Apeel Sciences founder James Rogers on building a plant-based food coating, getting blocked by Big Fruit, and surviving a coordinated disinformation campaign

with Codex and uh we will uh we'll talk soon.

Thank you so much for coming on the show. We'll talk to you soon. Goodbye.

Up next we have James Rogers from Appeal Sciences. He is the founder here with us live in the TVP Ultradome. Maybe move these objects out of the way so we give you a proper entrance. Thank you so much for coming on down. How you doing?

Uh please introduce yourself for everyone who might not be familiar. Introduce yourself and we'll go through the story of the company and talk about the news. Uh yeah, James Rogers. Uh thanks for having me down here. Based up in Santa Barbara, so easy to get down. Uh

wait, yeah, why Santa Barbara? I I remember finding this out and it being an interesting tidbit. There's some cool companies up there. Sonos and uh isn't Dyson up there a little bit or something?

Deckers. Deckers did.

Okay. Yeah.

Uh I went out there for graduate school to UC Santa Barbara. Did uh did my PhD in material science? Turns out that's the place to go for that. They didn't know. I was in Pittsburgh before that. got out to Santa Barbara and uh was doing my PhD in material science studying solar paint.

Okay.

Kind of weird.

What does that do? You painted

paint something. It dries into a solar cell.

Okay.

Like that.

Where did that technology go? Is that still

It's too expensive.

Uh that was actually where appeal came from was Hey,

power's expensive now though. Maybe the economics work in the data center era. You just paint the data center.

What was your uh I'm I'm a gaucho as well. Uh, what was your reaction to touring UCSB for the first time?

Unbelievable. I I came out to be

because from the air, my favorite thing is like if you show someone a picture of the university from the air, it looks like it should be like a Four Seasons or something like it has no a university has no business being that close

to an incredible beach.

It doesn't make any sense. It was like ranked like Yeah, it was it was crazy. I I flew out in March. I was in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and they were deicing us on the runway,

and then I land in Santa Barbara, and it's like, I'm not going back. It's it's too it's too nice here.

Do you study material sciences? Like, where did the original idea for Appeal come from?

I was I thought the paint thing was so amazing, you know? Wow, you can mix up a bucket of this paint and then it will build itself where you ship it. And but then I I realized how expensive that was going to be and went okay well

that maybe the solar paint thing doesn't work but this there's something about this idea that you could

technology that builds itself

somewhere else. Um and I started I just kind of had that in the back of my mind and I learned about how many people were are not learned about we all

learn we all know where people are going hungry.

Yeah. But I never I never understood why. Originally I thought, "Oh, we're not growing enough food. We need to grow more food." Nope. We're actually growing twice as much food as we need to feed everybody already.

Yeah.

Wow.

And the reason is we're people are going hungry because we throw it away.

Yeah.

And so why do we throw it away? Well, we throw it away because it spoils. It goes bad.

So the the initial product, are you in the lab? Are you on a pitch deck? Are you raising money and then going and doing R&D? It was all an It was just an idea on a on a sheet of paper, you know. I didn't know cuz I called my mom to tell her about this idea and she's like, "Sweetie, that sounds nice, but you don't know anything about fruits and vegetables."

That is true. That is true. Uh but I'm like, "Well, I just learned all this, you know, I learned all the material science stuff, so I could probably learn learn the fruits and vegetables." And uh so I made a list, right? Cuz I didn't know it would work. Uh I didn't know that this idea would work, but I made a list of the fruits and vegetables. And just in terms of how long they lasted and the shortest ones are like raspberries, blackberries, strawberries,

but what's at the bottom of the list, the longest lasting stuff is like mandarins, oranges, grapefruits. I don't need to know a lot about fruits and vegetables to know that the ones with a peel

last a lot longer than the ones without a peel. Just put those words together.

Yeah.

Now we got to figure out how to make it.

And that was the hard part.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Uh yeah. So what what like specific founder journey? you have this idea, you tell your mom about it. She's like, "Good. That's that's nice, sweetie." But you don't know anything about fruits and vegetables. And then what do what do you do next?

Uh I you know, I actually didn't know what fruits and vegetables are made. I'm so I'm a material scientist, so I'm kind of obsessed with what stuff is made out of.

And so the first question was, well, if you're if you got this strategy to allow fruit to last longer by strengthening the peel that's there, what's there now?

Yeah. So it was starting to do, you know, I'd been trained for this, started to do research. What are the skins of fruits and vegetables made out of? And totally blew my mind because, you know, I've been working on these solar cells. So then to pivot and start looking at we don't think about fruits and vegetables as made out of stuff. We think of them as fruits and vegetables,

but they're they're mixtures of really specific molecules.

Yeah.

And so it was what's the skin made out of? And turns out they're made out of these plant oils.

Mhm. and was, "Huh?"

Yeah.

So, these skins are made of plant oils. And then it wasn't just that the strawberry, it wasn't just that the orange skin was made out of these plant oils. It was the strawberry skin was made out of the same thing.

Mhm.

And that was like a

Yeah.

a big like that was like a mindblower because it was, well, wait, if lemons last a really long time and they've got the same thing

Yeah.

as a strawberries,

why can't you apply

can we just do more of that?

Yeah.

And so Yeah. It's so it's so simple at one level, but we were so addicted to

refrigeration and pesticides and and plastic wrap to try to address this stuff. This idea of using something plant-based was like at the time it was kind of kind of crazy.

Yeah. So, uh, grant money early on. When does the business

new new venture competition?

New venture.

We were like a UCSB. Yeah, I remember NVC.

But wasn't that wasn't that like didn't you get like 25 grand or something? Yeah, we got like we got like 10 grand, you know, for for a rap student.

No, I remember I remember I remember this this program and uh yeah, it was like it was really like venture funding for ants.

My first company at least twice the

size 17k first company for me.

It's enough if you're eating ramen and just paying rent.

I mean, my yearly salary was $24,000. So, this was like a 50% bonus, you know, it was enough to incorporate the business. first uh uh business address was on DelPlaya. No way.

That is crazy. That's like probably the the most enterprise value created from a from an incorporation on Dela. Who

knows? You'll probably get some dela is like uh yeah, just very notorious street. It's the street that runs

it's the street that runs uh in Isa Vista, which is where the university is.

Uh it's a street that runs along uh basically as close to the water as possible. You want to be on the uh you're usually surfing if you're on that street. Not necessarily.

Maybe a little bit. Maybe a little bit.

Yeah, we were at the end of the street, you know, I was in grad school.

Good. No, that's actually good. That that means you're way more locked in. Basically, like the middle zone is a nightmare. I don't think any enterprise value is being created there closer cuz it's basically one you're farthest from the university, but it's like much more kind of you're closer to nature. It's a little bit quieter there, but you go two blocks down. negative enterprise value creation.

Yeah.

Um Okay. So, uh you kind of have this insight. You you have a little grant funding.

Uh are you able to make MVPs with that grant?

No. Was able to do the do the research and it got it got to the point where it was, you know, I I couldn't there was no proof that it would work. this idea that we could add we we could we could strengthen the peel and it would last longer. It's kind of the will the lemon last longer than the strawberry but will it work if we actually build a business around this? And so it was research research re you know measure measure measure but you know okay at some point I couldn't figure out I couldn't find a reason it wouldn't work

but I also there was nowhere written that it would work and so it came to the point but

how hard could it be? You just spray you just put some stuff on on an apple and leave it out. Right.

Well, that's that's what's what's wild is there was when we

and I'm joking when I say

no no but but kind of I mean that was how simple it was supposed to be. But

how do you tell whether or not it's working? Actually, it's kind of hard because normally if you were going to, you know, apply it to an Apple, you'd have to wait a month to see what happened.

And that's just a really long

iteration

product iteration cycle. And so we actually developed these time-lapse camera systems was kind of our first product so we could see tiny changes.

And so would you effectively like go buy two apples

hopefully from the same orchard put

same tree you had to do same tree.

That was a big problem in the beginning. We were going to the grocery store and buying fruit and going like why does this one

rot faster

rot faster than this one? They came out of the same bin. Well, turns out those could be potentially from completely different countries, let alone different orchards or or different trees. And most of them have gone through this supply chain. You know, apples, you know, the average apple that's eaten in the US is a year old.

Yeah.

No way.

Yeah.

No way. If you're eating an apple in July, it's it's hitting its first birthday, basically.

Wow.

Yeah.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

That's globalized. We'd be growing them in the summer.

I grew up in Northern California or something. I grew up in Northern California, so the average apple that I would eat as a kid, I picked off the tree. Yeah. Yeah. And we can get back to that. You know, we you keep hearing about this farm two table thing, but the two is obscuring everything that's happening.

Okay.

Right. You hear about what's going on the farm.

Yeah.

You hear, you know, you know what's happening on the table in the restaurant, but the two is like, well, that apple might have been grown in Chile and gone through a refrigerated supply chain with pesticides sprayed all over it and then fumigate it. Yeah.

When it came into the country before it sat in storage somewhere and then you know you picked it up at the grocery store thinking it was fresh off the tree

and and of course it's of course

so yeah talk about the early business model the farm side the table side distributors supermarkets like there's a lot of different players in the supply chain that might be interested in the business. Uh how did you think about cracking it?

Well we were we were so naive. We thought, you know, well, hey, if food lasted longer, more of it could get to people and so we'd be able to feed people and that'd be amazing. But it turns out that actually the early feedback that we got from customers was, I don't want food to last longer.

The garbage can is my best customer.

Every piece of food that you throw away is another piece of food that

that I get to sell. So there's this crazy mismatch in incentive where you want to buy something that's better quality and longerlasting,

but somebody earlier in the supply chain might not have any sort of of interest in that. So So we actually our first customer uh was right up the street from us.

We make our product out of plant material. So we were looking for plant material and this guy was growing coffee cherries. I didn't know coffee beans like they're inside of a coffee cherry.

Okay.

This was news to me.

Yeah. So, you got all these coffee cherries after you get the beans. We met this guy. We're telling him about what we're doing. He said, "This sounds really amazing."

Can you do anything for my finger limes?

Okay.

And we're like, "What the hell is a finger lime?" You know, I've never heard of one of these things.

And they're these little uh micro citrus. You cut them open, they look like caviar pearls inside. You put them on oysters and salads and this kind of stuff, but they only last for 5 days.

And he lived right up the street. So we started working with this small farmer on these caviar limes cuz his thing was he had to air freight these caviar limes to places like Chicago and New York cuz they only lasted for 5 days these fancy restaurants. And so we started working with these caviar limes and gave them the ability to put them on on trucks basically save saves them a ton of money. The you know now they last 20 days instead of 5 days like everybody's happy. Um but then we started going and saying okay well let's do this again with you know other suppliers in other categories and this is when we got the feedback from them saying

we don't need it

we don't need it you know actually maybe maybe you guys should just stop stop doing this

um and what but what we did find

did you ever get a visit from Big Fruit coming in saying hey buddy

it's like the guy the guy

they were they were you know you guys probably have some of their masks around here. I've seen it. Uh yeah, under different under uh in different clothing. Um

yeah. uh you know actually our our first work that we did in the industry uh we were working with a we were doing a demonstration with a huge citrus company and we were high-fiving because we're looking at the data going this like we just won contracts with the biggest you know suppliers in the US and the data they came back with didn't look anything like our data

what does that mean

they said hey your product doesn't work

okay interesting

and we we were

totally knocked backwards because we've got the exact same fruit that we bring back hold and make the same measurements on they say no it doesn't look anything you know your product doesn't work

it almost completely blocked us out of the US market

wow

you it's such a small industry when somebody starts spreading rumors that oh this

so you think they were you think they were they were just they were just basically lying to you

their their data didn't match our data

interesting interesting

didn't match our data and it's and it's such uch a tightly controlled industry that

you know we were locked out so we actually had to go to market originally in Europe.

Oh interesting.

It knocked us all the way over to Europe. It's that tightly that tightly controlled.

Um but what we found it was was that in Europe people were looking for this. Okay.

People were looking for a way to have access to healthier fruits and vegetables that that waste. They had huge initiatives around this even like companies were like the retailers were actually talking about this uh kind of stuff.

Uh and we started with we started with avocados

because of the joke with the avocado. Not now, not now. Not now. Now too late.

Too late.

And it solved this the the you know this challenge that we had where the supply chain wasn't so interested in having food last longer, but the retailer was.

Okay.

Yeah. Because if they bought an avocado and didn't sell the avocado, that was a waste of money for you.

Dude, my my UCSB days, avocado was such an extreme luxury that the joke of like, not now, not now, not now, now it's bad or whatever. Like, that was so real. I was like monitoring my avocados, being like, I can't I cannot let this go.

Yeah.

Um, and it's cuz they're breathing. You don't think about it, but fruit is still alive when you pick it. At least you want to be eating it while it while it's still alive.

Yeah.

Uh and it and it and it has a certain number of breaths. So at the end it's breathing, breathing, breathing. It eats up all the energy it's got inside. And then if you eat it afterwards, you're eating dead food. And most people in the US are eating dead food.

They don't even know. Yeah.

Because it's dressed up in wax.

So retailers would actually uh acquire produce from a distributor and then apply appeal to the product.

Here was here was what was so problematic was the retailers loved it.

Okay? because now they're able to buy food that they can actually sell and they were actually telling their shoppers about this.

Yeah.

But that mean that meant they had to, you know, they're they're not growing the food. So they have to tell the suppliers, hey, we want you to use this product. The suppliers hated this.

Absolutely hated this because they don't they had pretty much shut it down.

And so the retailer starts telling the suppliers about what they need to do in their business. And don't get me wrong, we were a headache in their operations because we were this, you know, we were this new thing that they had to do and these things have been operating the way they've been operating for,

you know, hundred years.

Yeah.

So, uh, but that's the way that it had to that's the way that it had to happen, uh, in the US was was from the retail side, you know, pushing back into the supply chain.

Sure.

And so, what year is this when this starts working in Europe?

2019, 2020.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, it took a while. I mean

and you had already raised at that point like hundreds of millions of dollars, right?

I think probably we had raised a hundred million about by then, you know, when we when we uh raised some money uh from the Andre Horowitz guys, uh we used the entire world's supply of our plant extract to to treat the avocados that we shipped up to him

beforehand as a as a demo. We shipped up like a a a case of avocados and said, "Hey, put these out

on your desk." So that when we got, you know, sat down in the meeting with Mark, it was, "What happened? What happened?" That was the world supply,

right? Bet it all.

Bet it all. That was it. Yeah. Bet it all. Burn the ships.

So you raised some money. What did it look like actually scaling up your supply chain?

Oh man. uh you know when we first started like I said you know the the we were when we first started we were getting you know these coffee cherries from this local farm and then we were extracting these material we were extracting these these oils basically

but it was

super expensive to do because it wasn't a scaled up process and so we started with extracting these things ourselves in the lab just using like laboratory procedures it wasn't really for any sort of commercial purpose other than hey this can work. We had to show that this could work. And so in the beginning, it cost us something like, you know, a hundred bucks to treat an avocado, which it's not going to work.

That's not going to work. But once we once we figured out the mixtures of these plant oils,

then we could figure out, okay, how do you optimize the process to be able to isolate these things? And it turns out there's a really efficient way to isolate oils.

Distillation.

Yeah. You you it it's it's the same way that they you know get alcohol out of boil it off.

They you boil it off and and you can do this thing called precision distillation which basically allows you to separate out really specific

really specific oils.

Yeah.

Uh and that turned out to be a a super scalable, super cheap

because you can do it in a bigger and bigger vat bigger flame, bigger centrifuge if you need that, whatever. And you just you pull vacuum, you heat it up a little bit and you're able to separate it out.

By this point, did your mom think that you had figured out fruit?

Uh, it was so cool. I would go home for Christmas and, you know, my my mom would like collect the little appeal stickers like off the fruit that she bought. And that was just like, man, like that was so cool like

to to just have, you know, like to have my mom go to the grocery store we went to growing up

and be able to like have our have our product cuz growing up in Michig I grew up in Michigan. I'm not a California guy, but I I I love it out here, but I didn't grow up here.

And I it was just night and day, you know? I'd go back to Michigan and go, "Oh, yeah. Most people I mean I didn't experience what good produce good produce was living in the Midwest.

Yeah. I mean I I've spent basically my whole life in California and so always had access to farmers markets and sometimes the farmers markets are selling product that isn't actually that's not really like the the farmer is not present and maybe not even in the state. But oftent times oftentimes it's you know it is hyper local. So you get super spoiled living here. you get super spoiled living here. And and you know, I I I one thing I've come to realize is if you don't know the person growing your food,

they don't have a lot of incentive to do the right thing for you.

Yeah.

Mhm.

You know, it it's just people sell food based on price. And if I have a lemon that's coated in pesticides and a lemon that's not coated in pesticides, you can't tell that by looking at it. And this one's cheaper.

Yeah. Yeah,

the one coated in pesticides is cheaper because they have less, you know, less less rot.

So, you buy the cheaper one and the person who's doing the right thing doesn't get rewarded for it. So, there's just this horrible incentive in these supply chains to cut corners and do stuff that is horrifying.

What did you learn about the organic the like just organic as a certification and the issues of that? We had Brian Johnson on the show recently and he was saying like

he actually assume often times will assume that organic food is going to be more contaminated and worse for you than the non-organic just because there's all these like workarounds and

I and and it's that it's it's marketing. organic is is marketing and you know there's a whole agency there's agencies set up just to certify products to be allowed for use on organic produce and there's this kind of I don't know where this idea came from that organic produce meant no pesticides or no coatings or better for you but look at their actual marketing they never say that stuff

oh interesting

they never say that stuff cuz it's false advertising you they can't say that

so But the but the the brand is, you know, oh, this this apple was picked right off the tree and is now in the grocery store. It's just absolutely not true.

What is an inorganic apple? Just like computer chips and aluminum or something. Aren't they all organic? They are literally organisms, right?

Yes.

Definitionally,

you you got to you got to go to you got to jump on the marketing. You got to got to put your marketing hat on to understand what they mean by

but I mean that that's ultimately like part of the problem is that like you were sort of attacked with like like a aggressive marketing campaign against your product right and kind of cuts both ways like take us through that part of the journey like did it start like a low rumble and then turn into like a firestorm

we yeah oh man PTSD just even thinking about it that's all right we should talk about it because if you're building something right now this is the playbook they will use against if you're going after if you're if you're threatening some incumbent.

Yeah. So, set the table for us because you've raised some money. The business is working. The product is working.

You're in enough stores at this point. Your mom is buying hundreds of

hundreds of employees employees in the stores. The stickers are find pulling off the stickers. We got distribution.

Not like she has to go to some special store. One of

like 60% of the avocados that are being sold in the United States are with our product. And we are we are announcing a kind of a firstofits-kind uh partnership with a with a supplier supplier of lemons.

And he goes out in the media and does a press release and says, "This product is amazing. I want this product on every I'm going to I'm going to treat every lemon in the world with this product." and people didn't like him.

Boom. He gets doxed by these like video campaigns like put his phone number up there. Uh he's getting death threats from from uh from saying that he's going to do this. Um, and this what we thought you because the original I mean we we saw I mean I I remember our one of our guys coming to me and saying you know hey we're you know someone's saying our product is uh is this uh cleaning agent that's being marketed in the UK.

Yeah.

And it was

it was a similar name was that

exact same name.

Exact same name.

So it's not even a shared ingredient.

No.

Okay. It's

because sometimes there's there's precursors like, you know, I I can drink dihydrogen monoxide. That sounds very scary. That's of course H2O. That's water. Dihydrogen monoxide is the scary version. You might find dihydrogen monoxide in bleach. You might find it in cleaning products. That's not even what's going on.

Totally separate company. Okay?

Totally separate company. Sold as a cleaning product.

Okay?

Also with the company's name.

Two po two posts at the exact same time go live on Facebook. This is a toxic product with a link to this

this other company.

This other company which is a cleaning product which of course

you know is not something you should be eating. Right. Exactly.

And it just

and they don't want to put their cleaning product on your food either. Like two separate companies.

Yeah. There's Yeah. Right. Exactly. Different solutions for different products. Specific ones for food. Yeah.

Of course.

Uh and this this thing and this thing just goes goes crazy. Yeah.

And you know and then you know the attacks morphed into so we we you know we thought we cleared this up. Hey

look this is a cleaning product. This is this is our product made from plants.

And they morphed the attack into they they they couldn't find anything wrong with our product itself. So they morphed the attack into this is a Bill Gates

Bill Gates thing because of the nonprofit donation. We got we got a hundred grand in 2012 to research cassava root.

Okay.

Which we don't even have a product for today.

And then we got a follow on grant for this cassava project for a million bucks. I mean we've raised $800 million.

And and but that and but if you go online, you look up our name, you'll see.

It's not board seed. It's not

nothing. I've never even met this guy. Zero involvement. Zero involvement whatsoever. We got a check from from a foundation that he that he donates to. By the way, like let's talk about all the other people

who donate to this foundation.

Yeah.

We get we get these these donations.

Okay.

To work on cassava root, which you probably never even heard of. It's a starch source in subs here in Africa. It's kind of like an equivalent of

Sure. Yeah.

But you have scientists. You have researchers that could potentially dig that up. Like the coffee cherry thing. We're we're in we're in the business of hey if you're growing food and it's going bad can we figure out how to fix this

and and then and the result of that might not be a business might be more of like a research paper or a study where you took the cassava route ran it through some lab tests try to

figure out what was wrong does your product work do other products work understand what's going on

do try to figure this out and we we actually did figure it out it's a totally different

way that you solve the problem but I mean that's what the money was for to figure figure that out. So,

absolutely no involvement. But if you search our company's name online today, it's like

Bill Gates's appeal. And I'm like,

how did that happen? You know,

and and for a while we thought this is people are just confused.

Yeah.

Until we started until it didn't stop, you know, and it didn't stop and and it just kept morphing slightly and new photos would come out and the charge would change. We started mapping it and we started mapping back the accounts and we started looking at the timestamps and we started looking at the the accounts that were quickly reposting this stuff and it's completely coordinated.

Interesting.

Wow.

Yeah. Because people I feel like when when like there's an organ

because there are there there's plenty of like controversies that are entirely organ and well or entirely organic, right? Uh there's there's a bunch of stuff uh online this week from a certain uh from a certain sort of like health platform.

Oh yeah, you mentioned

that uh that a lot of companies have had problems with that um and that is like genuinely organic. There's a guy running a platform that rates foods and he has his own

scheme but yeah

well he has his he has his own

but it's an individual. It's not

it's one individual. It's not like funded by a specific group. It's just kind of like one guy running a business that

seems to be at odds with a bunch of companies. Um, but but yeah, like at first you're probably like, am I going crazy? Like why does this keep like

people are just confused, you know, that like the truth is a powerful thing, you know, obviously the truth will kind of come out about this.

Sure. Sure. Sure.

And it it didn't

it just it just didn't. And they they started activating real real people. Okay.

Some of which were real.

What was the long term? What do you think their goal was?

It got to that point, but they started activating them to call our retail customers in the United States.

And one by one, we got dropped by every single retail partner that we had in the United States. That boulder that we'd rolled up the hill for 10 years just rolled all the way back down. That's

in the US.

It was devastating. I mean, I had I had to let go hundreds of people that I cared about. Our entire US business got got destroyed. destroyed.

What was in the tool?

What What year is that? 2024.

20. Yeah, it was about It was like starting to happen. In 2023, we started to lose some accounts and in 2024 was really when, you know, started to go just like it just went to zero in the US.

Wow.

And it was double down in, you know, South America, double down in in in Africa, double down in in Europe.

What else was in the tool the tool chest at that point? Like did you consider just a full rebrand? Maybe tucking the brand further up the supply chain so that the sticker is not there like

what did you consider? Would you wind up doing?

Yeah, I mean it was it was it was pretty existential for us because you know when we first started talking to retailers we were saying hey you should put a sticker on this food because it's better for your customers. And the push back that we got was, well, if we start telling people that your stuff is better for them, what are they going to think about the other stuff? And so, you know, the joke's on us now, right?

Yeah.

Um, but so it was it was really existential for us to say, well, let's not tell people about this because our whole ethos was, hey, people should know what's on their food. If they knew it was on their food, they're going to prefer this is going to be something that they that they buy.

Yeah. But the conversation was, well, these these attacks aren't organic attacks. People, you know, organic people are some people are getting roped into this thing. That's kind of how they work.

Yeah.

You know, they they're like there's somebody kind of behind it, you know, planting the seeds. There's machinery and then they're just trying to find vulnerable people.

Yeah.

And, you know, make their personal mission.

And make it their personal mission and and they were really successful at that. But, you know, when when it's a deliberate attack on the business, it's not a confus it's not a confused thing. You change your brand. It's they're just gonna follow you to whatever you you know, whatever you shift your brand over to. It almost looks,

you know, it even looks like you're running.

It looks like you're it looks like you're running.

And so, I mean, we've been building this this playbook um from scratch. If there's other, you know, founders out there that are building stuff that is that is threatening someone in an incumbency position like this, I'd love to talk to them and share what we've learned because the beginning is just completely disorienting. Nothing makes sense. Stuff's getting said that just has no basis whatsoever and you're trying to you just think the whole world's against you. You know, you you in a little you kind of shut down a little bit. And it's not until you really get your bearings and you start to see, you know, see the the kind of systematized nature of these things that you realize actually there is there is someone behind this and you can start to figure out who they are. It just takes a really deliberate effort and now you're a a fruit company.

Yeah. learning how to do digital forensics. And you know,

well, and you think of the timing with all this, there's so much uh mistrust of the of the health system and the and the food system and uh you know, billionaires uh and you combine all of those things at once. It's like there's so much kind of

it's also something where

perfect story

the there the the buyer is almost everyone everyone has an opinion about food whereas there there have been somewhat even like more way like your scandal doesn't seem legitimate at all. There's been legitimate scandals in like enterprise software for example, but there are like 10,000 buyers or a 100,000 buyers. And so it's not something that goes viral again and again and again. And if you're even if you're a consumer of that piece of technology, but it's white labelled as under the hood and that particular buyer was able to sit down and understand the more the deeper context. Uh you have to win over like this mass of humanity basically all the food buyers which is everyone. on the TAM is everyone which is the beauty but it cuts both ways.

It cuts both ways and and what we find is that you know most actually majority of people haven't heard about this.

Yeah.

But a small percent of people have heard about it

who writes the reviews online happy people.

It's the you know it's it's the it's the not happy people and it's the people who are part of a system that's trying to stop something from from happening.

That's so interesting.

Uh what where are you at today? Uh, so the business is the business is going strong outside of the United States. It's

it's dystopian for me to walk into a grocery store in South America and find our products and to walk into a US grocery store and see everything still treated with wax and pesticides and go,

"How is this possible? There are better options that actually help people are better for the world. Eliminate plastic, eliminate pesticides." and we don't have access to them in the US because a small group of people want to want to bury these options and technology is happening technology growth is happening in every single industry except for food.

Mhm.

How is how is this

which is insane given how much how much uh of you know consumer wallet goes towards this category how how much of you know that is the human experience. It's like you eat and then you're waiting around to eat again. Like that's why

it's often the best part of my day. So I get that. I resonate with that. Yeah.

Yeah. It it is it's truly mind-blowing and and just how disconnected we've gotten from food.

Yeah.

You know, like

most people's connection to food is they go to the grocery store and they pick up a piece of food. You know, I I I I started growing, you know, a lot of food, you know, tomatoes, um you know, peppers, this kind of stuff.

There is something amazing about growing food. and we've gotten totally dis disconnected

with that. So, I'm optimistic about this future where we actually are able to, you know, people are starting to feed each other

again. People are, you know, you're growing tomatoes, you're growing carrots, you know, we have the opportunity to trade those with each other because that can actually happen at a smaller scale if you're able to match the match the supply and demand. And so, that's one of the things that we're talking about a lot. How do we Yeah.

How do we help small producers, community production in the United States where we can actually empower people to grow their own food, trade it with each other so that they're able to to feed each other, feed communities, and not be so dependent on this monolith where we're growing food halfway around the world?

Big fruit that tried to kill you in the cradle.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Other lessons for entrepreneurs? I mean, you mentioned like uh if if someone is going to war with a major industry uh that's alive that's allied against them, uh there's there's worries there. Uh do you is there any not to put like you know like uh dig up potential like Monday morning quarterbacking but is there any thing where uh like trademark searches could have avoided this? Is there something where like if you could play back and think five steps forward is any of this predictable? Is any of this uh like you know preventable? I so when we started the business uh it we were I think we were in a different we were a different era when we started the business in 2011 2012 sure social media was not what it is today

and I I've experienced you are just vulnerable to a different set of attack vectors in in the modern era

and you know if if if I could you know go back and talk to myself you know five years ago would have been to acknowledge hey we're in a different era Now, in terms of where the vulnerability can come from,

yeah,

on my list, you know, on my list never would have been, you know, someone's going to say that uh Bill Gates owns your company and it's part of a global depopulation agenda. Like, that would not have been on my list. You're like, make a make a list of a thousand things. It would have been

very hard to predict.

It would now. And it and it should be on it would now. And it and it should be on everybody's

three of the deck. like actually maybe make your maybe make your Thanksgiving dinner productive and that you know that that relative who's got all these theories

tell them about what you're building and just say hey what

what's find some flaws my business

find some flaws in my business flaws in my business

and let's talk about that and actually like maybe it's like a write off now because you got some good advice from uh that that aunt or uncle

yeah that's very funny I mean I had a uh there was someone who had a uh like a regional uh like sauce business and they bumped into another regional sauce business like halfway across the world that like the two companies never would have ever competed in the same name space, but because of social media and the way things fly around that both of these like sort of storied brands in their local communities are now like butting heads and suing each other. And so that stuff happens all the time. It's very hard to predict.

Confusion.

Uh what was I gonna say? I yeah it's it's also the mentality when like your mentality as a founder you discover this problem you discover an innovative solution that's aligned with uh uh nature's own approach

and you come out and you're and and you're like I'm trying to fix like a a systemic problem and so you're coming in with the attitude of of um uh as like a good actor like operating is like I'm a good actor. I'm trying to solve a global problem for humanity. But when your solution becomes misaligned with someone else's business model,

um the way those uh the way those and and I've just seen this with um I've seen this with a bunch of companies specifically in the in the um any for some reason like health uh anything like health supplements like food is just like becomes like hyper hyper political really quickly. it becomes super emotional. Yeah. Uh what starts as being like, you know, concepts grounded in science quickly becomes um something else. And I've been shocked because I know, you know, I know a bunch of uh like health podcasters that have gotten into controversies over um you know, and uh and and health brands and uh it is it's been wild to see so many people that I know personally that I believe are

waking up every day trying to create the best possible product for humanity in a category or create the best possible information for people. uh and then they become uh they become the enemy because of some other force

in the world and it's it's a real

it's a real challenge um yeah I uh I'm the co-founder of a of a water filter uh company and uh my journey into that business was uh realizing that there were so many companies in that category that were selling water filters which you you you are relying on this device to provide clean water for yourself, something that you're consuming all day long. And I was looking around the category and I was I found uh I tested a filter early on and the filter was adding heavy metals to the water.

So it was like it was like I found a filter that was like very popular. You

turn it around.

Yeah. Yeah. Exact. Exactly. Uh but I found this filter that was like a very popular filter. I got independent testing done on it. I tested like 10 10 different filters that were popular on Amazon

and mult multiple of them were adding heavy metals to the water. So you take water

uh that that is like maybe not clean and then you come out with water that's certainly not clean. Yeah.

Uh and and that was this crazy moment and then um as that company you know the company's done

uh quite well in part by trying to you know over test overshare all these things. Uh but there's still again immediately after launch there was uh legacy brands that that were trying to say like

oh they didn't you know you know trying to discredit like the lab or or all all these different things and it's like uh and again it does get um you have to just you have to just like go through it and and continue to

lead with transparency and science and all these things but there are uh it's a

it's not a it's not an approach that that that I can ever think about doing, right? Of like I never, you know, I never would go out and try to mislead a bunch of people

about you can't even imagine like you're like a golden retriever. We we talk about we talk about

great dogs. I don't take that as a

No, no, no. We talk about we talk about we talk about we have a bit where like golden retriever mode. It's like you should just be like, you know, you should be like friendly, happy, uh, and high energy. Um, and like a golden retriever, a golden retriever cannot imagine like attacking, you know, uh, like some kid running by, right? They're just focused on the ball, right? They're focused on the ball. And so, as a golden retriever entrepreneur, right, you're just focused on chasing the ball, right? Chasing the dream,

uh, trying to solving the problem,

solving the problem. Uh, and there are there are pit bulls out there. that doesn't overthink things and it's like in this case maybe like like to the point of like what's on the third slide of the deck. It's like maybe you should have been overthinking but that's not good advice. I don't know.

You know that's that's who I am. That's what happened to me uh when I said kind of I you know it really like uh was despondent for a while. That's what happened. You know, you go out into the world and you're told do the right thing,

be a good person, work hard,

you know, find good people, work with them, build like like you know, like create something like good that helps us

that your mom is going to be proud of

that your mom's proud OF THAT YOUR MOM is buying in the grocery store and then this stuff happens and you realize that the way that you thought the world worked

is not the way that the world worked. It's a golden retriever going to the dog park for the first time

running into there's a pit bull at the dog park and you're jumping around chasing the ball the pit bulls. It's like welcome to the park.

Welcome to the park. Yeah.

And you just go okay. So for a while you just go no that's you know I don't want the world to work the way. But then eventually you go well I can either complain about the world this way or I can acknowledge that's the way the world works and go from there. And the damning thing about this for innovators is

they don't have to con they don't have to change people's minds about what your product is. They just have to make them suspicious.

Yeah. Like the US FDA,

they just have to make them suspicious. And not only the FDA, the European Union, which is like 100 times more

like they're the most strict like regulatory agency in the world.

Yeah. And it's like there's like a million there's like a million products that we that are in our grocery stores that can't be sold there

that can't be sold like 4,000 approved I think in the US and there's like 400 in Europe. Ours is one of them. There's literally no upper daily intake limit of our product. You could just eat it as food.

You're not on the Prop 65 list. California.

No.

That's insane.

Everything's on the Prop 65 list.

We would definitely not want to be on that list. These are these are There's a lot of Prop 65 list remarkably low. Like you walk into Starbucks, I don't have a problem with Starbucks. Uh it's on Prop 65. And I'm like, "Yeah, okay." Like they're being extra safe. And

yeah, that's the thing. There's there's supplements there's supplements that people take that are on that

Prop 65

list, right? Which they they're probably unaware of at some level or they just like, you know,

it's sort of like the most conservative, but to not even bet on that is crazy.

Exactly. Wild. Yeah. It it it's plant oil.

Yeah.

Like if you've eaten avocado oil, coconut oil, like that our product is in is is an ingredient in those oils. Like you don't think about again like you don't think about fruit as having ingredients.

Yeah.

It's it's a mixture of different molecules like

oil. You're not even you're not even eating it.

You're not even eating the skin.

You're not even

Which is even which is even crazier. So these attacks like these comments come up and it's like this is like poison and you're going

well first of all no. Yeah.

And second of all,

even if a such an incredible level crazy. Yeah. Walk outside.

So, what is the uh you don't strike me as someone who's just going to who's going to give up? Like, what's the path back? What's the path back to?

You know, the internet kicked our ass. And so, I've been it took me a while to think about it, but I started flipping around and ask the internet for help. I've been offering bounties to people to help track back

figure out what happened.

Figure out what happened. I've just been posting them on Fridays. I haven't figured out what today's is going to be cuz I submitted one I put one out last week and I just

blew it blew up the number of people who are sending stuff in. So,

I'm really bullish that the same way, you know, right now there's no incent there's no cost to somebody perpetrating an attack on you online.

Sure. Sure.

The bots do their thing. They repost stuff. They like they whatever they share. They they manufacture engagement and it goes. But they're kind of doing it with impunity because nobody's taking the time to be like, "Okay, who's this user that commented this thing?" Oh, weird. They normally just talk about anime. And today they started talking about

Yeah. No one is clicking through.

Nobody's clicking through. They're just seeing the headlines. And actually, if you just give a little bit of Well, this is the experiment I'm running right now. If you give them a little bit of financial incentive, turns out there's tens of thousands of people who will spend

an hour, you know, going into this stuff, especially with especially with AI. So, I mean, that's the vector that I'm going with right now. I I you know, I think we're in the I think

you got to go all the way to Joe Rogan. This is the start.

You got to go straight to the top.

He's mentioned this a couple of times,

you know, but he seems but he seems like somebody who would uh uh be naturally skeptical of technology with food because he's like, I like steak and like

our product is also in by the way, right? So, he should be down with this. But yeah, no, he's he's had a couple of guests.

Pull that up. Click five links deeper. Get to the And you don't have to go you go one, see the real story

and like you just see how people work on social media. Like I hate to say this, but like I'm sitting on an airplane. I can't not see what this person's doing one seat over to the right. Like,

and this is the move. Scroll, see something, click comments.

Scroll, see something, click comments. So, doesn't matter what's posted.

Yeah. I don't I'm not People don't form their opinion till they see the first couple comments. And so that's how they hijack Yeah. That's how they hijack what's going on in your brain.

They just they just control the comments. They they control

No, there's going to be there's going to be some truly insane documentaries in about 10 years about this era of the internet and how people started. I've seen this in, you know, AI is so hyper competitive and there's like this insane, you know, horse race and I've seen uh earlier this year I was starting to see posts that would have like 20,000 likes on 200,000 views, three comments.

Getting a 10% like rate is like not a thing, especially on X. Like like there's a handful. And so you're like, "Okay, well,

who's actually engaging with it? is clearly getting a lot of views, but it's not necessarily reflecting, you know,

it's not real.

Yeah,

it's manufactured.

Last question for me.

Have you been keeping tabs on the other appeal, the clearance company? Like, wait, because their business buys actually now we are those guys.

We got to have that on. Now, we keep your floors clean and we keep your fruit fresh.

Yeah. Because I'm I'm just wondering because obviously they would be probably unaffected, but at the same time, they probably have some confusion. People are like, "I thought you were a cleaning company. You're doing

Wait, your floor cleaner is healthy now?"

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do they have a knock-on effect? I don't know. That's an interesting thing to dig into, but we'll follow up with you on that one.

Thanks so much for coming on and breaking it down for us. This is a fascinating story. I know it's obviously a really hard journey, but I'm extremely optimistic.

If somebody else learns from it,

I'm really happy. Thank you for coming and sharing with us. This was fantastic. Have a great rest of your day.

It was a great time.

We'll catch up.

Yeah.

Uh what do you want to wrap up with, Jordy? I mean, we could we could go into the the Warren Buffett of London, but it's a long it's a long story in the Financial Times. We can save this for another one. Uh I did think this was interesting. His children's investment fund has become the fifth most profitable hedge fund of all time. What a good name for a hedge fund. Children's investment fund. doing it for the children and beating the benchmarks. Chris Hone, he's been honing his skills. What else? Sworn in today.

Sworn in.

Frank says, "Good luck, bro."

And the prediction is that there will be a rate hike or something like that. I saw I saw both both uh both a cut and a hike uh predicted uh kicking off with good vibes potential for a hike. But I think the market is pricing in uh a a rate increase, not a rate decrease, which of course is what uh a lot of folks have been hoping for. But uh with the economy heating up, uh maybe a hike is in order. But uh there will be a whole bunch of knock-on effects from this. I wanted to talk about the robotic legs, the exoskeletons. Would you rock these or would you be sitting it out? The Hypershell X Ultra S is an exoskeleton that the Wall Street Journal demoed.

Thousand watt hips.

Thousand watt hips. You wear these and they help you hike and run up hills.

I listen to too many shows with with Palmer Lucky where he talks about uh the the capability of an Iron Man suit potentially just ripping you apart. And so I would be a little afraid. Uh but also imagine, you know, a bad actor. Remember all the DJI drones had like a back door

Yeah.

bad actor takes over your your your your and then it makes you Michael Jackson and it badly in front of your peers

potentially. Potentially

could be wildly embarrassing.

I guess I I'm unclear on

the goal cuz couldn't you just go on a short shorter hike or a less steep hike to make it easier? I guess if you want to see the top of a big mountain but you can't make it in a certain amount of time. Explain the market. Are you in the market for these?

Uh, yes. These are sick.

Yes. When

your answer is, couldn't you just go on a shorter hike?

Yes. Like if this allows me to go on a six mile hike. Couldn't I just do a onemile hike? Could you take a car?

Can you just stay home and

take a car or a helicopter?

Like you don't like this is sort of an in between thing. When When are you actually deploying this? I bet you if you get these Maybe we have to order these. I think we have to order these for Tyler and

just drive up like a massive mountain.

We're getting you these. They're they're two grand, but we're getting you some, and we're going to see if it transforms you into Iron Man.

Uh, also, uh, Cattle, CL, the Chinese EV battery giant, is investing in Deep Seek. Uh, some big rounds going on. Also, BY waking up. Remember, remember, this is what AI20. They predicted that BYD would get an F1 team. That's right,

which is what happening. Which is what's happening. At least they're in talks. BYD is in talks with Christian her over entering F1. That would be pretty crazy. Does BYYD have any uh gas powered ice engines? I don't know.

They're about to

They're about to Who knows what else gone,

folks? It's Memorial Day weekend.

Yeah. Go have fun. We'll see you Tuesday. Have a good rest of your day. Have a great weekend. Leave us five stars at Apple Podcast and Spotify. Sign up for our newsletter, tbp.com.

Been an honor. and we will see you

tomorrow weekend. We love you.

Goodbye.