[0:00] What are invasive species?Hello. The guest today is Pam Marone. She's the class of 1978. She's founded four companies. She's taking one of them public and has sold three of them. So hi Pam, what what does your current company do? It's the Invasive Species Corporation and we find natural products from microorganisms to control invasive species in water and agriculture. Oh wow, like what are examples of invasive species? Well, there are invasive zebra and quagga mussels in New York and also in the Great Lakes, And so invasive zebra mussels, invasive quagga mussels related species are an example of invaded species. You have another one spotted lanternfly that are now spreading all over the Northeast. That's an invasive species. So there's there are species that come from outside an area and then invade. And what we're finding now is that they have a very high reproductive rate and they can outcompete native species and they wreak environmental and economic harm. Oh. No, that's not good. But where do they come from, these invasive species? Well, for example, the zebra and quagga mussels came decades ago in ballast water from Eastern Europe spot and lanternfly, I believe came from citrus, Asian citrus, silid China. Let's see, we've got the emerald ash board. We ship so many goods from China and they hitchhike onto wood pallets and so forth. And so they typically are coming from Asia or Latin America when they invade. Oh wow. So, so they come to the, the environment, the ecosystem, and that they're able to reproduce much faster. And then yes, what's the method? What's like the process of that's causing harm to the economy? So when they first come in, you know, you try to prevent them from from coming and that is the cheapest way. But once they come in and they get established, there aren't that many measures of control. So they now they can do the genetic sequencing of the invasive pieces can find out that they they are really built for high reproductive rates. So they reproduce really fast and compete native species. So in the case of zebra and quagga mussels, they they destroy lakes and for example, they're causing extinction of native mussels and whitefish and whitefish in the Great Lakes. We have a project to help rehabilitate that. And in the case of emerald ash borer, they've caused the death of 100,000,200 million trees. So it's almost expected to perhaps even cause the extinction of the American ash species in the United States. So that's the kind of damage they caused. The mussels also will will clog up pipes and if you don't treat mussels, if you don't inject into pipes something to kill the mussels, they can shut down a power or industrial plant. So very serious issues with invasive species. They cause all kinds of troubles. They kill the native plants and they also clog up the factories. They do, and they do wherever they go. They cause a lot of harm, for example, if they invade agricultural crops. And there's plenty like the spotted Lantern fly now in the northeast. There's spotted wing drosophila, there's Asian citrus solid. What happens is that the statistics show that once an invasive species comes in, pesticide use increases by 200 times. And chemical pesticides are very fossil fuel intensive. And as a result, then we have a very, a very carbon intensive problem where we're trying to reduce the amount of carbon and, and greenhouse gas emissions. And unfortunately, invasive species change that equation and cause us to increase the amount of greenhouse gas and carbon we're producing because of the amount of pesticides that have to be applied. So. So the pesticides will kill the invasive species then? Well, that's that's what they're using. So typically they cut when invasive species come in, they use a lot of pesticides and then over time, but it takes 10 to 20 years, researchers will find native like parasites and predators, things that are that are back at the home country that they can bring in and then see if they can do biological control. But that takes a long time. So until those kinds of biological controls get established, then they use a lot of pesticides. So our company, the Invasive Species Corporation, has seen this as a very a very big problem to solve. And we can solve it by finding safer, environmentally natural products that we can use to control them. Gotcha. So it's like a third layer of defense then rather than waiting for the pesticides and waiting for the home country predators, you have a third option. Yes, exactly. And so hopefully we can replace some of those toxic chemicals that are used for controlling controlling the invasive species with safer natural products. Yeah. So when the invaders come, so let's say like the zebra mussels come, what's the process of creating this third layer of defense? That's a very good question. So the product that we have, Zequinox was discovered by some New York State researchers from a mussel infested river. So typically to find a solution, we go to where the pest is living and then take samples that could be water, could be mud, soil, and and then find the microorganisms that live that are in those samples that we collect. And the scientists isolate those microbes on a Petri plate. And now today we have powerful tools that we can use to quickly identify the ones that are going to kill our target pest. We do a gene sequence. So we do a we sequence the genome of the microorganism, either partial or full. And then now we can use artificial intelligence, machine learning, data mining to that gene sequence goes goes algorithms go to work on that gene sequence and tell us, OK, what possibly in all the databases that are mined, what possibly that gene sequence means, what microbe it could be what it's producing, it is producing anything toxic. Are there anything known about that microbe? And then the scientists canmore intelligently pick which microbes to test against the pest. This has allowed us to be 30 times more productive in finding solutions for pests than at my previous company. So it's amazing what the new tools can do for us today. That's so interesting. Are there like different puddles, little like micro experiments and you can test different puddles and see which puddles are most effective. Yeah, we get from mussels.

[6:16] The science behind discovering new productsSo I'll give you another example. So we were contacted by the Oyster Industry Association of the State of Washington out of the blue and said the brewing shrimp have invaded oyster beds and are destroying 4th generation family farms because the mud collapses and the oysters can't live. Can you find us a biological solution for these invading shrimp? And we're like killing shrimp. I said, well, we're game. Let's try it. Microbes can do pretty much do anything. So we went out to where the shrimp lived and we asked the oyster growers, are there any places where the oysters had been thriving but they died out? Maybe, you know, maybe a naturally occurring epidemic came. So we, we, we got, we got mud samples, we got water samples, we got shrimp samples, oyster samples. And the scientists set up a makeshift lab, lab right on the spot to actually put them, get the microbes, isolate the microbes out of those samples so we could get real time what's what is there in, in, in the environment. And lo and behold, in less than seven months, we had microbes that were killing the burrowing shrimp. We're very excited. So we proved once again, just like with the the zebra mussel discovery, that you can very quickly find these things now at the modern tools of artificial intelligence. Yeah. Gotcha. Yes, I'm sure. I picture this. There's like a microbe here and there's a shrimp here. Yeah. How does the microbe kill the shrimp? OK, so in nature, they're there, who knows they're what they're doing, they're warring with each other, they're like they're living there together. But there's the microbes. Not at a high enough dosage. How to kill it completely. So when we find a microbe, we turn it into a product and it'll be grown in a fermentation VAT, like you're making wine and beer, but just much faster. And then we harvest. So after like 2448 hours, we harvest the back the bacteria and then we either we concentrate it in some way, in some way so, and we can spray dry it like you're making powdered milk. If, if it needs to be a dry product, if it's not stable in a liquid form. And then so it's more concentrated than it would be in nature. And as a result, then we can, we can then spray it back where the pest lives and then kill the past. Yeah, with a more concentrated form. And of course, we have to test it to make sure it's safe. So the Environmental Protection Agency approves our products for sale. And we go through, you know, it's a, it's a long process, but we have to test against fish and birds and honey beetles and lady beetles and other predators, beneficial predators and freshwater crustacean and Daphnia. So we have to do a whole range of studies to prove that the product is safe. And of course, of course, we have to test rats as well. They're very well regulated and we have a nice well established process for proving that these products are safe to turn back into the environment. So something we've isolate from the environment but then in a more concentrated form put it back into the environment to kill the pest. Oh, sure, That makes sense. So, so let's say the you you create this powder and you put it back into the oyster bed where the shrimp is. Does the shrimp eat the the powder? And then as a result, that kills the shrimp like. Well, yeah. What causes the shrimp? Yes. So in our case, we're not sure how our, the ones we discovered work yet because we tested them in our micro extracts. They're extracts of microbes. They're not the living microbes in the water. So we're not sure if they work by breaking down their their exoskeleton or that they work by feeding. So that's something we'll work on is how do you deliver something back to the shrimp? And that would be the next step in the project certainly. So that was, that's an example of how quickly we can solve a, a, a real serious problem for a particular grower in the case or oyster growers. We're also. So our biggest focus though is on controlling weeds. So there's 30, three, $33 billion worth of chemical herbicide sold every year and there's a lot of problems with them. Consumers don't like them and they're being restricted around the world. So we decided we would go ahead and hunt for microbial natural products that kill weeds. So we spent last year testing against different weed species and now we have found quite a number of them and we've narrowed it down to 14 candidates, of which 2 are very nicely killing the weeds we want. So we did the same process we did for shrimp and that was done for the zebra mussel to targeting weeds now. Gotcha. So you, so you went there, found the microbes, grew it in a fermentation tank, and then once you have a lot of it, then you put it back into the environment. So right now we're at the early, we're at the, we're at the discovery stage and on the cusp of moving a product to development. So we're not at the big scale up stage yet. So we're growing in little quantities in the lab right now. Before, before, but yes, for a commercial product you'd get to the size where you'd grow your products. Equinox is being growed, grown in a tank that is 3 stories tall. So we're selling that. We are commercial with that product and we're selling it to Oklahoma Gas and Electric to stop the mussels from encrusting their cooling water bays because if they don't kill the mussels, it'll shut down their plants. So that's our our who. We're who we're servicing right now. Yeah, that that makes sense. So this like these, this microbe strategy works really well. Then you can just repeat this process. And you know, I pioneered this back and been doing this this my

[11:34] How her startups get better each time she founds a new one4th startup. So each time I start up a new company, it gets better and better because the science and technology gets better and better. It's really great to hire young new scientists now who can implement all the new tools we didn't have at my previous startup. As I said, this one has been able to be 30 times more productive in our discovery screen. And now we're also applying the new tools of machine learning to growing the microbe in fermentation, so scaling it up. So for Zequinox, we're working with a partner in Germany who's using algorithms to improve the product so we can make it lower cost. So they get a recipe for growing microbe in the fermentation tank, and then recipe works. But then they ask the algorithm what would be the next best recipe to make the product even better. And then it gives you a new recipe so it can be done on paper without having to do all the work in the lab that used to have to. So again, accelerating the speed of development here. That's so interesting. So, so once you find a microbe that kills the shrimp in nature, you're able to take that microbe and you're able to optimize it. Yeah. And in this case, my example I was just using is with the Synchronox because it's already a commercial product and been scaled and we're trying to make it better and lower cost so we can deliver it competitively because the copper is used for lake treatments, which is an environmental pollutant and chlorine is used for power plants and that is also toxic. So, so Zinchronox is much safer, but it's more expensive than copper and chlorine. So we're developing this way using machine learning to improve the process to get the cost down. Gotcha gotcha that makes sense. So I'm a picture like a big fermentation tank, you get the cost down if the reproduce is faster, so then you get more and more of it in the short time. Faster and more potent. Yeah. So the, the the Zequanox microbe produces proteins in its cells that kill the muscle. And so we'd like to have the cells make more of the protein as well as make more cells. So yes, that's what the genetic algorithm helps us do. Yeah. Gotcha. Interesting. Yeah. And we didn't have these tools before, but before we'd have to do hundreds and hundreds of, you know, different, different experiments in order to get to the same result. That can now be done on paper, which is fantastic. Is that what they call a synthetic bio? I would say that it could be considered synthetic bio. But in the in our case, synthetic bio usually means that you take the genes from 1 Organism and move it into another. So using some kind of genetic engineering in our case, we try to in the in the in the initial stages when we're scaling up, we try to avoid that because we got a much faster, easier regulatory pathway by just using the natural microbe and amping up that natural microbe. But if we have to for our herbicide project in order to keep compete with Roundup, for example in price, if we have to use synthetic biology to move the genes that code for production of a particular natural weed killer from the microbe, we will do it. If we had to, yeah, we could use synthetic biology. Yeah, gosh, that makes sense. So, so these pesticides, like these companies that develop pesticides, they don't use this method of developing their pesticides. How do they develop their pesticides then?

[14:52] Pesticide industry trendsSo the the biological pesticide industry is now getting quite large. It's probably about 6 to 8 billion, not $70 billion of chemical pesticides are sold every year, 6 to 8 billion of biologicals. The biologicals are getting getting big there, but there's still less than 10%. So all the big companies have bought companies in the biological area because they know this is the fastest growing area. It's 10 to 20% growth per year versus flat single digit growth of pesticide, chemical pesticides. So if you look in 203020402040, then the biological segment will be as big as the chemical pesticides. So we're going mainstream. I mean, I spent my whole career pioneering this whole area. And finally, finally, you know, the, the segment is, is really has momentum and going mainstream. So all the big companies are in it, but none of them are doing what we're doing. We're, we're quite unique in how we approach discovery and development of, of a biological pesticides. And because I I've started early, have more experience and and we have a a unique way of of discovering and developing that others have surprisingly not imitated yet. So then how do they come up with a biological thing that could actually kill the zebra mussel if they don't use like natural? OK, so there are other companies that are using naturally occurring microbes. There's plenty of them, but most of the time they use the living microbe to infect and kill or to let's say in the case of a crop plant, there's a lot of companies that find microbes that colonize the roots and then ward off the pests and make the plant healthier. Our approach is to find like penicillin came from a mold, your anti biotics come from microbes or taxol comes from EU plant. We look for those natural compounds that are produced by the microbes, in some cases by plants and and and look at and and exploit the mixtures. So a microbe might make a cocktail of 20 different natural compounds. We optimize and understand those complex mixtures and it is complex chemistry. Most companies, big companies, would like just one compound you can find and synthesize and maybe make in fermentation, but those are pretty rare. There's a lot of companies that are finding natural products from nature and then changing their structures and turning them into chemical pesticides. Instead, we take the complex cocktails and and optimize those. It's a unique approach, yeah. Like does, is there like a platform that you have? That's correct. So we have AI call it a screening platform or a discovery platform, so that we have numbers of microbes that we've test, we we've isolated, done the gene sequence and then those are tested against different, the platform is that we test them against different test targets. And in our case with the shrimp project, very interestingly, our largest shareholder said, you know, there's a, there's a real problem in salmon farming and there's a crustacean, which is a shrimp is a crustacean and there's a crustacean called sea lice that is devastating salmon production. And why don't you test the microbes you found against a shrimp, the brewing shrimp against sea lice. Lo and behold, we took the top five candidates that were killing a shrimp and they, we tested them with the University of Sterling, their marine aquatic lab against sea lice. And we got 100% kill of, of sea lice. So we're very excited. So this is how we've leveraged the platform, our discoveries, the one microbes can be used for different things. And so this is, this is really exciting. That's a billion dollar market and we learned from a Norwegian investor last week that salmon farming is stopped. It's basically flat because of the problems with sea lice. They were using lots of chemicals and the sea lice became resistant to the chemicals. Just like an agriculture, you overuse A pesticide, the pests become immune and can't, it can't use them, then they don't work anymore, same as sea lice. So here we are coming with some new solutions. So we're very excited about leveraging our platform into new markets. That makes sense. And how much is shared between? Are they able to use the same fermentation? What's shared between different problems? So we don't know about that yet. So we're not sure sometimes. So we had a microbe that we discovered at Marone Bio, my previous company, which one just won the Presidential Green Chemistry Award that produced the same microbe, produced compounds that killed insects, compounds that killed nematodes, roundworms that feed on the roots of plants and compounds that killed weeds. And we had to produce it in a different method in the fermentation. So there were three different ways to make the product not sometimes you can have one fermentation, it does everything, but a lot of times it's more complex than that. So we'll have to wait and see on our new discoveries what will whether whether the one microbe that's killing algae and weeds and shrimp at the same time, it's probably different natural compounds I suspect and maybe require different tweaking of the of the conditions in the tank. But it's the methodology of developing it. And yeah, it's pretty much the same. That's the same throughout all the. Early, it's just we might have to tweak it to to make more of the, you know, the wheat, the herbicidal versus the shrimp compounds or what what have you. So So what happens after the fermentation tank? Like, do you sell it to like a big industry group? The EPA approves our products

[20:07] Distribution of the pesticidesand then so the product is after comes out of the fermentation tank, it's concentrated and then you add ingredients to it to make it so preservatives to make natural preservatives to make it stable. So we want to have it last for two years in a jug or, or if it's not, the compounds are not stable in a liquid form. We might dry it as I said, like powdered milk or turn it into a granule. Then you package it and then it gets sold through typically for agriculture through a distributor. So there's an Agri chemical distributor could be a big company or could be a, a company like a Wilbur Ellis Nutrient or Helena AG or could sell it through Syngento or Bayer or BSF, a big company. So there's routes to market through established channels. Now for water, we are selling direct right now to power plants and golf courses. But as we grow, we'll there are established distributors, the middle men who we would sell to for lake treatments. For example, there's a whole lake treatment business of treating algae and mussels and fish and so forth. We have another product for invasive carp, but that's another story. Yeah. So the distributors would own the trucks that come to your factory to pick up? That's right. We we would have our product in a in a storage facility and they would pick it up and move it to to the customer, correct. Gotcha. OK. And then they would be responsible for distributing it into the oyster beds. They'll be responsible for pouring it into the pipes. That's right. So for in the case of a farmer, then it would go to the distributor's warehouse and then when the farmer needed the product and it would get trucked over to the farmer's farm. And then they would have a spray rig, a sprayer, and they would open the package, dump it into the sprayer with water at the proper. There's a length label that is EPA legal label of how to use the product and they would use it according to the label instructions and put it into the tank and then take the rig out into the field and spray it on. So it's all compatible with their existing. Exactly. We design our. Products to be completely compatible with this existing practices. You know, it's been over the years hard enough to get people to switch to biologicals from chemicals and so one thing that I've done and what why my products have been successful is design them to fit in existing application and farmers practices. Yes. And like what's the sales process like? Does the farmer buy it from you and then the distributor would bring it to them? Yeah. So we, you know, that's a very good question because it's not. So it's been a challenge to get biologicals adopted and I spend a lot of my time with industry groups, Western growers and others of how to increase the adoption of biologicals. And what we found is that the best way to get adoption is to, even though the distributor actually physically distributes the product, the company that's making the product, us, the manufacturer has to create the demand at the farmer level. So the best way to do that is to do demonstrations on the farm. So what we do is we'll do a demo with what the farmers existing practices in a block, let's say it's 20 acres block, a block of this is what the farmers normally doing. Then we do a 20 acre block next to it and say, OK, we're putting our product this is how you would use our product in the program where this is how you know we'll just give specific ways to apply the product and then we provide them the product and and help them set up the demo and then compare the results. And we, we've had in the past at my previous companies pretty much nearly 100% from demo to sale because products work, they give the farmers a better ROI and lots of other benefits. Managing pests don't become immune, you can improve your soil health, you don't harm the bees and so forth. Because, oh, you couldn't spray right up to harvest. You can spray right up to harvest and, and, and then export because there's rules about how much chemicals, you can have pesticide residues, you can have it harvest. Our biologicals are exempt from those rules because they don't leave synthetic residues. So it's real easy. You can spray in the morning, be back in the field in the afternoon so you can manage your work crews really much easier, et cetera. Yeah. What about oyster beds in Washington state? I can picture a Big Lake where there's like 10 different oyster bed farms. Like what prevents the freeloader effect where if he killed invasive species for the whole lake, won't all the oyster beds benefit? So in the, in the case of the oyster bed example, we're, you know, we're still developing the product. So we're not sure exactly how we're going to deliver, but there are just oysters, oyster grow. Oyster farming is just like crop farming. It is a crop. So there are the farmers own acres and it's salt water. So it's on, it's on the shore, the coast of the Willapa Bay region in Washington. And and so it's, it's done on a per acre basis. So like a, an oyster, you know, farmer might have 10 acres of, of oyster farms. And so no, just like with crops, we'd have to, you'd have to reapply the product, our product, which is not a living microbe, so it doesn't spread and it is the natural compounds produced by the microbes. So we have to reapply it every year, just like with crops. Then every year you have. To yeah, Now with sequinox. Sequinox is the same when you treat when you treat a power plant. So Oklahoma Gas and Electric takes water for their coolings, for their fire suppression system from a lake that's infested with the mussels. And so, so then every year they have to treat because they continue to bring that water in and the mussels settle inside the pipe. Now we can either have them do a once a month treatment to prevent the settling, but in this case they're, they've, they're, they've chosen a once a year. So the mussels build up and they they clog, they start and they treat it before it gets clogs too much. And they use our product. So, you know, it's it's an annual cycle, just like with crops. Yeah. Gotcha, gotcha. And then, like outside in the world, the the invasive species is constantly reproducing, so they'll constantly come in and clog. They constantly come in. Yeah, exactly. Now they're, if you're following the spotted lanternfly, every day I'm seeing a new report of where it's spreading and it's too late to eradicate it. And I just read a report today that they're spraying every six days. And this is tragic because, as I said, this is what happens. You get come in. So I'm hoping that Cornell and other research research institutions will find a parasite or a predator that or more of multiple ones that they can use against this lanternfly. I had someone send me dead lanternflies from New York, and we isolated the microbes that lived on that are in that were in the lanternfly, and they're sitting in the freezer. So at some point, we'll have to grow those out and see if we can kill, go back and kill the lanternfly with those microbes from itself. Yeah. Who would be like the customer for that product then? Would it be like a government? Farmer. It's the farmer. The farmer. It's the farmers. What if it's like for like a public good, like the ash borer tree, like there's so many in the parks? Yeah, in that case, it probably, there's actually a pretty big business of injecting trees with chemical pesticides for controlling for controlling ash borer actually. But a lot of government agencies also do treat for invasive species as well. We're working with the US Geological Survey to treat parts of the Great Lakes with sequinox to control the mussels to save whitefish habitat. So USGS, we're working with the National Park Service and the USGS and another product that is a natural product that kills invasive carp and invasive fish. So we're working with the National Park Service and the USGS to to treat Great Smoky National Park and Crater Lake Park to get rid of invasive trout that are damaging native trout. So there are government agencies also that are doing this work, in addition to the case with oyster farmers and crop farmers, you know, the private sector. Is it typically like through RFP process where they have a new invasive species and they release the RFP and you bid on it? Sometimes, sometimes, but sometimes we're sole source where there's no other solution. In case, in a lot of cases with like with Zequinox, we are or with the carp product, there's nobody else. There's really no other solutions, yeah, except with carpet carpets, fishing with carp, you fish out the you can fish out or have barriers, but there's, there's, there's limited solutions for some of the invasive species. Yeah, so, but yeah. Like the sole source. Yeah, it might be an RFP, but not a lot of times it's just sole source. Yeah. Gotcha. So over like let's zoom out your entire career you've had multiple companies. Were they all around like biological, like pesticides? Were they all around the same industry overtime? Yes, even just starting my

[28:31] Career trajectorycareer, I start after Graduate School I went to Cornell undergraduate, then done a PhD in entomology at North Carolina State University, then was hired by Monsanto to start a new unit looking for new ways to control pests without chemicals. And that's what I started looking at, micro microbial natural products, but Monsanto was more interested in genetically engineering crops. So they dropped that project. But I fell in love with microbes and then had the opportunity to move to California. Novo Nordisk, it was actually very small company, less than 2 billion at the time, hired me to set up their first R&D subsidiary outside of Denmark in Davis, CA. And, and that's when I, I tested we, we set up a microbe natural product discovery and screened over 55,000 microbes. And, and so I've been doing it ever since then that was sold and then I started up Agriquest that was sold and then I started up in Rome bio took it public and then it was sold. So each time screened many 10s of thousands of microbes and developed products at Agriquest. The product was Serenade. It was the first organically listed product in Walmart stores in 2003 and it is for controlling molds and mildews on plants. It's still sold today under by Bayer Crop Science who bought Agriquest and then that won the Presidential Green Chemistry Award and then at Marone Bio had an insecticide Nevada side also award-winning that is the leading is the leading in its category. It's on about 20 million acres in the US as a seed coating to to kill soil insects. So yeah, I've been able to really successfully find these things from nature and then turn them into commercial products. And this new company is exciting because we can use tools that we didn't have before, like I mentioned, genomics, bioinformatics and AI and machine learning and do everything even faster and better. You said it was like 3 times more effective. As before, 4 times about yeah, taking half as many. People, yeah. And is this like if you get to a certain number of revenue size, there's a bigger House of brands that would buy it? That's a good question and I've never been asked that question before. I would say the way it works is just yes, it's just like any industry where you have your early adopters and you have a curve of customers and then you have your early adopters, you have your mainstream customers in case mainstream growers and you have your late adopters. And so we follow the exact same curve. So typically the early adopters are the organic growers because they don't have, they can't use synthetic chemicals, so they quickly latch on to the new technology. Then you get your early adopters who are farmers that want to try the new stuff, and then you work hard to get it over that mainstream hump. Yeah. Gotcha. And then like do you sell it to the bigger company? Yeah. Like I would point like the best time to sell it to the bigger company. Exactly. And that point at that point, that's why my companies were bought in the past because because you get to where you really prove you've de risked the product and then and then the big companies get interested and say, well, we'll just buy you. And is it because like the big companies have the big manufacturing facilities with huge Capexes that you wouldn't want to to build yourself? No, you sell it to them and they. Were in the case of biologicals, they didn't at the time. I actually bought a plant from Abbott Labs that was mothballed because of NAFTA in Telescala, Mexico. And Bayer still has that plant and are expanding it to make Serenade. And then at Marone Bio, I had to build a plant in Bangor, MI on the side of a defunct biodiesel plant and actually spent 10 million with a beautiful government USDA guaranteed loan with our local bank to build that plant. So no, that at the time there weren't these kind of facilities and the big companies don't have them. Some still don't have this kind of manufacturing. But in the case of Bear, you know, they bought my old company and bio series crop solutions who bought my own bio my last company that now they have of course the tanks because they've they've bought it. So some do and some don't. But it's very different manufacturing than chemical, synthetic, chemical. So you have like huge CapEx as well and then you were like? Yeah, but huge relative. I mean, 10 million is peanuts compared to what they spend for chemical pesticides. It costs $300 million in 12 years to to develop a new pest, chemical pesticide. I can do it in four years and 4 million, so way less expensive. So how'd you decide like when to sell the company versus build another product within the same? Company, you know that's not. My choice part of that company. Yeah, that's not my choice.

[32:57] Investor dynamicsSo the investors decided, well last company run by we got an unsolicited offers investors and the board has to look at those offers, right. And each time it's the investors that decide these things. In the case of invasive species corporation, because we have water products and we have AG products, not everybody's interested in both sides. So I could see us being a platform that spins off products and sells off products and keeps the, the core of the company. I think that may be our future. I'm not sure. But again, as is as we haven't, we are investor backed and, and they expect a return. It's not always our choice of what to do and but you know, the, the, the, the advantage of this is that each time I start up, the company's even better than the previous one. So that's the beauty of it, of being a serial entrepreneur. Yeah. So so the so the investors for the past companies or they like very specific to that industry. Like if you have a new product for farmers, then more farmers and more corporate venture capital in the farming industry will want to invest in that company. Like how industry specific are the? Investors. So back in the day when I started a bag request, there were no venture capitalists in this area. I had to basically there were biotech investors who were who were in pharma biotech who decided they'd try. We were their first AG tech investment, AG biotech investments. There were just nobody doing investing. Now there's lots of investors investing in an AG. And let's see for a Marone bio in the early days, back when I started in 2006, there was a whole clean tech, a new clean tech group of VCs that started up, not specific to AG tech, but they called it clean tech. And, you know, you can still call it clean tech today, but it's sort of morphed into climate tech. But there's a yeah, there's a whole group of, of AG tech and AG biotech investors now that didn't exist back then. But there's a whole, the whole category would be called clean tech, green tech, climate tech. Yeah. AG tech, yeah. Yeah, gotcha. And are these like investors all focused on certain type of return profile and certain type of risk profile, whereas different products within the portfolio might have different risk and return profiles? Well, that isn't. That isn't always a question. And at every conference I go to, so you know, that's always the discussion is you have to find investors that are willing to go the distance because it's not, it's not software, it's not something that can be flipped pretty quick and you get a quick return. We are EPA regular regulated. So it takes it's certainly not as bad as FDA or as chemical pesticides as I described. We still have, it's shorter, but still requires millions to develop a product. So you know you're on a, you're on a minimum five to seven-year if not ten year time frame if you're investor to get a return. I fortunately my companies have been, I've gotten investors in a, in a return in a reasonable time frame. But you've got, you've got to be patient investor to get into the AG biotech sector for sure. And for my own bio, did you go public because the private investors threw in enough of them?

[36:03] Taking a company public with IPOYeah. So we had offers from companies to sell the company at the time there was a real hot bubble corn prices for the whenever commodity prices are really high, AG has lots of cash. Unfortunately they're really low right now. So but AG has lots of cash and so there's a lot of there's a buying spree. There was a buying spree then AG request was bought for my previous company was bought for almost 500 million by Bayer. So our investors said, OK, we'll see what who wants to buy us. And they made the decision that they could get a higher return by going public. So we went public in in 2013. And by the way, I'm only 1 of 32 women have taken founded a company and taking it public. So we need more women to to do that. And and it was a challenge being a public company. It's, it's really not easy being a small public company. It's that that quarter, those quarterly reports come up awfully fast. Yeah. And now it's all, you know, it's all automated trading and the big funds. And so it's really hard to get mindshare if you're a small company. It's not that I wouldn't do it again, but it's not easy, yeah. Did you take it, did you take it public because you could have gotten the higher like a multiple if you got to a certain revenue threshold that's like that's. Well, yes, the, the investors figured that the company would be worth more as a public company than selling it off early to a, to a, to another big company. I'm not, I mean it didn't work out that way, but you know, that's the the investors who sold shortly after the lock up, which was six months. So there's typically a 180 day lock up. Oh, you can't sell, but nobody can sell. Well, after that was up, there was a lot of out of our early investors sold and they made ten extra money. So they did quite well. But as we had challenges over the next few years, you know, those who stayed in didn't do as well. But then we had some public investors, we had Ardsley Capital that ended up being like our third largest shareholder, bought in at the IPO at 12, sold at 18. Then the stock dropped really low for various reasons. I won't need to get into it, but bought, bought at like 2 and sold at 4. Then when it went down even further, bought at, you know, 69 and sold at 2. You know, if you're, if you're a sophisticated investor, you know, you can make money on, on these things and, and, and some have made some did others you just, you write it up and then you write it down and didn't sell at the right times. It's the way it goes. You know, and then over time, you've been in this biological pesticide industry for a while now. Like, did you build up a certain reputation over time? Is it easier to recruit executive talent over time as well? Like what? What happens over the career? You know, it's interesting, yes.

[38:34] Thought leadership in industrySo I'm I would be considered an industry thought leader or pioneer. So it's a, it's a really nice privileged situation right now in the sense that of that reputation in the industry. And so, but it's always, it's not easy to, to find people who want to work for a startup, you know, a risky startup. But we did, we found, we, we, we had lots of lots of applications. And, and so that reputation does precede me in that. And a lot of women, I have a lot of women entrepreneurial following because there's not that many women who have done what I've done. Nobody who's, you know, started this many companies and had three exits for an IPO. So that that does give me certainly your reputation, yeah. Like you also like sell into the same customer base overtime as well, so the same customers buy overtime. Too so it. Carries between the. Companies, my customers followed me from one company to another and and stuck with me because they always saw that I was gonna have something new that would serve their customers needs. Yeah. And now, of course, they're all waiting for that bioherbicide, that weed killer. Yeah. So for the closing question, I I always ask the guest, well, what's the kindest thing that anyone's ever done for you? The kindest thing that anyone's

[39:45] Closing questionever done for me, I would have to say Rich Roaminger was a founding investor of Marone Bio Innovations and also my board chair for many years and and then served on the board after being chair and he is a fourth generation farmer. He has passed away, but he. Did everything he could to advocate for me and for the company. And he was just the nicest, kindest man. He was deputy secretary of the US Department of Agriculture and also a large farmer in winters near us. And he was my advocate. And he, you know, anything I could ask him to do, he would do for. Me. That's wonderful. Thanks for sharing Pam.