Claude Code or Grok or Perplexity Computer. We want to see it all.

• 1:45Speaker 00

  We love to work with founders in year zero. And I'm super excited today because we have Dr. Yuki Hanu and he is making cultivated meat.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  This Week in Startups is brought to you by Agree.com. Stop chasing invoices and automate your entire contract to cash stack. Go to Agree.com and tell them Jason sent you to get 50% off for life. MongoDB, AI assisted and agentic coding is helping you build faster than ever. Start building at MongoDB.com/ai. And Every for all your incorporation, banking, payroll, benefits, accounting, taxes, or other back office administration needs, visit every.io.

• 2:27Speaker 00

  And you're doing this in a different way than some of the cultured meats that we got to experience in America. I think Impossible Meat was one?

• 2:36Speaker 02

  That is actually plant-based meat.

• 2:38Speaker 00

  That's plant-based meat?

• 2:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:40Speaker 00

  And then what was the next one that did chicken in America?

• 2:44Speaker 02

  Upside foods.

• 2:45Speaker 00

  Ah, yes.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, so there are like major companies in this field, it's like upside foods. Believer Meat is now defunct, but there's like wild type without that, so-called salmon.

• 2:55Speaker 00

  Ah, yes. What was the salmon one called?

• 2:58Speaker 02

  Wild type.

• 2:59Speaker 00

  Well, yeah. So this has been around for a couple of years. And between the veggie, the fake chicken, fake fish, or mock, I think is the term.

• 3:14Speaker 00

  It's gotten some fans in America, but it hasn't broken out yet. Why? Why hasn't it become very mainstream or hasn't?

• 3:23Speaker 02

  I would say it's just a technology just not being there because the issue has always been the scaling and unit price. And also on the other side, that's, on the other side, that will be the unit economics that's not quite working yet.

• 3:37Speaker 00

  Got it. So consumers have shown they want it, correct?

• 3:41Speaker 02

  That's another because unless you have like a sufficient quantity, you can't even like test for real to the consumers. And until then, it will be all fantasy, to be honest.

• 3:55Speaker 00

  There hasn't been enough scale for a large amount of customers to try it. So it's hard to understand demand. But I know from my friend group in San Francisco.

• 4:05Speaker 02

  You can always ask.

• 4:06Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, what consumers say and what they actually buy are always very different, as you know.

• 4:12Speaker 00

  As Steve Jobs taught us, right? If he asked people like what they wanted in an iPhone, it would not be beautiful, elegant. And I guess when it comes to food, if you were to ask a chef, if the chef were to ask you what you wanted, you would not be as delicious as omokase and or, yeah, correct?

• 4:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I go for like half price.

• 4:33Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 4:33Speaker 02

  30% off, things like that.

• 4:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, you want to really have, so your company, Integri Culture, Integri Culture is working on a new way to create this food, yes?

• 4:47Speaker 02

  Yes, I would say protein. Whether to call our product as meat, that's a different story.

• 4:53Speaker 00

  Got it. So for protein, and it's going to get a little graphic. So people be prepared if you, you know, we're talking about meat. But the ingredients and the process for creating mock meat previously, this was using FBS in some cases?

• 5:10Speaker 02

  Not really, because I would say FBS was, has been only for like global pre-scale tests for like regenerative medicine, cell culture, like those things.

• 5:21Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  And no one has actually made any commercial product with FBS. It's too expensive anyway.

• 5:28Speaker 00

  Too expensive. And this is of course fetal bovine serum. That's the blood of unborn calves. And that's going to be used for organs in our body, maybe?

• 5:37Speaker 02

  Maybe, but maybe even within that field because such a quality control of FBS is really difficult. It's, as you can imagine, how would you control the exact chemical composition of if it's made that kind of way?

• 5:50Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  So the industry is going, I mean, medicine, pharma, biopharma, they're going to chemically defined ones, but very expensive, but it's, it's medicine anyway.

• 6:02Speaker 00

  How were some of the other companies built the mock fish? I'm going to say mock fish and mock chicken. How did they make it taste? For me, I tasted the chicken. And when they put it in sauce, I didn't taste very different. It tasted a little different, but I would say maybe it was 70% as good as real chicken to me. So what was the strategy they used for those specific verticals?

• 6:33Speaker 02

  So obviously there's like different levels of, I would say imitation level or completeness for cell cultured, cell cultured meat.

• 6:42Speaker 00

  Cell cultured meat, yes.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, so if you are talking about, it's 100% cell cultured is a little bit hypothetical, but if that is, there is one, that's kind of like synthetic diamond versus natural diamond. So it's basically talking about chemically the same thing. So that's why, so no wonder it tastes just like chicken.

• 7:00Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  And but as of now, because of the state of the technology, it's not 100%, 100% imitation. Somewhere like, say 70%, let's say.

• 7:11Speaker 00

  What do you think it's at now? If you were to pick?

• 7:14Speaker 02

  I would say, I think as of now, the 70s is like the maximum. And the reason is like, right now, the cell cultured meat, what they say, is made in like large stir tank bioreactors. And it's, it is not making steak. It's making like slurry of cells.

• 7:31Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 7:31Speaker 02

  So you have to modify the slurry of cells to taste and look and taste like meat. But it's not quite the actual muscle tissue.

• 7:41Speaker 00

  Got it. So right now, anybody who's a vegetarian is turned off the podcast, that's okay. But for us who do like meat, it makes a slurry, which has the chemical composition, but now it doesn't have texture. So it doesn't have the fabric of meat that we like in a different cut of steak, different cut of chicken. You might like the chicken breast, I might like the chicken wing. The fibers and the structure is another piece of this. Some people were making a 3D printed one or other techniques. But essentially, current state of the art is making this in a big giant vat with chemicals in order to get activated. And then you make the slurry and then you put it into chunks, I guess, or different formats.

• 8:25Speaker 02

  Or chemicals, but exactly speaking, things like glucose, amino acids, which is like something we eat every day anyway.

• 8:32Speaker 00

  Okay, so you have a different technique for this that you're pursuing? Tell us about it.

• 8:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, so first of all, we are not aiming, we are not aiming for meat. So we're making something, it's trademarked as Kraft SN. It sounds a little bit German, but it's just, well, Japanese people sometimes do the kind of things, just take any long words without even knowing the word, the origin of the word.

• 8:55Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  But anyway.

• 8:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, I have seen this. Sometimes you go to a cafe and it has a name that doesn't, for the American mind, make a lot of sense. But so tell us the German word you're using.

• 9:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, Kraft SN. So basically Kraft food.

• 9:09Speaker 00

  Kraft food.

• 9:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, so basically, yeah, so that is basically a cell cultured duck liver cells on cellular scaffold that actually looks like this.

• 9:19Speaker 00

  Got it. So you're going to make duck liver like pate?

• 9:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's actually the same cells as foie gras.

• 9:27Speaker 00

  I love foie gras, but I feel guilty eating it.

• 9:30Speaker 02

  Well, if you don't need to, if it's cell culture.

• 9:33Speaker 00

  Yes, then I can eat foie gras every day.

• 9:35Speaker 02

  Make sure you get enough vegetables as well.

• 9:37Speaker 00

  Okay, yes. So the first product you're making is going to be foie gras-ish.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  Foie gras, well, if we are to, if we decide to go with that marketing strategy, but probably not.

• 9:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, this is a very niche market. What is the technique you're using that's, and what's unique about your technique?

• 9:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we have like a number of ways, but it traces back to our origin as a company. So originally, we were not even a company or even a for-profit entity. We were more like an open source culture meat project. And do that DIY cell culture meat, making cell culture meat at home. Ah, by the manual is about here, by the way.

• 10:15Speaker 00

  Oh, wow. So there are nerds, there's a technical word in America, there are nerds

• 10:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:21Speaker 00

  who want to do this at home as a hobby.

• 10:24Speaker 02

  Ah, yeah.

• 10:25Speaker 00

  You're one of them.

• 10:26Speaker 02

  Ah, yeah.

• 10:26Speaker 00

  You're the leader of the nerds?

• 10:28Speaker 02

  Because I thought it was funny.

• 10:29Speaker 00

  You thought it was funny to make meat at home?

• 10:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I was basically distributing this manual in comic market.

• 10:36Speaker 00

  So I would go to a comic store and you have the manual here, I'm holding it up, that has all the different tools you need

• 10:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:43Speaker 00

  to make your own meat at home.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  Yes, I think some of the copies is still in comic thing in Akihabara, still.

• 10:49Speaker 00

  In Akihabara?

• 10:50Speaker 02

  But also in London Science Museum.

• 10:52Speaker 00

  In the London Science Museum, hilarious. How many years ago did you start this hobby? One of the most important things you can do as a busy founder is stay focused. You need to prioritize the decisions and workflows that are gonna move your company forward, not get lost in extraneous details and minutia. That's why the best decision you can make for your business is signing up with Every. Every is the all-in-one platform for incorporation, banking, payroll, benefits, taxes, basically your entire back office. They're going to keep up with all the bookkeeping and paperwork so you can stay laser focused on your next big product or hiring, features, customers, all that important stuff. If you're just getting started,

• 11:31Speaker 00

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• 11:53Speaker 02

  Ah, so yeah, we started in back in 2014, it's called Shojin Meat Project, it's still ongoing.

• 11:59Speaker 00

  Okay, so 10 years ago, over 10 years ago, you start this open source project.

• 12:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:04Speaker 00

  And how did that grow and who joined it?

• 12:07Speaker 02

  Ah, yeah, all sorts of random people, some of them like high school students. And this was actually one of the high school students who did the DIY cell culture at home. And NHK came to film her, like growing cells in her room, and that got televised nationwide. And that's so, so that sort of like funded the, uh, funded, uh, led to the seed funding of Integri Culture, which is the direct spin-off from this Shojin Meat Project, this DIY movement.

• 12:38Speaker 00

  Got it. So there's the DIY open source movement created your company.

• 12:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:43Speaker 00

  Uh, and how many people participated and actually made lab-grown meat at home over the last 10 years?

• 12:50Speaker 02

  We haven't been even counting actually, because we, at least we have.

• 12:52Speaker 00

  Hundreds, thousands?

• 12:54Speaker 02

  I would say, including those who did cell culture in schools, after following the teacher's instructions and the teacher being trained by the Shojin Meat Project workshop.

• 13:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  I just don't know the number.

• 13:07Speaker 00

  But maybe thousands even.

• 13:09Speaker 02

  Potentially, I don't know.

• 13:10Speaker 00

  Potentially, yeah. And so this technique, maybe you can show us some of the items you have here, but you've got a technique for doing this, that's open source, and then you're going to go to market with it and you've raised a seed round, yep?

• 13:24Speaker 02

  Ah, yeah, so there were, but when in the early phase, what our worry was that, so the cell culture meat could change the world, but it could also easily get into the GMO situation, like being politicized, uh, some like the, basically if we just let capitalism take this, things go bad. So we need to clever, we needed a clever way. So, um, so what we, what we came up was to build an ecosystem. So Shojin Meat Project is open source, they do the more visionary stuff, like in this like latest zine. Yeah, and then there's Cell Agriculture Institute of Commerce, nonprofit, they speak with the government regulators and maybe like established industry association.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  Then there's Integri Culture Company that builds the physical infrastructure.

• 14:13Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 14:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, and anyone who wanna make, develop cell culture meat could use Integri Culture Company's capabilities, these materials, equipment, and in the future, production capability.

• 14:24Speaker 00

  Got it.

• 14:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, so.

• 14:25Speaker 00

  So you're starting with the products you need to do it at home or business, if you wanted to start a startup, and then eventually they'll be able to come and you might have a factory to do this on behalf of some other entrepreneurs.

• 14:38Speaker 02

  Ah, yeah, if things, uh, things go well, what we are gonna get is there's some hobbyists developing novel sort of cell cultured meat. It could be like pork muscle, tuna fat, healthy meat, something like that. And they, if it's, if it's good, and they wanna, he wants, he wants to expand, it could come to Integri Culture Company to expand. So that way, how to make is open source, how to scale on the business.

• 15:06Speaker 00

  Got it. It's almost, I think they call it contract manufacturing in the United States.

• 15:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, so you come up with your formula and then somebody else packages it for you and then there's distributors after that.

• 15:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:16Speaker 00

  You mentioned two different meats together. This is, I think, something people don't understand. We're comparing it to things that we've put in our mouth before and flavors that we understand.

• 15:27Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 15:28Speaker 00

  So I understand tuna, chotoro, otoro, had all these great flavors, seared toro. Then I also understand wagyu, Miyazaki beef, 5A5, New York strip, Australian beef, different profiles. But somebody could take these two concepts and build a flavor profile that somehow incorporates toro, yuzu flavor, and maybe steak, yeah?

• 15:56Speaker 02

  Ah, yeah, so if it's cell cultured, you can design that, like, meat, or better say fruit, in any way you want.

• 16:05Speaker 00

  So has anybody done anything interesting that you've tasted?

• 16:07Speaker 02

  Vow Foods, it's an Australian company, they did like quail meat.

• 16:12Speaker 00

  Quail?

• 16:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, quail.

• 16:13Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  This little.

• 16:15Speaker 00

  Little bird.

• 16:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, which, which has never been on the supermarket as a packaged quail, that has the quail meat.

• 16:22Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 16:22Speaker 02

  By setting the initial product as quail meat, they cannot benchmark against any existing category. So they can put it in whatever price they want, and also it shows the possibility of this technology.

• 16:33Speaker 00

  Right.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  So there have been some stunts like mammoth meat, but a bit more on the realistic side to when it comes to the act, when they actually distribute stuff, they went with quail.

• 16:43Speaker 00

  Well, and it's somewhat controversial.

• 16:46Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 16:47Speaker 00

  And so I'll be delicate, but in certain cultures, uh, the idea of killing a cow, you know, in some countries is considered a sin and just terrible. Other cultures, uh, you know, in Alaska, seal meat, dolphin meat, whale meat, like is part of the culture, history. And then in other cultures, it's looked at as a very big controversy between the West and in fact Japan. And in Nordic countries, we don't, we consider, oh my God, how could you kill a whale or how could you kill a dolphin? It's very strange. First time I, one of the first times I came to Japan, I went to the Sijiji Fish Market.

• 17:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:26Speaker 00

  Before it was popular.

• 17:28Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 17:29Speaker 00

  And I saw this beautiful meat in bricks.

• 17:31Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 17:32Speaker 00

  And I said, oh, it must be this beautiful tuna. And then I got closer and closer and it was whale. Uh, beautiful cuts of whale and I was like, whoa, I've never seen that before. So sometimes things that maybe are either extinct or maybe controversial.

• 17:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:47Speaker 00

  You can't sell whale meat in America, so not allowed. Um, it's contraband, just like in some countries now, in some places, foie gras is considered too cruel to create and they don't let people do it. So have people started to think about that, uh, you know, dolphin meat, whale meat, et cetera? These are things that people are just not able to access, let's say.

• 18:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, so those things are on the possibility as a niche market. So the market has developed. It starts with some like stunt, stunt products.

• 18:14Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 18:15Speaker 02

  Then niche products, then something a bit more mainstream before going into the actual mainstream.

• 18:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  So the, uh, the industry has to like take each steps to reach the mainstream.

• 18:26Speaker 00

  What, where, what stage are we in now? Are we in the stunt phase?

• 18:29Speaker 02

  Stunt phase.

• 18:29Speaker 00

  Got it. So are, are you able to buy many of these stunt meats in supermarkets now?

• 18:35Speaker 02

  Well, right now in Japan, because the food regulation is not ready yet, so it's not there. In Singapore, some, yes, with Vow Foods. And Parima, which is, uh, which is a French company that makes cell cultured foie gras. They, um, they've got the clearance, regulatory clearance, but I don't think they have put it on the market yet.

• 18:55Speaker 00

  Have, oh, you haven't tried it yet or have you tried it?

• 18:57Speaker 02

  Uh, Vow Foods quail meat, yes.

• 18:59Speaker 00

  Hmm, how was it?

• 19:01Speaker 02

  Um, well, I enjoyed it, although like because it's a stunt meat, would I eat it every day or, um?

• 19:08Speaker 00

  Regularly?

• 19:08Speaker 02

  Regularly, probably not, but because it's expensive.

• 19:12Speaker 00

  Ah.

• 19:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, partially.

• 19:13Speaker 00

  What is it per pound versus real quail? Yeah.

• 19:16Speaker 02

  I don't know the price of the real quail, but anyway, so that's the whole point, but anyway.

• 19:19Speaker 00

  It's much, it's multiple times the cost of poultry or chicken.

• 19:24Speaker 02

  Uh, and partially because it was in a fancy restaurant.

• 19:27Speaker 00

  Ah.

• 19:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it was a good experience.

• 19:29Speaker 00

  Yes, it's also interesting, maybe you wouldn't normally use a larger quantity or a different format, for example.

• 19:37Speaker 00

  To use a 5A5 incredible Kobe beef or Wagyu Miyazaki beef in a hot dog or for like a bacon or some common meat or, you know, to make a, you know, hash brown or like a corned beef hash, you would never use it. It's too high quality. You'd be offensive to use it. So you could have maybe more accessibility. You could have a hot dog that's a Wagyu hot dog. This might be the best idea ever.

• 20:04Speaker 00

  Maybe I should contract manufacture this.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, actually, when it comes to those stunt products, it doesn't have to be like, it doesn't have to be just food that you're selling. It could be part of a bigger experience, like, so for example, have you heard of a video game called Cyberpunk 2077?

• 20:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, of course.

• 20:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. So basically, if there's a, if there's some sort of special event of Cyberpunk 2077, and part of the event is the cell cultured meat. So basically, you're selling not just the cell cultured stuff itself, but it's the, you're selling the whole experience.

• 20:43Speaker 00

  Got it.

• 20:43Speaker 02

  So that's the sort of approach we have to take for this stunt market.

• 20:46Speaker 00

  When will the regulatory framework make it possible to put these in more supermarkets and more restaurants?

• 20:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, well, you mean in Japan, right?

• 20:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. So that depends on what the consumer agencies say, but they've at least did the hearing session to consumer groups already.

• 21:06Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 21:06Speaker 02

  And so the industry, those industry association people says, well, end of this summer or maybe beginning of autumn. So it's very close, I would, I hope.

• 21:19Speaker 00

  Yeah. In America, and maybe you know about this more than I do, there were some places, Florida or Texas, that wanted to ban these things, yes?

• 21:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:29Speaker 00

  I don't know, those haven't passed or those are controversial, I think.

• 21:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, because it has become a part of a culture war in the US.

• 21:37Speaker 00

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• 22:18Speaker 00

  I can't use the actual words they said in this ad, so let's just call it a really great database. Start building at MongoDB.com/ai. Because it seems woke to have mock meat.

• 22:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:30Speaker 00

  As opposed to, it might taste better, or it might be more interesting, or it might be more luxury product. It could be framed as those, but people are trying to protect the cattle industry, maybe.

• 22:44Speaker 02

  Well, to be honest, the, well, I talked about the scale earlier. And the scale is so tiny that it's, I think it's the 0.001% or even less compared to the existing meat industry. So it's not even a dent to the industry, but it's just too woke.

• 23:03Speaker 00

  How many cycles do we need to do sprints to get it to be the same price as the equivalent product today, do you think?

• 23:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. So sprints.

• 23:17Speaker 00

  Or years, you know, how many, you know, revisions do you still need? You know, do you have to do maybe 10 revisions, five revisions every six months? And, you know, two or three years from now, it'll be same price for a steak?

• 23:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:31Speaker 00

  Or chicken breast, yeah?

• 23:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. So actually, what could happen is that, because the existing meat price is also the moving target because of all the climate change and geopolitical this and that, and, yeah, so.

• 23:43Speaker 00

  Well, let's assume meat prices, you know, continue to go up maybe 5% a year. So it's, you know, going to double every 10 years, I think, is what it's done previously, yeah?

• 23:52Speaker 02

  So the meat categories, like eau foie gras, I think the price probably is close. And when it comes to like regular beef, if we're talking about Wagyu beef, things like that, it also depends on texture, but I would say like 10 years or so. But it also depends on the branding, actually. Yeah, because it's actually a pain, paying for the brand rather than the meat itself when it comes to Wagyu and those like.

• 24:19Speaker 00

  Right. Let's just go with, let's go with chicken.

• 24:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:21Speaker 00

  So chicken's a commodity, you know, people make chicken salad, they make chicken breast, they make chicken nuggets.

• 24:27Speaker 02

  That's the hardest one, so it could.

• 24:28Speaker 00

  Why is it the hardest one?

• 24:29Speaker 02

  Ah, because it's cheap. So you have to make it cheap. You have to, you probably have to go with a large scale factory or something. Yeah, which even if the technology is ready, you know how many years it takes to build a nuclear power station?

• 24:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. We'll be talking about that kind of things.

• 24:45Speaker 00

  Like a decade.

• 24:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:47Speaker 00

  Or two, maybe.

• 24:48Speaker 02

  And we don't have the technology yet.

• 24:50Speaker 00

  So when do you, as a startup, you've raised a seed round?

• 24:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:56Speaker 00

  How do you stay in business long enough to, you know, get there? Because obviously you're enabling other people, so you're selling the tools, yeah, and the system? So.

• 25:06Speaker 02

  By, by, by making ourselves a cell agriculture company rather than cell cultured food or cell cultured meat company.

• 25:13Speaker 00

  Got it.

• 25:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. So there's this kind of like nested, like fields of ideas. Cell cultured meat is a future form of cell cultured, cell, cell culture, cell cultured food. And outside the cell cultured food, we have cell cultured, cosmetic cell cultured leather, maybe? Like, well, this is plastic, but anyway. And even outside that, we have regenerative medicine and other like biopharma stuff. So we are cell agriculture company rather than cell cultured food or even cell cultured meat.

• 25:50Speaker 00

  Got it. And leather could be really interesting, yeah. And beauty.

• 25:53Speaker 02

  Cell cultured cosmetics. Yeah, that's one, one of the ways of like keeping us alive.

• 25:59Speaker 00

  Tell me about the cosmetics. Is it a better product, a cheaper product? Are you making things that can't be made or today, and you're going to have breakthrough products?

• 26:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, so it's also resonates with, but we discussed a little bit earlier about this previously impossible sort of food. So when it, when it comes to cell culture, we can make some of, yeah, one of the most common beauty ingredients, like placenta in Japan and East Asia. But that's, that alone, like, safety is one, ethical side is another.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  But if it's cell culture, it basically solves all these problems.

• 26:42Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 26:42Speaker 02

  And another is that, like, it's becoming more important, but supply chain stability is another. It is in competition to so-called stem cell serum, a lot imported from Korea.

• 26:54Speaker 00

  Got it. So this is something for your face or something? Or this ingredient would go into another product?

• 27:00Speaker 02

  Or to our client's product.

• 27:02Speaker 00

  Your client's product.

• 27:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. And that one's more supply chain stable because we don't, we don't need to import from Korea. And the existing stem cell serum is human cells. But that one's like vaccine grade egg placenta cells, so safer.

• 27:16Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 27:17Speaker 02

  And also, it's actually a little bit cheaper. Yeah.

• 27:19Speaker 00

  Be, yeah. So better supply chain, more ethical, less controversy.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  Safer.

• 27:25Speaker 00

  Safer, so many things to navigate.

• 27:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, just with this particular brand alone.

• 27:30Speaker 00

  Right.

• 27:31Speaker 02

  And we could develop all sorts of other products using different cells.

• 27:36Speaker 00

  You can make something better.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:38Speaker 00

  Ah, fascinating.

• 27:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:40Speaker 00

  And so how much money have you raised so far? Who's the investors? Is it venture capital yet or just crazy seed investors, crazy angel investors?

• 27:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. So so far, our fund rates so far have been something like, somewhere between 15 to 20 million USD, which is far less, smaller compared to our, like, industry peers in the US or like in Europe.

• 28:03Speaker 00

  Yeah. But it's still a big amount of money for Japan.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:06Speaker 00

  And you have how many years to figure all this out? Two years to make it work?

• 28:12Speaker 02

  Well, initially, we, like, we have been doing cosmetics from day one.

• 28:17Speaker 00

  Oh, so you have revenue now?

• 28:18Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 28:19Speaker 00

  Oh, amazing.

• 28:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. So that's actually one of the reasons why a lot of our better, better funded peers are collapsing while, like, we're totally healthy. We actually turned profitable last year.

• 28:30Speaker 00

  Oh, congratulations. It's fantastic. Because you picked a good beachhead market. You have a good first market ideal customer.

• 28:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:37Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then you wait for the other things to show up. And also the contract manufacturing and building the tools.

• 28:42Speaker 02

  A little bit in the future, but yes, we already provide the tools, but.

• 28:45Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 28:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:46Speaker 00

  And that business could be big too, yeah?

• 28:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:48Speaker 00

  Excellent. So this is, I think, an important lesson for a lot of founders. We talked earlier, like, sometimes you have a big vision. We have one founder here who wants to put robots for elder care, you know? And the robots aren't going to be ready for one, or he thinks one year, I think two, maybe realities three. What can you do before the future is ready, right? Before the technology is ready, you have to find really good ideas.

• 29:13Speaker 02

  But then there's a trick, because I, well, I would say better say a trap, but because a lot of venture capitalists, when they invest, they basically tell you to focus on something, which goes against that sort of strategy.

• 29:26Speaker 00

  Right. Only focus on one thing as opposed to have a series of what I call waypoints, a series of islands you can stop at before you get to the new world. Yeah.

• 29:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. So like in early days, like they say 2020 or something, like, there has been, like, even from within the company to focus on meat rather than doing cosmetics.

• 29:50Speaker 00

  So you had to, as the founder, get everybody around the right idea that could generate revenue today?

• 29:56Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, because there will be this hype cycle stuff.

• 29:59Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 29:59Speaker 02

  There will be hype crush. Yeah, so we need to be ready by then.

• 30:03Speaker 00

  Got it.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:04Speaker 00

  And is this your first company, your first startup? Okay, what have you learned? And then we'll open up to questions. If you have questions, you can line up at the microphone. What have you learned? What mistakes have you made that you've corrected in terms of company building, raising capital? You know, and getting product market fit?

• 30:22Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah.

• 30:23Speaker 00

  Or mistakes that?

• 30:24Speaker 02

  Mistakes.

• 30:24Speaker 00

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• 31:07Speaker 00

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• 31:23Speaker 02

  Team building really matters. That's one. And team building starts from day zero of like, okay, let's do something. Within yourself, decide to do something, which could be a startup, could be a nonprofit or whatever.

• 31:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:36Speaker 02

  And but doing it alone, solo, so-called solo planner, possible, but eventually you need to find like someone else to work with.

• 31:45Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 31:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:46Speaker 00

  And you have to get it right. If you get it wrong, you have to correct very quickly.

• 31:50Speaker 02

  Quick iterations is everything.

• 31:52Speaker 00

  Quick iterations.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But even with quick iteration, I would say something like, uh, some, some, I would say the blurry star or whatever, like the general direction.

• 32:03Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 32:04Speaker 02

  Of, I think that's something you call a vision.

• 32:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, for us, it was easy because I could do it like, like I, I also do like computer graphics.

• 32:13Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 32:13Speaker 02

  So I basically showed all these images that I made for fun. And that's where we're going to and.

• 32:19Speaker 00

  Right, like Elon says, we're going to Mars. But before Mars, uh, we have to get a rocket and put some stuff in space. And then we can have Starlink to help solve a problem with the rockets.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:33Speaker 00

  That generates revenue and.

• 32:34Speaker 02

  By drawing this kind of things, it actually gives you an idea of, okay, with that sort of future, what component technologies do we actually need?

• 32:42Speaker 00

  So working backwards from science fiction in a crazy vision.

• 32:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, because the reason why I started working on self-cultured media is because of science fiction, anime, manga and video games.

• 32:50Speaker 00

  Oh, really? Because you were scared about the future? Like, or the nightmare future was in it or a positive future?

• 32:57Speaker 02

  Positive future.

• 32:58Speaker 00

  Got it, utopian future.

• 33:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, like in Doraemon.

• 33:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, very nice. Okay, so some questions. So tell me about how you get to product market fit while we wait for the questions.

• 33:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, to be honest, when it comes to food, it's not in product market fit yet because we cannot even put product on the market yet. So, uh, that's a work in progress. But when it comes to cosmetics, then, um, like it's lots of like asking conversations, trust building. And it's, it's not at all something like someone with an MBA do some, something smart and then there's a deal. It doesn't work that way. It just takes lots of trust building and asking people like maybe sometimes drinking together and, yeah, that kind of thing.

• 33:43Speaker 00

  From the beauty company and you have to go to the beauty company, explain what you're doing and then listen to them and build a trusted relationship.

• 33:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:51Speaker 00

  And after.

• 33:51Speaker 02

  It's all go, they all go in parallel.

• 33:53Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 33:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:54Speaker 00

  I think it's very important.

• 33:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, and then what we figured out is that when it comes to this kind of beauty products, then it's actually the sales, this hard-earned sales channel is what matters. And it's not actually the patent on that ingredient, so things like that.

• 34:08Speaker 00

  Ah, they have worked hard to build a brand, have distribution, and they've built trust on their side of the business.

• 34:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:16Speaker 00

  You build trust with them, then they can take what you've done and give it to their customers.

• 34:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:22Speaker 00

  But they have to trust you first. I, I've learned this lesson, you know, also in the Middle East. When I first started going to the Middle East, they said, um, it's a very family dynamic. And people want to build a relationship, then do business. In America, you do business, you do a deal, and then you decide if you want to be friends. And I think in Japan, you become friends as you're doing business. Three different cultures.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:49Speaker 00

  It's all slightly different. You know, in America, everybody fights to be an investor in your company. We become investors and then maybe we become friends or not. Maybe I'll just be very distant and you have some venture capitalists who are just, you know, put money in and they send you emails and talk about the business, but no friendship, no, no birthday card. You know, and then other ones, they send you when you have a baby, baby clothes with the name of the venture capital firm that backed you. Sequoia would send a onesie. So when we had our baby, they sent a cute onesie with the Sequoia Capital logo on it. I thought it was very cute, very fun. But I, I think we now have a framework. Do a deal, build a relationship, build a relationship, that's America.

• 35:33Speaker 00

  And then in Japan, maybe build a relationship as you're building a business together. And then maybe in the Middle East, in Saudi, UAE, uh, it's get to know each other, then build the business. Very interesting, you know, different in each case. Uh, I don't know about Europe. I don't think they're building businesses there anymore. Okay, so tell us your question, your name, your company and your question, please.

• 35:57Speaker 03

  Hi, I'm Natalie, uh, building Playpen, so we make anyone easy to build robots. So I actually have two questions that I'm quite curious about, um, because we also do open source community. So one is, how did the open source community react to your company's commercialization?

• 36:12Speaker 00

  Oh, good question. Yeah, so you had the open source community for 10 years plus and then you made a for-profit. How did they respond?

• 36:19Speaker 02

  From the early phase, we had this like, uh, um, overall framework of how things should be, like this open source community doing like all the bio art. Uh, so like a visionary, visioneering. And then we have this nonprofit organization, talking, speaking with academia and maybe the government. Then there's this, this, um, for-profit entity that does the physical infrastructure, therefore like, uh, IP, uh, how to make open, how to scale, uh, proprietary. And we had all this kind of overall framework already, like, uh, shown from early phase. So, uh, a lot of the members, it wasn't a surprise for most of the members.

• 36:58Speaker 00

  Got it, so good communication.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:00Speaker 00

  Okay, next question.

• 37:01Speaker 02

  And also a clear vision in a way.

• 37:03Speaker 00

  Very clear, yeah.

• 37:04Speaker 03

  What was the impact of the open source angle when you were raising from VCs?

• 37:07Speaker 02

  They didn't really care, to be honest. Yeah, so, um, because it's not the, um, they knew that it's not the, this initial IP that really matters. It will be more about the IP to be generated as, um, as, as the company operates.

• 37:23Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 37:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think we've seen that many times. Open Source Project, uh, WordPress powers a lot of the web. My friend Matt Mullin, what created it? And everybody was using it, but he made the commercial version and hosted version. And so VCs were like, yeah, if a bunch of open source people want to go through the trouble of forking it or standing it up themselves and, okay, fine. But the businesses don't want to do that. They want to, you know, have a, a partner who they can trust, right? Back to trust. So great questions. Awesome, yeah. Okay, we'll take another question.

• 37:56Speaker 04

  Hello, Richard from Nakatomi, a cybersecurity company. Um, my question is around, uh, like, are you working with, uh, organizations like NASA or JAXA to do this type of like culture in space? Because that would be actually a really great use case because, uh, getting protein to the astronauts, especially if they're on the moon.

• 38:16Speaker 00

  Such a good question. Yeah, because you can't bring cows to space yet.

• 38:19Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, so the very short, uh, succinct answer would be yes. Uh, it's like, uh, more specifically, like, uh, the cabinet office, moonshot, um, not moonshot, the other one, Stardust Project. Uh, and this, uh, potential application in space is also what led us to get into seed round funding. Mainly as an, as an open source project, I was pitching for this potential space application of this technology. And that, that made it to like television broadcast. And, uh, a professor in Tokyo Women's Medical University, Professor Shimizu, uh, he's himself being an expert in regional medicine. He's also a, like, a space enthusiast. And he decides to call us in to Tokyo Women's Medical University.

• 39:04Speaker 02

  We got there and basically we agreed to work together. So we now have a very prestigious advisor, yeah, working with us.

• 39:18Speaker 00

  Fantastic.

• 39:18Speaker 02

  And that basically led to the seed round.

• 39:21Speaker 00

  Great. So you built up your credibility.

• 39:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:24Speaker 00

  And then were able to raise. Did you raise from American VCs, Japanese-based VCs, or both?

• 39:29Speaker 02

  In 2018, in the seed round, we raised on Japanese VCs and even the government-backed VC as well, sovereign VC, I would say.

• 39:40Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 39:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. And because of our own administrative capabilities shortcomings, we couldn't take international ones, although one of the international VCs said yes, that it was kind of oversubscribed.

• 39:55Speaker 00

  Ah.

• 39:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. So but in the Series A and the next one, 2020, we got AgFunder on board and also Venture University Partners.

• 40:04Speaker 00

  Great. Awesome. All right, one more question.

• 40:07Speaker 05

  Hello, I'm Howard from LFA OS. We build the student recruitment tutoring agencies. My question is that in traditional meats or even for processed meat, there's a certain hierarchy that is based on both cost and also public perception. Do you think this hierarchy would exist for cultivated, lab-processed meat? And what do you make of this trend?

• 40:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it will be more of a future stuff because we will be talking about the mainstream phase. So I have to admit that it will be a bit of a fantasy that I'm on a, I'll say. But I think it will be a separate category. And at least those existing brand owners don't want cell-cultured versions to come get into their field. So it will inevitably, cell-cultured meat will be outside the existing hierarchy. And then comes the questions, like, should we call our product even meat? Is actually another. And as of now, Ministry of Agriculture, Forest and Fisheries or MAF in Japan, they are refraining from calling it meat.

• 41:12Speaker 00

  Got it.

• 41:13Speaker 02

  It's a cell-cultured food.

• 41:14Speaker 00

  Got it. So that's a great question. Yeah, I think we had in America, I think it was Burger King, somebody can look it up, Bianca. I think it might have been Burger King that had either Beyond Meat or the Impossible Burger. Maybe you know. It was Impossible Burger? And do they still do it? I wonder. Yes. They do. Yeah. I think it's been successful. Hamburger, I think, is the holy grail. If you can make a great hamburger.

• 41:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:40Speaker 00

  That's gonna be.

• 41:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:42Speaker 00

  Amazing.

• 41:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:43Speaker 00

  Maybe 10 years.

• 41:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, so because it will be a commodity product, so it takes time to get to the price point. But that is a holy grail, yes.

• 41:51Speaker 00

  And it could be healthier.

• 41:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:53Speaker 00

  And it could be designed to be very healthy. There's a product in Japan only.

• 42:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:02Speaker 00

  It's Coca-Cola that helps you lose weight. What's it called? Coca-Cola Special? I just got it at 7-Eleven.

• 42:10Speaker 02

  I'm sure that someone in America has decided Dope Coke with GLP-1 or something.

• 42:15Speaker 00

  Yeah. No, this is Coca-Cola, though, with fiber in it. Somebody look it up and tell me the name.

• 42:23Speaker 00

  Wow, incredible. So we just heard the Impossible Whopper is one of their most successful. It's in a white label, this Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola Plus. Has anybody tried it? Raise your hand if you have. You have. What do you think?

• 42:39Speaker 00

  It's incredible. I had it and Coke Zero tastes like better than Coke Diet Coke. It's like more syrupy and delicious. And then Coke, what's this one called? Plus. Coca-Cola Plus has, I think, fiber in it and no calories. And you lose weight from it. As I drank it, I was working last night, I was a little bit late, and I had a Coca-Cola Plus on ice. And I said, oh, if they had this in America, I would be even slimmer, like a model, like a fashion model slim. I would be like runway slim.

• 43:17Speaker 02

  You could try for a K-pop star band.

• 43:19Speaker 00

  Like K-pop, I could be, we could start a K-pop band together. We would be incredible. Yeah. You could be the nerdy, I could be a sporty K-pop member. We have a, do you see? How many members do we need? Three more? You need five, right?

• 43:33Speaker 02

  Possibly.

• 43:34Speaker 00

  Possibly five. We could be like the old entrepreneurial K-pop band. All right, listen, this has been a pleasure. I wish you great success. Let's give a round of applause to Dr. Yuki.

• 43:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, thank you.

• 43:47Speaker 00

  Okay, and we'll see you next time on This Week in Startups from Japan.