It is beginning to get ridiculous how we’ve been meeting up in places where none of us live. From then on, New Harvest held a bit of equity in Muufri, and I personally have none.
I was more than happy to put the future of Muufri in Ryan and Perumal’s extremely able hands. It will help the industry grow faster, more responsibly, and encourage cooperation and communication. It is important to me to keep the non-profit voice strong in this new, emerging industry. We wanted to do something big and Horizons wanted to help us do that.Īs we worked through the paperwork, I decided to remove myself as a company founder on paper. Our conversation was great and we could feel the excitement. We were getting the richest man in Asia excited about transforming the food system. I got my ticket to Hong Kong the day before flying out, and the whole 15 hour flight I was thinking to myself: this is nuts. This was one of the most surreal things for me. Finally we got on a call and decided on Muufri. The names we came up with were embarrassing, to say the least (Noccau, Herdler, Bovino are just a sample of the atrocities we came up with). We kept stumbling on what to call this thing. We were thrown into a frenzy of incorporating, buying plane tickets, opening bank accounts, getting visas and quitting jobs.
WE GOT IT! The New Harvest Dairy Project was going to receive $30,000 and laboratory space for the summer. One day ahead of schedule! April 22, 2014 It was inspiring, to say the absolute least.įour days later, after several hours on Google Hangouts, Google Docs and Prezi, we had a sound presentation. Patent searches, protein structures, pros and cons on different steps in the production process. Over the next few hours, and days, I was just shocked and impressed to see how Perumal and Ryan burst forth with all this research literally overnight. He had recently moved to an entrepreneurial co-living space in Boston called Krash, and he got in by posing the idea of producing milk in cell culture. Ryan had already done a lot of work on proposals around producing milk in cell culture. We decided to apply as the “New Harvest Dairy Project,” hoping that New Harvest’s established network would help with the application. I emailed both of them, asking if they wanted to apply. They were the only two people I’ve met in New Harvest’s network that had mentioned the idea of producing milk in cell culture. He had a biotechnology undergrad degree and was doing a Masters in Biomedical Engineering at Stonybrook University on a student visa.
A perfect day 2015 how to#
Perumal Gandhi I had met for the first time less than a month before – he sent me a message on LinkedIn in March asking advice for how to tailor his education. He was a biological and chemical engineer who had just graduated from Tufts University.
He had dabbled in cultured meat research and first brought to my attention the idea of making milk in cell culture. Ryan Pandya was one of the first people I had spoken with after I joined as New Harvest’s director in January 2013. But milk – now that was something you could get going in just one summer. Meat – that’s kinda tough for a few months in the lab. She wondered if I knew any new start-ups that could apply. My friend Pantea from Synbiota had told me that a new biotechnology accelerator was seeking applicants for summer 2014 and winners would have access to laboratory space, mentorship and $30,000 in initial funding.
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