Ben Lamm is no stranger to starting an interesting company but Colossal Biosciences, the world’s first de-extinction company is definitely the most sci-fi startup we’ve seen yet. This week on Found he talks with Darrell and Becca about what it means to bring back the infamous Wholly Mammoth, knowingly dumb Dodo, Australian massacred Thylacine; and what this means for conservation, how they secured VC funding despite being a long way away from profitability, and why they structure the company like a typical SaaS startup.
Ben Lamm is no stranger to starting an interesting company but Colossal Biosciences, the world’s first de-extinction company is definitely the most sci-fi startup we’ve seen yet. This week on Found he talks with Darrell and Becca about what bringing back the infamous Wholly Mammoth means for conservation, how they secured VC funding despite being a long way away from profitability, and why they structure the company like a typical SaaS startup.
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Darrell Etherington 0:03
Hello, and welcome to found where we tell you the stories behind the startups. And we talk to the entrepreneurs who found them to get the inside scoop. A little bit of housekeeping just before we begin here, please rate review the show. We love it. We love you. We want to hear from you. Also come see us early stage, which is happening on April 20. You can use promo code found for a 40% discount on both founder and investor passes. And that's all I have to tell you. I want to bring on my co hosts back is good tech. Hey, Becca, how's it going?
Becca Szkutak 0:40
Gone? Well, nice, slow news week, nothing going on much. Glad you're enjoying your conference.
Darrell Etherington 0:47
Yeah, I don't know when this will be aired. But in case this is a distant memory, which I don't think is at all possible. That's true. News Week that includes the Silicon Valley Bank collapse, which is not a laughing matter. Many people are negatively affected. But it has been a wild ride, to say the least in terms of covering it as a news organization. And it'll continue to be but today we're going to be talking about something completely different could not be more different. We're talking to Ben lamb from colossal biosciences, which is the world's first de extinction company. And that is just as out there as it sounds. But we had a great time talking to Ben, who makes this kind of weird sci fi stuff surprisingly relatable. So let's go ahead and get into that conversation.
Unknown Speaker 1:41
Hey, Ben, how's it going?
ben lamm 1:42
Great. How are you?
Darrell Etherington 1:43
Doing? Great. I just got back from vacation. So I'm really well rested. But I might be a little rusty. So take it easy.
ben lamm 1:52
No, no. Same. I've been traveling nonstop. Unfortunately, not for vacation for work. But yeah, so take it easy.
Darrell Etherington 2:00
So before we get into it, we always like to have people understand the company we're talking about. I suspect a lot of our listeners may have heard of colossal. You guys have been making waves recently in the headlines. But do you want to give the elevator pitch so people understand what it is? You do?
ben lamm 2:15
Yeah, so colossal biosciences, to our knowledge is the world's first synthetic biology company focused on de extinction and species preservation. So I think most people know of us from our announcements to bring back some of the iconic megafauna, like the woolly mammoth, the Thylacine, and then the iconic Dodo. So I think that's where most people know about us. But we also do a lot of work in conservation, and then just developing technologies around synthetic biology as well. Amazing.
Darrell Etherington 2:45
All right. Yeah, I think definitely the, you know, those are the things that come to mind. Are these extinct species that you want to return to the world when I hear the name? But yeah, it sounds like maybe that's just a hook to hang your hat on and get attention to the other thing, what's more important to you? Listen, I want to bring these things back just as badly as anyone else. I just want them around. Why not? Right? I want to
ben lamm 3:06
Yeah, I pretty I mean, yeah, we get mixed feedback, right? So like, what's been crazy when you're doing anything this big and strange and bold, you're gonna get all kinds of feedback. We've been very, very fortunate to get predominantly positive feedback, right. And I think it's been a testament to our incredible team, our incredible conservation partners, our incredible advisory board, and that I think that we've done a good job. And we need to continue to be doing the job to have conversations like this and be really transparent, right? Like, I think that, you know, one of the things that we've seen in this world is like, you know, things can get weird when you're not transparent. So we try to be as transparent as we can be, right? We always can't be with every single technology we were working on. But But our focus is like to make no mistake, de extinction. Some people think that we are just interested in the tools, but we are interested in the technologies, right? Because that enables some of the work that we're doing for both the extinction, conservation and for human health care. But fundamentally, you know, our goal, and we branded ourselves as the de extinction company, right? So we do not if we build, you know, billions and billions of dollars of successful technologies that spin out, but we don't achieve our taxation goals, and we don't really see that as success. So we are pretty focused.
Becca Szkutak 4:16
I'm curious how you guys have picked kind of what species to bring back. I mean, there's probably sort of the more like biological components, maybe things might be easier than others. But I mean, for me, the woolly mammoth. I'm like, It's adorable. Everyone loves Snuffleupagus from Sesame Street. So how do you pick these?
ben lamm 4:34
Yeah, there's definitely like with the woolly mammoth, it's a charismatic species. Like we should all be as hopeful that later 10,000 years from now we are we will not be there's not we will definitely not so we can aspire to be the man there's not like Facebook hate groups for man. teams of people that like we hate the word. Why, why? Why God? It's so yeah, it's a great question. Some of it has been, you know, really strategic, and in some of it, you know, has kind of evolved. So, you know, we've announced three species, the man with the bow seen in the dodo. And they almost all have their own kind of unique origin story. So this entire company started as George Church's vision, right. And so he had been working for the last six years before we got together on leveraging his tools and technologies, also doing computational biology, to bring back the Mammoth and his goal with bringing back the mammoth was actually to reintroduce it back into the wild, to help increase the biodiversity and the nitrogen oxygen cycles of the permafrost and help kind of stimulate that he goes back into the mammoth stek ecosystem, which was massively more efficient from a carbon sequestration perspective. So he had this goal of doing that. And then he looked at this halo component of electronics and build technologies that help elephants and elephant conservation, right. And so, you know, if you're gonna start a synthetic biology company, who better to start with and towards church, if you're going to start a DX stations, like biology company, probably George Church stepped up the list to right. And so given that he had worked on it, and so the mammoth we also had a close to the phylogenetic relative, being the Asian elephant. It's about 99.6%, the same most people don't realize this, but the Asian elephant is actually closer to a mammoth genetically, even as an African. Yeah, which is crazy. And like, I didn't know that before I started this. And yet African elephants and Asian elephants can create viable offspring. So we had a really great surrogate and a really great architecture to start with. And because we're working with frozen tissues, even though it's old and degraded, we had a lot of tissue samples, so that we could build a reference genome, right. And so there's minimal number of edits that you have to make in order to make and produce the phenotypes of a man with indexing those genes in an elephant. So that's why we started there, right. And Giorgio has been working on it for six years. So it doesn't hurt when you're one of the smartest people on the planet working on something for six years to start there. A little bit of cheating. You know, once we launched the company, we got so much excitement that we actually had, you know, Andrew Pasc, we've been working in a similar boat is George he'd been working on the Thylacine for 15 years, and was like I have a 91% complete genome. We have done reproductive compartments with the done art, which is the closest phylogenetic relative, it's one of the Desi urines, closest to the to the Thylacine genetically, so he was like, we have all this stuff, could you help us? And we're like, Okay, well, he was a great guy. He was great partners. The project inversely fit with the mammoth, right? Because it was like we had the genome, really great, you know, way more editing the mammoth, a lot easier gestation. So it was like an inverse project. And so everything went great with those two projects were kind of ahead of schedule than what we originally planned, we spun out for bio, which we talked to you guys about. And so things have just been going well. And then our investors came to us and said, they were really excited about the technologies. We're really excited about the progress on the map and the Dow scene, if we gave you more money, what would be something that you guys would want to go tackle, and we just got flooded with people that were obsessed with the dodo and death who's like our lead paleo geneticists, Ben Shapiro, She's incredible. One of the other kind of like geniuses of the ancient DNA world, she had actually built the reference genome for the dodo and sequenced it, you know, and spent the last 20 years on the dodo. So it's like, like, I wish I could tell you it was like super strategically thought out just we were doing really great job, our investors really happy we had Beth in the genome, everyone begged us to the dodo, we reached out to Mike McGrew, who's actually cultivated primordial germ cells in birds. He's the number one guy in the world and told us he thought that we could get there with pigeons. So while it doesn't correlate 100%, to all the work we're doing on the mammalian side, we thought it was an interesting challenge. And so that's what led to Dodo. And we got our hands full, and we're pretty excited.
Darrell Etherington 8:47
Yeah, it's almost like it's a LEGO Ideas portal. But for genetic, extinct animals. It's like you do most of the work, like, come on, come and bring the design to us. And we'll be like, yeah, yeah, we'll do this. We'll put this into mass production and bring, yeah, well,
ben lamm 9:01
we'll put it. I wish. Yeah, I wish it was asked. But it's great. You know, and we've, we've kind of built the core infrastructure, right. So we built these functional teams are on computational biology, embryology, tailor engineering, animal husbandry coming from technology, never thought of animal husbandry. Yeah, so we kind of built this infrastructure that now we can take on other projects, both conservation and de extinction now that we've kind of it was 87 people at colossal working full time on these efforts. So So I
Darrell Etherington 9:33
think the other question out of that, for me is like, how much do you think about the impact of once the animal is there? Like, how much does that factor into your decision once it's back and has a Stable population or whatever the end goal is, right, like, I know, I've read in the past, I can't remember what they are, but like some of the benefits, potential benefits of having mammoths back again, kind of like trouncing the tundra or whatever, but like, does that factor into it? Or is it more like the work is there and done and then the dodo too, is like We did that, right? There's the ones where it's like, Well, we did that maybe we should undo the thing that we clearly did. Yeah,
ben lamm 10:05
they all have different purposes. Right. So like with the dodo, and the Thylacine, most people don't realize this, but with the Thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, what do you want to call it? We like the Australian government actually put a bounty on their heads to eradicate. So two of the three species unquestionably we eradicated right. There's lots of data that suggests that early man hunted and killed mammoths that drive them solely to extinction. Probably not they have a hand in their extinction. Yes, I mean, we've looked at across the globe, in historically, it's pretty clear that one of the things that mankind is very good at is going somewhere killing the biggest since lowest stuff, right? Like we've done that all over the planet, right? Like, that's what unfortunately, we've done really well. Terrible. We were efficient at it. And so it's, we're very, very thoughtful on that conservation side, in that rewilding side. So even though we are more than a decade away from putting mammals back into into that arctic environment, we've already you know, held multiple town halls, we're working with the head of Fish and Wildlife, we're working with indigenous people groups, or with largest private landowners, it's really important to be really inclusive and work on these things sooner rather than later. And so in the case of Mauritius, you know, it wasn't people like to think like, we were on Jimmy Kimmel, and people were making their tummy Kimball was making jokes that we just erratic, that humans just killed them, because they were dumb, right? The dodos were dumb. We don't know that right, we do know that they did eat them. The reason why most the dodo is actually witnessing was not the eating that and killing of them, but was actually the reintroduction, or the introduction of these invasive species, that you know, the dodo was a flightless bird, they laid one a year, Kid laid it on the ground. And you know, in a, in a world where it was fine, when you start introducing things that kill and eat those eggs, well, then you can see population declines very, very quickly, right? It's so we're starting to have the conversations with different groups in Mauritius around Okay, looking at the neighboring island, Mauritius and the neighboring islands in Mauritius, you know, what are the some of the processes that we can go through, and we can help with third party partners like rewild, and others that we work with to then go in and start to remove the invasive species so that we can reintroduce them. So some of that rewilding benefit, whether it's the carbon sequestration, silent de minimis, or just cleaning up an environment in eradicating those invasive species that we added to it, or something that, you know, I think that adds a different benefit. But it's a biodiversity benefit that comes from it. So
Becca Szkutak 12:30
and I want to take a step back for just a second, because you mentioned in one of your answers, that you're not someone who's been in the space forever, and you kind of came from the tech world. And I know, I think the one we met, we met at a dinner this was years ago, you were working at a space company. I remember correctly, or something in that ground. So how did you get into this
ben lamm 12:49
job? My superpower is working with much smarter women and men than me to bill you to help them set a vision and help them raise capital and then go build teams with people much smarter than me, right. That's kind of like my only thing I'm good at. And yeah, my last company hypergiant has now ran by Mike better recruited out of this to equity to run it so that I could go pursue this. No, I've always been massively curious. And what's funny is before I started hypergiant, I was in conversational intelligence, right? So NLP AI system? And then I got, and then I was like, Well, how do we apply AI to the intersection of critical infrastructure, space and defense, there's got to be better ways to look at satellite software, there's got to be better ways that you can look at a common operating picture, the challenges that, you know, we saw in oil and gas and the challenges, you know, that we saw in space. And the challenges that we saw in defense all kind of seemed similar, right. And they had bad in their faces, bad systems that didn't seem to talk together. So I thought that we could build a system around that that could be more interesting. And so you know, built hypergiant, and you know, which was great. But then curiosity is a funny thing. And it leads you in lots of weird places, sometimes great, sometimes that's just weird rabbit holes of information that you now have in your brain forever. So I reached out to George, while I was running hypergiant, I reached out for two reasons. One is I was genuinely curious about synthetic biology, and how we could apply, you know, is there was there a way that we could take some of the lessons learned in my software career and apply them to synthetic biology. That's kind of like what we talked about previously for bio, but it's like, how can we create better interfaces, using automation in AI, and actually create a better system for bench scientists to achieve you know, discoveries faster? Can we accelerate the path of discovery through software? Right, so that was kind of like the original call. I had just worked on a project at hypergiant around a photo bio reactor. So we had this r&d group that did weird lots of weird stuff. We had heads up displays, like straight out of like movies. We built this like, we never actually got to launch it, unfortunately. But we actually built a robotic agriculture system that was pretty interesting. So I got really interested in sustainability. So we had this Like, you know, we were doing well financially. So we started looking at hypergiant to do different r&d projects. And one of the r&d projects was around carbon sequestration. So it was interesting because I kind of got on this call with, you know, this legend, George Church was talking to him about that biology and software. But then I had just had we our technology, we built this iOS by reactor, which could sequester as much carbon as 400 trees a year, and ended up getting into the Smithsonian, it was like a super cool experience. Lots of brands really interested in it. This is right up right before this global pandemic. I'm sure you heard of it in that I was like, well, could you genetically modify algae to make it even more efficient? So Jordan, I had George on the phone, right? So I went from software to genetically modified algae. And he started telling me about all the cool projects he cares about, we both care a lot about climate change. And then he ended the call, I'll never forget it with this kind of like Steve Jobs. One more things. Oh, and by the way, I'm also working to bring back man, this boy, man has to reintroduce them into the world to make billions of dollars from carbon credits and save the world from climate change, I have to go to my next meeting. And I was like, wait for, like the greatest mic drop, or sales pitch, whatever you want to call it. It was amazing. Because I was absolutely like, you know, just completely dumbfounded on the call at the end of the call, super. We just had this like massively productive conversation around synthetic biology, software, genetic modification for algae, and then told me a bunch of all these other things he's working on, and he drops in this like, last 30 seconds this thing, we get off the call. And all I do is I spend all night reading and listening to interviews about George and I saw this through line of the mammoth, and I was like, Oh, my gosh, he really cares about no matter what he was talking about it, the mammoth would come up. And so a week later, I was in his lab. After that meeting, I was pretty in love. And I was like, I have to find some hybrid. So that I can try to go figure this thing out.
Darrell Etherington 16:58
I mean, that was kind of what I wanted to ask with, because you have so many different interests, right? And like, how do you decide? Well, this is the one that I really want to focus on. And it because it sounds like to me thinking about what myself in that position, I would just be like, well, if this thing works, this is the coolest fucking thing to be, without have all these things in the history books. And that's basically the decision process. But how did how do you think about it? Is it like that, or simple or what?
ben lamm 17:25
Well, I wanted to build, I built a bunch compare, he employed a handful of companies that like were really great, you know, they created jobs, they were good culture, you know, they provided value to me and our shareholders and our employees. But I never really created anything that had like value plus impact, right? It was like it was impactful to them, right? But it wasn't like really impactful to the world. It's there's different than staying things doing things, right. And so I've said 1000 times, like, Oh, we're building this company to change the world, right? It's like, how many times I'm sure you guys have heard the will this company is here and change the world? Just recall? Yeah. So I think we all say that. And I think from an entrepreneur perspective, you know, the vast majority of us truly, right, but not every opportunity, right? Like, if you look at like company lifecycle management, the vast majority, at least in my companies, and I can't speak for everybody from my experience is like, you start a company, you grow, you build a cool culture, someone a bigger fish is like, oh, I want to eat that. That's cool. It eats it. And then that company kind of goes away. Not that doesn't add value to the bigger fish. But like, you know, like, when Accenture by chaotic moon, they kind of just destroyed cattlemen, but a lot of those great employees still work at Accenture, they've got awesome jobs and provide their family. They're gonna be lifelong people there, which is great. And so in others, like moved on and whatnot, but But fundamentally, this don't always exist. And so I felt like I got presented as an opportunity as an entrepreneur. It's like, Hey, by the way, you from, you know, the universe, you asked him to be careful what you wish for and ask for. It's like, I got presented this opportunity. And I was like, from a prioritization perspective, I wasn't looking for another opportunity. I wasn't looking for another job. I was just genuinely curious about synthetic biology. And I was like, wow, this is one of those moments where I don't want to look back, you know, 50 years from now 20, whatever years from now and say, Oh, I had this really cool opportunity to potentially make a meaningful impact on society in the world. And I didn't take Yeah, and so I was like, I don't know if it's the risk factor or the entrepreneur side. I don't know what it is in me. But I was like, I just I got presented an opportunity. And I feel like I got this offer to be a steward of Georgia's vision. And, yeah, I just felt like I had to take it. It's like, you know, it was like a really cool VR thing. I don't think I would have done it. Right. But this was something that I felt like it was a once in a lifetime opportunity. And, you know, I felt very honored to have it in front of me and I was like, I just felt called to do it. I don't know how to really explain. Yeah,
Darrell Etherington 19:56
I think I get I mean, also, you're in a position where you have a history kind of like standing these things up that, like, you know how to do all the pieces that are required that George probably didn't have. And like, I can imagine myself being in that position and then being like, well, I can't fucking help you at all. So have fun.
ben lamm 20:14
Well, it's like, well, the world always neat, you know, and I think there's this other piece is like, you know, we built for biotech, full disclosure, I'll probably build other software companies, but it's not like the world needs another fucking software. It's not like every see, it's like, oh, like, Oh, here's, here's a, it's Tuesday we need. And so I don't know if you guys hear this a TechCrunch. But there's a lot of software companies. And so
Becca Szkutak 20:34
I think I've come across, yeah,
ben lamm 20:36
in a lot of them, were just like, oh, this is a better version of the last software company, you know, if there's anything wrong with them, right? Like, that's innovation, not not as much invention, but innovation. And I'm super guilty of that, right? Like, it's like, I didn't invent all these things I worked on. But fundamentally, it was kind of like, you know, this is not another software company. And then my viewpoint is like, you know, step to the plate, really do everything you can to make this massively successful. And then, you know, the worst case scenario, you know, you try for the world, if it doesn't work out, you know, that's why you're building a software. So I didn't see a lot of downside in approaching it. I never though, thought I'd work this hard. You know, I feel like as an entrepreneur, I've always worked a lot. But I've never been, one of the things I've realized through this project is I feel like I've learned and one of things I've learned about myself is that I've always been in love with like technology in building companies, I don't know if I've ever actually been as in love with what the company actually does, right? So like, I love to talk. So it was like, I built a conversational intelligence chat bot company, probably not the right thing for me to build. It's just like, did not in my like core of who I am, right. And so I've never been more in love with anything that I've actually like, it's the first time that I've kind of married the process of building that I love with what the actual company does. So it's the first time I've ever experienced that.
Becca Szkutak 21:56
Yeah. And I'm curious what it's been like now that you've obviously jumped in, you guys are working to kind of toward all of these goals. What is it like to kind of structure a company like this that really is doing something like there's no comparison, like you keep saying, with software companies, if you're building a software company, you compare it to the previous version of that task, or something sort of trying to hit something similar, but like, how do you work to build and staff and kind of set goals and timelines for a company that is such a different concept, and also is so technical, so far out for so many people? And how do you set that kind of stuff up? Well, I think
ben lamm 22:33
measurability is important, right? And so we kind of designed it functionally like a software company. So we have species leads, which are almost like our product managers. I'm not joking. So. So I like to joke internally, I don't think they think this is funny. But I like to joke that the hardest thing that we've done is not our stem cell reprogramming work, but it's actually reprogramming our biologists to work in JIRA. So, you know, you do somewhat default to what you know. And so I, you know, we started to design this, like a, like a software company where we have kind of like shared services, like when you think about software, you know, you have certain things like, you'll have your product managers, and you're building multiple software lines, you'll have like QA and kind of like IT security, and you'll have these kind of like cross functional domain support systems. And then you'll have kind of your like, you know, functional pods, right, here's how I build it. So we do the same thing here. And so we have these, like functional pods that are around the species. So we have a species lead that I spent a lot of time so all the species leads report directly into me, I spent a lot of time with them, ensuring they have a resource of what they need. And then underneath them, they have dedicated computational biologist, dedicated sailor engineers. But then we have these cross functional teams around embryology, animal husbandry, and some cell reprogramming, doing some of the forward putting stem cell work on all the different species that are are kind of like support functions, right? Because once they achieved their goal for that side, we kind of, you know, move on. So it's kind of like org chart, if you will erase like their PhDs names, kind of structurally looks like a software company like a technology company, do we have a separate product, an actual product group that then kind of just constantly goes all biology meetings, and it's looking and working with our lawyers on the in technologies on the IP side to say, oh, that could be its own company, that should be something that we patent, that to be something that we open source and give to the world, we kind of give that domain to our vice president product. So it's structurally like that. And then and then you know, what's interesting is like when whether it's building a mammoth or a Thylacine birds are a little different, but on the mammalian side, we kind of know the steps, right? Like we when I say kind of like, we know the, we don't know necessarily like step 348. But we know from step one to step 1000 At birth, what are the big functional areas that you have to go through and so we organize everything around that, and then we know how long gestation is. So we set a goal, a six year goal and then start Ready to work backward in the timeline. So very similar methodology to to like how you tackle software hardware at least. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, it's at least structurally that structurally how we how we approached it. And now it's like really efficient that we've been able to add on these other species been started to add on some conservation work and whatnot, just because we built that kind of like, right structure. And we're currently you know, fingers crossed, we're currently on on schedule. And so we hope to continue to be nice. Yeah, I
Darrell Etherington 25:27
think like, it's really interesting that you have this shared services layer, but it's like not like file a ticket with design. And then they'll, like, get you Yeah, a banner ad. It's like file a ticket with animal husbandry and they'll figure out how to make these two animals. Yeah.
ben lamm 25:39
So for example, one of the things that we're working on right now is the hyrax, which I didn't know, Iris was a thing. And but just but gestation really, it looks kind of hierarchs kind of looks nothing like an elephant. But gestational, it's actually very similar, right? It's the same kind of like, when I started this, I thought that all animals just kind of grew inside a bag inside of another biological bag being the person or an animal or whatever. And that's just not the case. Right? So there's like, there's actually technically more but there's roughly nine placental types. And you're like, that's, you know, so like, there. There's like abandoned placenta, and it's like a big, like an awesome, crazy big belt versus like, a whole sack. And so there's all these different things right, that I didn't that I didn't even know when you were going into this example, kind of like what you said about the genocide was our head of biological sciences, who runs our mammoth project, Ariana Seeley, she put into the system that she needs us to sequence and do some imaging work on on the gestational side of hyraxes, just because there's so much correlation to elephants, it's a little bit shorter, but it's very, very correlated. And so in that they're a lot easier to work with, because we're not endangered, right. And so it's interesting that these kind of like sub tangents that aren't directly related to today's workflow can go into a ticketing system, and another party organization can start working on something that may not have an impact for two years, but couldn't get that data. So it's available now. Yeah. So it's cool. It's, you know, we're constantly refining it, but so far, it's good. Cool. So
Darrell Etherington 27:15
yeah, the other thing you mentioned there that I wanted to dig into a bit is like farm for bio is a great example. But is that kind of the, because the timelines on this don't make any sense from like, a venture perspective, necessarily, right? So is the goal to continue to like reach revenue positivity, or generate additional revenue possibilities through spin us through patent applications through things like that? Yeah. So
ben lamm 27:36
what's great is our you know, our investors like Thomas tall, and Jim Breyer, and others, you know, their long term and technology investor. So the nice thing is that it's not like, we don't have this, like, oh, we have to return a fund in three years, because we're at the end, there were a lot fund lifecycle, right that came in. So we do have traditional investment funds in it. But some of our biggest supporters and investors that have been here since day one, like like Thomas tall, and Jabbar have been great, because they they understand the implications of what we're doing in the long term. So we're not pressured to monetize, but we start to think about these things. And so like one of the monetization angles is technology. spinouts. Right. So that obviously doesn't generate revenue. But you know, we think that foreign buyer was a big player getting great feedback in the market. I think Kenton Andrew are doing a fantastic job of running it brandy, there's absolute genius. So it's like, I feel like we put the right team there, I feel like we really saw a hole. And I think that we've got two or three other things like that, that I think will come out of colossal, because like anytime you look at things, from a systems perspective, you really start to understand what's broken. And you know, what I've seen a lot in academic labs, and in these published papers is they'll typically go solve this like one little point solution, right, which is great. And that one point solution could but help humanity or help a disease state or can be a trillion dollars, but it's they're not looking at the whole system. And so when you when you're building an extinct species, you're looking at the entire system, right? And so you have to have the computational side, you have to embryology side. So we've designed a system for large DNA delivery in mammalian cells, that's really efficient. Like that's, that's something that could turn into its own biotech company right there, even before we get to full x utero development, kind of artificial womb systems, just the pieces that we're working on now could be helpful for human based IVF. So like, for example, we've designed and built this really interesting system around hydrogels and micro fluidics of nutrient design, in this cassette system that no one that we went to the market no one else had, right. And it's showing massive efficiencies in the early embryonic stages. So the embryo development way more efficient than anything that we bought off the shelf. And so that itself could be really, really helpful. And so I think that technology spin outside could be really interesting. We're also getting lots of government feedback. So like governments are really excited about working with us. governmental are spending, you know, hundreds of millions, in some cases, billions of dollars on biodiversity and whatnot.
Darrell Etherington 30:07
Defense spend, do they want to? Do they want to put bio guns inside of the man? Yeah.
ben lamm 30:17
So none of the government we're working for I'm looking at like, you know, battle,
Becca Szkutak 30:21
like blink twice.
ben lamm 30:24
Yeah, thank you tell we've been very transparent about this. Once again, I think transparency is key when you're doing anything big involved, like this AQ tal is one of the investors of colossal which sometimes gets people, calamity and conspiracy continues. But no, but he has been fantastic in the, you know, the federal government, you know, really cares about how we apply technologies, specifically, in the case of us synthetic biology to solving really hard problems, if you look at like the world that that is coming with manmade climate change as it relates not just to biodiversity loss, but also what relates to food production, carbon sequestration, these are these are big government, these are these are national security topics across the world, not just the United States, right. So governments aren't asking us to do our government and other governments aren't asking us to do that he weird, like Battle name is damaged. And but they are interested in saying, you know, if we're spending x dollars a year to build, you know, to protect this amount of land to protect this species, and we're spending this much could you accelerate that, right, and so, so there will be some of those projects that we take on. And we are happy just to provide all of our technologies for speech for conservation, for free to the world, that's part of our mission, anything that we develop for conservation, we want conservation is to use, but there may be certain cases where government says, hey, yeah, we get it. But some, this is really hard. And this species really critically endangered. This, this is key to us. Can you help us like, you know, create a breedable population that we can then go and read read to do so? We're having those conversations. And then there is a massive biodiversity and carbon sequestration component to the business long term with rewilding, right. And so I think that we have lots of different avenues to monetize kind of along the path that, you know, it's funny, a lot of people ask us about monetization. And our biggest concern is actually, let's deliver the the monetization side isn't the thing that keeps us up at night. Right.
Becca Szkutak 32:20
And I'm curious, because we've talked a lot about sort of the positive feedback. You guys have gotten with a lot of these projects, but I'm sure I mean, on the surface level, you're gonna get a lot of people who just don't get this or who think maybe funds should be used in other ways. And kind of Yeah, have you heard?
Darrell Etherington 32:34
Like, it's wrong? Yeah. It's wrong because of God. Or it's wrong because of nature, like everybody. Right? Yeah. I
ben lamm 32:39
mean, I think that we, so first and foremost, we'd love that feedback. And I know that sounds weird, you know, coming in, as a technology CEO, I haven't always loved every kind of feedback that I've gotten in different businesses. But what's interesting about this is like, we look at this while we're doing this in the US is that this is kind of a world first like that. Yes. Like the moon landing was done, you know, by by the US, but it was a, it was a humanity achievement, right. And so I'm sure they got lots of different feedback along the way. Right. And, and we have to, and I'll talk some about that feedback. But it's we think it's really fundamental that, you know, you can learn a lot more from a critic than you can someone that just says, Oh, that's amazing, right? We do have a lot of people that are like, the Jurassic Park crowd, that's just like, This is amazing. Like, let's do dinosaurs. We love you. Right, like, yeah. And so like, we don't we don't, we love that we actually love it. But then but but you can learn a lot like from credit. So some of our earliest critics that are the scientific community are now actually on our Scientific Advisory Board. Luba dolmens, like, Yeah, you don't have enough reference genome, you don't have a mammoth samples to build a reference genome. It was totally right. It was completely great feedback. So we reached out to him start talking to him. And he's not one of our most active scientific advisors, right. You know, Ben Shapiro, same way, right. And so we tend to lean into criticism, as long as it's informed criticism, the thing that drives me crazy is when you get like, I'm a curator at some random museum. I don't know anything about genetics, but this just isn't possible. The end, I'm like, that's as helpful as someone just saying you should do this. Right? It's like, it's like, it's just if you're an informed critic, and you have real feedback on like, like the conservation aspects, like what you mentioned, decades, like, could money be better spent somewhere else? Right? Those are really important questions. And those are important feedbacks. And it isn't our job to persuade anybody or convince anybody. I think it's our job to be transparent and educate people. It's our job to educate people on what we're doing and why we're doing it. And a lot of times, we're gonna hear really great negative feedback, like, Oh, we didn't think about that. And as long as we're honest, like we did think about that, but let us go come back to you on that. You know, we got a lot of feedback at launch about Alaska. You know, the people were like, well, have you been to Alaska in Georgia in the Siberia in met with the Pleistocene Park, guys, and it's been years working with him. But he's like, but you know, several big feedbacks we got around lunch is like Ben, have you gone and sat down with indigenous people groups in Alaska? Have you ever been to Alaska? Like, and these were the questions I got was like a really good point. Everyone can think about how Alaska feels about it. But has anyone ever talked to someone not on not on social media from Alaska, but has anyone gone and sat down in the governor's office Alaska and had this conversation? And so I was like, Okay, I gotta get on a plane, and I need to go sit down with people and listen to people. We try to be really receptive. But but to your to your other question about like, what are some of the feedbacks, one of the things we got is like, shouldn't this money just go? Are you taking money away from conservation? Shouldn't this Why don't you just go into conservation? That's kind of one of the biggest feedbacks we got, and what once again, not against software, because several other software companies have started them on the board. I'm not against software at all, but it's like, you know, I kind of like to think there's one less shitty software company in the world, because rest because, you know, we went and raised money from traditionally software technology people, right, like, while Tom has told cares a lot about conservation. He's a technology investor. Right. And the same thing with Jim Brier, same thing with Tim Draper. Like, it's a same thing with bold, so we went out and like, we went in focus on technology investor, and we're bringing new capital into conservation. And we're developing tools that like, you know, we are losing we as humanity are losing have a losing battle against loss of biodiversity, we're gonna lose up to 50% of biodiversity between now and 2050. We don't do anything. There's just a story. I think, in the New Yorker like we do, that's like, just protecting the land, which we totally should do. And Concord conservation should continue to do these things. It just isn't fast enough, right. Like, you know, we just met with the Sumatran rhino, we have this rock wristwatch and Rhino taskforce that we're putting together in partnership with the Indonesian government. And later, DiCaprio has rewild and others funny, I literally just got a FedEx of the sign are signed MOU literally today, back from Indonesia, it's one of those things that like, you know, there's less than 50 left, it will go the way of the northern white rhino if we don't do anything, right. And so, you know, that's where you have to start looking at like, you know, assisted reproductive technologies, like, you know, how do we create gametes? How do we look at new ways of doing IVF? How do we start looking at, you know, introducing genetic diversity via CRISPR, and other tools, and then doing cloning. So there's lots of ways that we can save some of these critically endangered keystone species. And that's not going to work at scale for every single animal, but it can work for the key senses. And so there's about 100 keystone species around the world that are fundamental to their ecosystem that are in trouble. And so if we just focus on those guys, then I think there's a real, you know, opportunity to leverage these technologies to massively, you know, 510 x, their numbers, and we can start there. So one of the big criticisms is on the money front. And, you know, I think we're showing that some of these tools and technologies can be massive accelerant where current conservation just isn't as fast as human invasiveness
Darrell Etherington 38:04
is Yeah, I think, yeah, those are great points. Like a lot of people think of it as a fixed sort of like, like, like, there's some kind of fixed budget overall for like, conservation projects. Yeah. And
ben lamm 38:14
it's like, it's like a secret fixed budget. Like I have got, you know, you mentioned this by Jerome like, we we've got the god question. It's like, well, aren't you playing God? It's like, what did we play God when we killed all the thylacines? Yeah, it wasn't that wasn't great. Wasn't that? No,
Darrell Etherington 38:28
no, no, that was part of the plan. Ben, come on. Yeah.
ben lamm 38:33
Like was like this. Like, I take, I take cholesterol medication. Does that mean that I'm playing God? Like, oh, I should just let this kind of naturally play out? Are
Darrell Etherington 38:42
they or antibiotics, too? Yeah.
ben lamm 38:44
I feel like we like completely destroy like the entire, you know, millions of acres of the rainforest. But that's not playing. Yeah. So. So I think that if we had the opportunity to leverage these tools to reverse the wrongs, then we I feel like even if you come from that argument, I feel like just the flip side of that coin isn't, you know, it's like, then we have a stewardship planet, regardless of who gave it to us. Right. And so we should do everything we can to make it better, especially when we're the ones talking about Yeah,
Darrell Etherington 39:14
yeah, I think I mean, it's, you also have a bit of a NASA thing going on, too, which is like, Why send these people off? And it's like, well, because we generated so many useful technologies and doing so right in the course of doing so. And that's what you kind of were alluding to,
ben lamm 39:26
right? Like we don't like we all saw COVID Like just sitting at home watching Netflix is great for everybody, right? People get weird or ideas, I think so it's like, we need it. We need to do things that advance humanity, advanced technologies, you know, I was at this like a group discussion roundtable this weekend in in Vail, and it's crazy. You know, just like how short time ago things were just so different. And that's what people don't realize, but things like the moon landing things like de extinction, things like the discovery in the creation of like the bid with the company. You'd or you know, things like civil rights, like not that long ago, things were really weird and really different, like people would smoke on airplanes, and just like oxygen, sky, like people told on airplanes, right. And you know, I got to spend some time with some of the leading women that like, you know, that, you know, are some of the big coaches that like won the World Cup? Well, you know, when she was growing up, you couldn't play soccer because she was female. That wasn't that long ago, like, and so the only reason why, like we as humanity have to keep pushing the boundaries forward, because even 100 years ago, things were pretty weird, right? And so I feel like we're in a much better state today than we were 100 years ago. And now we're starting to realize that maybe cutting down on the forest and killing on the animals wasn't the best idea, what can we start to do about it? Right. So
Darrell Etherington 40:48
and all those ideas that you just mentioned, like they don't come from seeking a 10% improvement in the efficiency of software XYZ, right. They come from an overall ambition and like a graduate. Right? Yeah.
ben lamm 41:00
Yeah. Like looking at the system, seeing what's wrong. I mean, if you look at like what Elon has done with with SpaceX, like, you know, Ula, and others have been putting stuff in space for quite a long time. My grandmother didn't know about those, right? But she's, she's awesome. She didn't know about any of this. She now knows, like, when you know, Bezos take someone into orbit or when another SpaceX like, with the super heavy and all that stuff and starship launches, my grandma, my 94 year old grandmother knows them, right? Because these are people that took giant risks that changed the entire system. And that brings awareness and excitement towards science and technology. And and I hope that we can play a small part like that in biology, I hope maybe someone you know, said, oh, I want to go be a geneticist because I thought woolly mammoths were cool. And this company made them and that person like cures cancer or something? I don't know. So I mean, those are the halo effects. I think we hoped for cool.
Darrell Etherington 41:53
All right. Well, that's a bad time for us. But we'll definitely be checking back in 10 years when you have the first man with baby.
ben lamm 42:02
Well, we hope to see you guys, we'll keep you guys informed. You want to
Darrell Etherington 42:06
just send me one. That's fine. Just we won't we won't tell anybody. It'll be just between we get we do get a lot of requests for miniature. I'm serious. We get a lot of Yeah. productize that that's great.
Alright, Becca, that was our conversation with Ben, who I think you'd met before. He mentioned a couple times on the call. I have yet to meet him as of this recording, but we'll be meeting him later this week in Austin, Texas. What did you think about him in general and his entrepreneurial approach?
Becca Szkutak 42:46
Ya know, he's had such an interesting career to follow. He's always seems to be somehow involved with like some of the more interesting sci fi esque projects we see in venture that get funding and do end up becoming into sort of real enterprise there. But this one was so interesting to me, because I've been following colossal since they were, I guess, founded and I'd always just been like, okay, like, yeah, D extinctions. Cool. But I don't know, I think the company has been really underselling themselves on sort of what this means for conservation efforts and kind of why it's not just necessarily about bringing back the woolly mammoth. Whereas like bringing back the woolly mammoth, does X, Y, and Z, which is good for all of these other things. So it's interesting. It's like they're underselling themselves. And they come off kind of as a little crazy. But then like actually hearing what they're doing on the back end, it's like, Oh, I totally get this now. Like, I'm drinking the Kool Aid. I'm interested, I want to see this succeed.
Darrell Etherington 43:43
Right. When I heard about it the first time when I mentioned this in the thing like I am for it in like a way that's just like, This sounds great and weird, and go for it. But right. Yeah, when you talk to him, you get to this point where you're like, oh, it also is just like, logical that we would do this. But for me, when I think back to why that is, other people are like, can you explain them? The logic? Like, I don't think I don't remember how I got here. Yeah, you know, he clearly, I think, has a natural ability to sell people on ideas, right, whatever they might be. And I don't think you could put that kind of skill to use in a more ambitious arena. So I think, you know, it is a thing where you're like, you just want to see if people can do it for the sake of how audacious it is, right? Yeah, so I wish them all the luck in the world. You know, I'm so curious about their methodology for how they pick additional animals because he got into it. And it's like, basically, if there's a lot of extant research that is like well respected in the community, they'll go that way, because it gives them a good head start. But I do want them to get into a place where they're like accepting submissions for what is the next animal and maybe it's the crowdsourced and you just vote on it.
Becca Szkutak 44:57
And I'll be the next thing that like elementary classes do like how they name like town buildings. And it always goes horribly wrong. Like, that'll be the next thing. It'll be like this elementary school in Milwaukee is nominating this animal to be the next one to be saved. Yeah. But I just thought that was so interesting because like you said, like thinking about, like, how do they pick which animals to focus on and stuff like that. Just now I know, I guess that a lot of scientists out there are working on these efforts with these different animals already. And that's definitely not something that ever crossed like my sphere. Prior to
Darrell Etherington 45:32
know that I wonder, too. And, you know, we'll, I think we'll probably actively try to go talk to some of the scientists behind this as well, because I want to hear more about that, too. I want to hear about how they got to that. Because I suspect behind the scenes, it was like, Well, I always wanted to be a paleontologist when I grew up, because I love whatever. And that just kind of stuck through it. And then it was like, why don't I just bring it back? And then they probably dress it up. And like, look, it'd be good for all these other reasons. But really, they just want to make a childhood dream come true right
Becca Szkutak 46:02
now, because I mean, I'm like, even outside of this realm, I'm just like, infinitely fascinated when people have such a good niche focus area, like say, Bring back the dodo? Yeah. And it's like, yep, this will be my whole careers work. Like that's so interesting to me.
Darrell Etherington 46:17
Yeah. But we did it. We talked briefly about legacy, I would love to get into more of that, like, is it? Is it a play for like, ego? Is there a way? Is there an element of it? That's like, my name will be associated with this in history books forever? I feel like I feel like that would also be a strong motivator for something like this, depending on for sure.
Becca Szkutak 46:36
Because whoever does it first, regardless of what animal it is, it's going to be like, the talk of the town and the science community and beyond for years.
Darrell Etherington 46:43
Yeah. And I would love I also wanted to ask him, this is just my regrets. But we'll do a part two with Ben, I'm sure. But I would love to talk to him about, you know, I should have known this, but I didn't really think about it. But like, a lot of what's involved is building a genome that as closely resembles the genome of the animal that's gone as you possibly can get, but using a lot of adaptation of existing, like not extinct animals genomes, right. So it's, it's more of a hybridization, I don't know, if what you get in the end is like, Yes, this is genetically identical to the animal that was gone. Or if it's like, this has all the characteristics and attributes of that animal. But it's like, close enough as makes no difference. But it's not actually that, right? Because it's a concoction created. So that leads me to like, are you gonna build other crazy things that are new net new animals? And why not? Or why or why not?
Becca Szkutak 47:35
Definitely know what I mean, this is definitely a smaller, less intense scale. But I know when you guys had the Bowery farming guy on and he was talking about all the different breeds of all of the, like produce, like strawberries and stuff that like we won't even recognize as them, but they're like, they can genetically modify them. And they're all these different things we've never heard of. And I just feel like there's just so much stuff that could come out of this in that way, too. Yeah.
Darrell Etherington 47:58
Well, Brave New World, I guess. But we'll see what they've been up to. I guess we'll check back in 10 years, probably before then, to see how their progress is being made. But yeah, it's it's rare to get so excited about something that sounds so fantastical, because generally, cynicism is my default stance for stuff like that. But Ben does a very good job of of making you believe that these magical things are possible. So
Becca Szkutak 48:22
yeah, I think part of that too, is the fact that the company as he joked, like couldn't be more vanilla and structure, right? Like you could look at them and take out like what their titles actually did. And it would look like any other software company. So I think they're built in a way that they can get really crazy, because they've got that good foundation, which you don't always get for these moonshot companies.
Darrell Etherington 48:42
Founders hosted by myself, managing editor Darrell Etherington and TechCrunch plus reporter Becca SGU. Tech were produced by Maggie Stamets with editing by Cal Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator Alyssa stringer leads audience development and Henry pic of IT managers TechCrunch is audio products. Thanks for listening. We'll be back next week.
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