The Strange Attractor
The Strange Attractor
Stem Cell Banking for Pets: Paloma Newton's Journey to Building Elita
What happens when a hospitality veteran with a passion for problem-solving discovers her new puppy is predisposed to joint issues? For Paloma Newton, it sparked, naturally, led to an Australian-first in pet healthcare.
Paloma's path to founding Elita is anything but conventional. Infact, her entire journey is about as unconventional as can be, but like most great innovators, the meandering path is the one most often taken. From call centres to cocktail bars, advertising agencies to venture capital, her career spanned across many industries before she found herself asking a deceptively simple question: why can't I bank my dog's stem cells for future use? When veterinarians responded with 'great idea, but we can't do it,' she recognised not just a gap in the market but a genuine opportunity to improve pet healthcare.
The science behind Elita's approach is both elegant and powerful. By extracting and preserving a pet's own stem cells while they're young (currently during routine desexing), owners gain access to a biological insurance policy. These cells can later be used to treat conditions like arthritis, hip dysplasia, and potentially even kidney disease – all without risk of rejection since they're the animal's own cells. 'The worst thing that can happen is they don't work,' Paloma explains, contrasting this with pharmaceutical options that often carry significant side effects. Currently, they bank enough stem cells for ten potential treatments, making it remarkably cost-effective compared to donor stem cell therapies.
What makes Paloma's story particularly compelling is how her varied background became her superpower. With no formal science training, she approached the problem with fresh eyes and a beginners mind, both of which pair perfectly with her determination to execute quickly. 'My style of being a founder is execution over everything,' she says, describing how she built the company from CoLabs before even hiring scientists (bold move, we know). This fearlessness, coupled with a vision for more ethical healthcare that extends beyond profit margins, positions Elita Genetics at the forefront of a transformation in how we care for our animal companions.
Curious about banking your pet's stem cells or learning more about this revolutionary approach to pet h
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Hello and welcome to the Strange Attractor, an experimental podcast from CoLabs, a transdisciplinary innovation hub and biotechnology co-working lab based in Melbourne, australia. I'm your co-host, sam Wines, and alongside my co-founder, andrew Gray, we'll delve deep into the intersection of biology, technology and society through the lens of complexity and systems thinking. Join us on a journey of discovery as we explore how transdisciplinary innovation, informed by life's regenerative patterns and processes, could help us catalyze a transition towards a thriving future for people and the planet. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Strange Attractor.
Speaker 1:This time around, we sat down with Paloma Newton from Alita Genetics and we delve into, I guess, her origin story and how she got here and what she's been doing. And yeah, this one's particularly exciting because we've kind of been actively supporting her since you know, as you find out, as it comes from a, the seed of an idea, so it's been really fun getting to watch this grow throughout the entire process. Um, we hope you really like her story. I think it's a great one, uh. So, yes, uh, enjoy this conversation with paloma from Alita Genetics. Welcome, thanks for having me, paloma. It's been a hot minute trying to organize this one, I feel like almost since you guys moved in. We were like soon Soon, we should do this Soon. So why now? How come I've managed to catch you now?
Speaker 2:soon. So why? Why now? How come I've managed to catch you? Now well, um, firstly, this is the first time I've been on the other side of a podcast, so maybe a bit of fear you can.
Speaker 1:You're just so welcome to interview me if you want.
Speaker 2:Thank you, that might be my gumby spot. Yeah, um, no, we've just been really busy building the company you definitely have.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, it's been. It's actually been such a amazing thing to witness this from like.
Speaker 2:I don't even know if you'd registered the company when we first no, I came to you and was like how do you build a lab? Because I heard you did one in a shipping container and I might need to do something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's, that's about right. Yeah, so it's been really fun getting to watch this happen from like ideation to, you know, benchtop and actualization, and then starting taking the first samples and all of this sort of stuff. So it's been and then even participating. You know, I'm going to have some samples from my dog as well, which is pretty exciting.
Speaker 1:Yes, but yeah, I mean mean, let's pedal back a little bit so tell us about your background and then maybe how you also got to be where you are now with elita yeah, for sure, I background is a um, I used to think this was so niche and, you know, personal, but it's not like.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of people that find themselves in a founding role have a similar story, but my background is pretty erratic, I would say at best.
Speaker 1:ADHD brain yeah pretty much.
Speaker 2:I actually finished school and I was working in a call center while I was saving up to go to Japan and I was so bored. But I think working in a call center was probably like the best training of all time, because you just learn to talk to anyone. But I was so bored and my partner at the time was playing music and he was playing at this little cocktail bar and I was there drinking and complaining about my job and the guy that owned it was like come and work here. And I was like what? And so I went and worked at that cocktail bar on Crown Street in Surrey Hills and that kind of actually then landed me in like a 10-year hospitality career where I opened restaurants with like celebrity chefs and ran restaurants and kind of got to this weird point where I was, I think, 23 and I was like the youngest GM of a restaurant in Sydney and was just like why, like how did I get here? Um, and I kind of snapped out of it and realized that I loved hospitality. I still love hospitality, I have so much respect for it. But I think at 23 I started to feel like I was hitting a bit of a glass ceiling and was like, oh, if that's where I'm hitting this my own personal feeling of a glass ceiling then probably something else needs to happen. And I wasn't very creative minded because I just went. Well, what did my parents do? Both of them worked in advertising. So I'll just go to advertising.
Speaker 2:And during my hospitality decade, I guess, I did two degrees which were both useless. So I did a bachelor of visual arts, majoring in photography, and then I did a master's in publishing and I actually turned down. A chef said we'd just done a pop-up restaurant and he was like, oh, do you want to come to Turkey? And like, run front of house for this restaurant, we're gonna do. And I said nah. And like, run front of house for this restaurant, we're going to do. And I said nah, I've really got to finish my master's, because that's halfway through. And I remember like not going to Turkey and standing in a print press factory in Alexandria or Marrickville on a master's, like excursion, day out, watching the actual newspaper get printed and thinking to myself, well, I've really cooked this like I'm with the dinosaurs peak moment right there um, and so, yeah, I finished the degrees and I didn't really know what to do and I had this like art and publishing and both my parents worked in advertising.
Speaker 2:So it kind of made sense to go and work in an advertising agency and I loved that job. That was my first ad job. I got free reign. I don't know why, but I got free reign to do as much not-for-profit stuff as I wanted to, um, as long as I got my actual work done so is that where some of the grapevine stuff comes into the picture?
Speaker 2:not really so. What happened actually is my first not-for-profit that I started myself before grapevine. Very similar concepts. Actually I was working in advertising. This is a bit of a wild story so I'll try and like tighten it a bit. You can google it for the full story, but send it.
Speaker 2:I know exactly where you're going, yeah so I was in my 20s, working in it in hospital no, this was pre-advertising, sorry, I was working hospitality, still in my 20s, and this is where the not-for-profit theme that kind of comes in and out of my career, as you'll hear started. But I was in my 20s, working in hospitality, working in bars, and a friend of mine basically got attacked on the internet by some guy we didn't know, screenshotting her Tinder profile and essentially like calling her promiscuous in much less polite words. Anyway, we jumped on and we were like hey, this is misogynistic, yada, yada. You know, I was at university and a staunch feminist, so I was trying to school these young men on the internet, because that always works. And, um, it just ended in like a lot of like death threats and rape threats and I was like this is crazy.
Speaker 2:So I went to the police, not because I was scared, but just because I thought it was like it should be illegal. There's like a justice thing in there, right. Anyway, the police were like no, we can't do anything, we don't know what the internet is. And I was like what? And they were like yeah, we don't even have Facebook, we're told not to. And I just like could not? My brain didn't compute what they were talking about. So we went to the media and that blew up in this like two year long um group at the time had no idea about marketing, so we called it sexual violence won't be silenced, which, like now, as a marketing person, the idea of calling it that blows my brain out. But um, good jingle though. Exactly but um, but no, we ended up going to court and basically it was the first case where using a carriage service to menace, harass or cause offence was tried for an internet troll, essentially.
Speaker 2:So there was a lot of media. I mean, we went to the media because the police wouldn't listen and within about two weeks I was on the project uh, triple j, triple j, hack abc. We ended up being on the cover of grazia uk. At one point it just went like gangbusters and the police kind of came back to us and were like oh, we've actually decided that we think we might want to like prosecute this. I wonder why. And so we then did that and we won the case. Um, although like, justice is a you know whatever concept, but we won the case. And I think the more exciting thing was we were then invited to help write the revenge porn laws in New South Wales. So that was kind of my first foray into like building something, genuinely into building something. I think at the height of that we had a Facebook group with like 10,000 people which at the time Facebook was like how you built community dog years.
Speaker 1:That's like a million now, right?
Speaker 2:yeah, exactly, and I mean some of the things we got to off the back of that like we held again. Like at the time we were like living in the inner city in Sydney, had a lot of friends who are artists and musicians, things like that, so we held fundraisers. I remember we raised a bunch of money at one point for a indigenous women's shelter that was run by indigenous women. So we really tried to use that platform as much as we could for good. But like none of us knew what we were doing, like most of us were either uni students or working in hospitality. But I think now obviously hindsight, you know, gives you more context.
Speaker 2:But I think that definitely was a early, an early sign that I might, that I might be liking to build things, because that theme kind of runs through right. Like even when I went into hospital, even when I was in hospitality, the way that I would end up in these places where I would be like building a new restaurant or helping someone open a pop-up, like it felt like a constant pushing back. And even then in advertising, probably the reason I loved that first advertising job so much was because I got so much freedom to like build my clients and do these not-for-profit things, and part of the reason they hired me was because of the work I'd done with that group, so they were like we'll keep her engaged by letting her do not-for-profit work, which is actually so clever, and I don't think they would do it today it sounds like almost, like a almost like an early version of what, like a four-day work week would have been right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, have a day to do what you want, so to speak their prerogative was more like do it when you can.
Speaker 2:So I was like getting into the office at. I mean, advertising is crazy. I was getting into the office at like 7.30 and leaving at 10 pm every day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, no thanks.
Speaker 2:But I thrived in that environment. Like, I think that's probably and I don't think that's necessarily a good thing, but I think when I'm really passionate about something, I find it very difficult to switch off and obviously that's become something I've learned to balance. But I do find that if I love it, I don't care how long I'm doing it, because it's not purely work for me.
Speaker 1:It's play as well as work right. It's like you find that flow state in it, or it's like this is really fascinating and you're just drawn into it, rather than it feeling like effort.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I mean also I was being paid so badly because junior advertising people are paid. I think I was being paid so badly because junior advertising people are paid. Like I think I was on 60K a year and I was working crazy hours and I found out that if you worked after 7pm they would buy you dinner and get you an Uber home. So it also just economically made sense to just work all day and not go home to work but just stay in the office and work and get free dinner. It's just good math. And then from there, so advertising loved it really did ended up moving to Melbourne because the best advertising agency is Clemenger BBDO in Melbourne. So obviously I had to go and work there. Um, and I kind of got there in a roundabout way making another agency pay for me to get to Melbourne. But, you know, ended up there, which is what I wanted, um, and then very quickly I was like oh no, like I don't know if I want to do this and it was just this moment of shit like agency is great, I had a lot of fun, I loved it, I learned a lot, strategically particularly.
Speaker 2:But campaigns are three months and I would work so hard on getting this campaign out and then it would just be over in three months and there was something about that that I found like deeply unfulfilling.
Speaker 2:So you would work really hard.
Speaker 2:Then you would get really drunk, right, because the campaign was going live, which felt like a lot of fun, and it was a lot of fun and you did work really hard and then the campaign would be live and I remember like chasing a bus down the street to like take a photo of the ad and then it was over, and in an agency you never get data on how it went or, and like the marketing team, often like the clients I had were like Nestle, bayer, bmw, like the marketing team don't ever get that data. Um, and so at the time I had a friend who I was talking to and he had a couple of startups and he had said to me oh, you should work in startups and I was like I don't really know what that means. So a long journey basically led me to working at a place called Baraha, which was a self-driving car technology startup, and then from there I went and built a brand for another not-for-profit, because I kept trying for another not-for-profit, because I kept trying to do not-for-profit work.
Speaker 2:I kept wanting to do it get that water in you, yeah um, but from there went into a little known VC called Blackbird for a little bit, but um, I think going back to like I know this is a quite a long way of little bit, but um, I think going back to like, I know this is a quite a long way of describing how I got here. But going back to that really early bit of building, it almost felt like when I was at Blackbird I was watching other people build things as someone whose job was kind of to watch other people build things, which again I got quite unsettled by. And I think there are notable moments where I start to get unsettled and then I kind of like self-implode because I know that I shouldn't be doing the thing that I'm doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's a. I mean, first of all, I think that most people feel that and then don't do something. So the fact that you're catching that and course correcting is it's an admirable thing, because it is painful to like realize that you've climbed, let's say, uh, this mountain, and then you look over and you're like, oh god, this is the wrong mountain, you know and and I've experienced that as well like going in digital marketing agency and content creating and all manner of other random things prior to um, dropping into collabs and I think that look, where am I trying to go with this. I think there is actual merit in that as a strategy writ large, but I won't go there. But it's like you realize that and you go, oh no, like I'm going to have to go down and try something else and come back up and like a lot of people just get stuck in that space and then they're not really working well and they're not really like questioning their happy, happy. So in a way, it's kind of like, yeah, kudos to to making that happen. Um, but I, this is going to be really um, nerdy.
Speaker 1:I think it's something to do with like optimal foraging strategy and adhd being beneficial, because you're just like, oh well, there's nothing, I'm going to go move to greener pastures.
Speaker 1:And it's interesting seeing how that pattern of like let's say psychosocial behavior, can actually be beneficial if you know how to work with it and you have enough self-awareness to see when that happens and go okay, cool. And then taking that skill set and applying it somewhere else. So all the digital marketing, content creation stuff that I did beforehand, um, when I was, you know, creating the content for companies or doing modeling, it's like you, you learn all these things and then suddenly, oh wait, this is all incredibly relevant when building a brand, or so I can see how to your point. It's like you look back and it's all non-linear, it's all over the place, but what you've done and all those skills you've accrued along the way, as soon as you get to this point, you're like, oh great, I have all of this behind me to then channel into this new initiative, or thing 100, like I joke all the time that the training to be a founder is is like one part call center, three parts hospitality, three parts advertising and the rest is just sheer stupidity.
Speaker 2:But like it's true, like every as as much as it sounds so erratic and makes no sense. Now all those skills that are from each of those individual pathways make total sense to me. Um, but then, like, how Alita came about was my co-founder, jackson, and I were working at Baraha and at the time we were actually spitballing heaps of start-up ideas, like I think we decided very early on that we were going to start a business together and some were really bad, like really bad. One was quite good and I think we would have killed it, but it wasn't as good as Alita. But basically, when we got Edgar, our dog it was COVID, for context we got him in the last lockdown. We almost made it through all the lockdowns without getting an air fryer or a dog, um, but we got both in the last one and and we found out that. So we basically I had only ever had dogs from the shelter Like that. That was just to me how you get a dog, and so that was the plan going into it.
Speaker 2:I think one day I woke up and was like I want a puppy. And I just felt like my whole twenties I was like I'm not ready to get a puppy. I know that it's like so much work. And I suddenly woke up and was like nope, I'm settled, I'm ready now. And I went to look for a puppy and at the shelters that we were looking at again like hindsight I probably just should have waited, because it was the middle of COVID, but there was just no. There was a lot of older dogs which would have been lovely, but I really did want a puppy. I wanted to like nurture something and I think I knew it was the only time we were ever going to be at home that much. And the only puppies that were there were just so non-compatible with our lifestyle. Like I, I'm not a hard ass, I can't train a dog. That needs really hardcore training. Like I'm too much of a softie. And then we were like, oh, maybe we'll like buy a puppy. And that was like, oh well, what kind of dog? Like I've never thought about acquiring a dog in that way.
Speaker 2:Loved golden retrievers, and then we found a girl who was half golden retriever and and half cocker spaniel and we were like, oh my god, that's the perfect dog. And so we got him. And I had never like, because I had never owned a dog. That was like a bred dog before. I didn't even know you could look up like disease indicators or like predispositions. So I just went down this rabbit hole and found out he was predisposed to arthritis, hip and elbow dysplasia on both sides, which to me felt terrifying because I was obsessed with this dog. And from there it was like everything from.
Speaker 2:We started cooking his food, not actually straight away as a puppy, just because we learnt that there's quite a few like nutritional requirements when they're little. So we were buying his food when he was a puppy, but as soon as it was like ready and we I mean now we have a dog nutritionist but we started looking at like naps, scheduling and like how long interval walking and like all these things that he needed. And during that process I learned about stem cell therapies and I learned about stem cell banking and I was like, oh great, like you know, problem solved. And then we went to the vet and I was like, hey, you know, while he's a baby can we store his cells and they were like, oh, that's a great idea, we just can't do it. I was like what do you mean? You can't do it? She's like we just don't have the like. I wouldn't even know how to do it. I was like that seems like a solvable problem. So we went to a couple more vets and just kept asking, just kept being quite inquisitive.
Speaker 2:At the time it wasn't like a business idea yet. It was just me trying to figure out if we could do something. And I think, like the fourth or fifth time, I was like this is crazy. And by that point I'd started researching the global landscape and the fact that stem cells have been used in horses for 20 years. I was like this is insane, that you just can't do this and that's kind of well, it wasn't that easy. I then started you know having to plant the seed in Jackson's head and then be like oh, wow, did you know that Australians spent 33 billion dollars on their dogs in 2022? And like doing the market research. But once we validated the market, we basically I think this is a bit of a cliche, but it's a true one we kind of got to the point where there were more reasons to do it than there were not to, and so then I quit my job and started pestering you about how to build a lab.
Speaker 1:Uh, I remember it. I remember vividly the first time that you sort of came in and you, just you just went straight to it. You're like how do I build a lab? I want to do this thing. You know, not even no small talk, just straight to it, just like I'm just picturing you doing the exact same thing, just just walking into these vets and being like I want to bank my pet stem cells yeah, that's pretty much how it went.
Speaker 1:I don't know, because I hear you say six. I'm like no one goes to six vets.
Speaker 2:No one goes to six vets, just because oh no, I was definitely angling for something that's an expensive like well, we had a membership and every time you go to the vet you get a different vet. So, oh, so you just went to Two different locations, six vets in total. Yeah, he had a lot of oh, I think he's got a bit of a limp A lot of that going on, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I think he's just like emotionally unwell. Yeah, there's something going on. Yeah, yeah, might be his gut microbiome. Can you just check that for me? Oh, that's great, okay.
Speaker 1:So I mean, I feel like this paints a really good picture of how, like, it's come to be right and all those different backgrounds, and you know mixing all that stuff into a cocktail shaker, like you were saying. But I guess what I'd be curious about understanding as well is that interesting background that you've got there. Has that shaped like? How has that shaped the vision for Alita and what? Where you're wanting to go into the future, like because it is a unique background you've got, and I'm very curious to see if you think that that's yeah, if that's played out in the way you've stepped into this new role, um, or if it's like the personal, scientific, entrepreneurial thing is just an emerging thing that you're figuring out as you go I mean, I think, firstly, we wouldn't have done this if it wasn't for jackson's background, like the fact that he was a biomedical engineer, he had experience in stem cells, like through another business that he worked in.
Speaker 2:There was a bunch of things that made it possible to do this. I think, with the way that I've done everything else, I'm actually very comfortable with not knowing things Like I, because when I was in advertising I worked as what we call a suit, which is basically like I mean, actually now I think it's an incredible job and I think it taught me so many skills. But it's known in the advertising industry as kind of being like the go between person, like you're, you're, you're client facing, but you deal with strategy, you deal with creative, you deal with like, you deal with production.
Speaker 2:You're, you're the joining, you're, you're the weaver, so to speak yeah yeah, but you're also in charge of the relationship, so you write the brief. So it's it. It's funny because to me it's almost like a mini founder role, like it's your job to take the client's idea or what they want.
Speaker 1:It's like managing a team, pulling together something Correct, going to strategy.
Speaker 2:Like I spent most of my advertising career trying to decide if I wanted to do strategy or if I wanted to do production. And because I was really lucky in the teams I was in, I got to do a little bit of everything, but in hindsight, like that was actually the perfect role for me because I enjoy building and I enjoy doing all the things a little bit. I don't need to be a subject matter expert in anything. I'm actually really comfortable not knowing anything.
Speaker 2:I think one of the big benefits of me being the founder of my business is, you know, very early on we realized we needed to find some great scientists and we did that. And because we're very good at selling the vision, we were able to get like incredible staff, one of which before I mean don't show this to the OTO, but one of the which before we could pay them, like we obviously did equity and a whole bunch of things. Um, but like when you're building something that requires technical or scientific input but it's a commercial business, I think there's a massive value to being a person who doesn't have the background in any of that, because nothing makes me feel more comfortable than saying to my team explain it to me like I'm an idiot because I just I don't have any ego around like how we get there, so my focus is purely on the problem solving, which is the bit that I'm obviously good at.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it's interesting hearing this because obviously you know Tina Funder as well from Alt Leather. Amazing, similar sort of amazing, right, you're both amazing. Thank, you.
Speaker 1:That's a similar sort of background, right? So digital marketing agency. Oh, here's a problem I've come across you, right so digital marketing agency. Oh, here's a problem I've come across. You know, well, I'm going to create this company. Oh, great, now I, I'm created this company and I can't find any like sustainable, non-pe based materials or I guess how hard could it be to find people to make it? And it's.
Speaker 1:I see this pattern playing out quite a lot and it is interesting to see how quick non-technical founders get things done versus someone who might have had a long and illustrious career as an academic or working at a crown research institute like a CSIRO or something you know. They might be like absolutely amazing technically, but then it's almost like if you, if this has been something you've been in for like 10 years and you know you've been in there so long, if this has been something you've been in for like 10 years and you've been in there so long, like you, kind of, a lot of the times your thought process is tram-tracked within what you're doing, where you've gone, and sometimes learning these additional skills can take a little bit longer and like there's less of the all. Right, we've got to iterate, we've got to rapidly do, and I find that those who've had an arts degree or a design background.
Speaker 2:It's really interesting seeing the different approaches that they'll take to solving a problem, um compared to technical founders it's also just ignorance, right like, but it's true like I didn't know what we couldn't do, so therefore, I could do anything, because I didn't know what could, what could trip us up, because I I couldn't see the science more than like, well, this works and this works and this works, so like, just make it work there's a venn diagram that's like, that's the science I get and now that we have incredible scientists like they tell me what I need to know, but I tell them what we need to solve and that's like a great and I mean jackson obviously obviously gets a little bit more of the stress of what that actually looks like.
Speaker 2:But I don't think as a CEO or a founder, it's really my job necessarily to be in the nitty-gritty, day-to-day solving the. My job is to be like well, this is the problem. We have to get to X. Who do we need?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and again it's like not, not. I think every type of founder has their own problems to have to solve. Right, it's like the technical ones they need to be learning, the marketing, the communicating, all of that sort of stuff, the, the vision building, um, all of that sort of stuff, whereas you know then the, the non-technical, you know you have to find the right team, all that sort of stuff. It's not that one way is better or worse. It's just interesting seeing the different patterns and the different places that people have bottlenecks, and it really feels like it seems like because you also raised like pretty quick, you got your initial funding to get sort of everything to where you are now, like relatively speaking.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I think that comes with a little bit of privilege as well, though right Like I'd been in the startup ecosystem. I'm like English speaking first language.
Speaker 2:Fair play, fair play.
Speaker 2:Like I mean, it's still hard, it's really hard.
Speaker 2:You know we took longer to raise than I wanted to, but we were able to close capital early, which was, like, obviously incredibly beneficial in starting stuff off.
Speaker 2:But you know, I think, also just being in the startup ecosystem having worked in VC even not for a very long time and not as an investor there's still that when I talk to founders now I have a bit of a rule where I will always take a call with a female founder if they need help, and so I see a lot of female founders with early stage decks and it makes like my first deck was so embarrassing and I still have it just to humble myself, but like it makes you realize, just like how much privilege there is even just being around the startup environment, like the amount of times I meet a founder who's never even been in a startup before and I find that so much more impressive and courageous that they would think to do this, because some of the words that I consider just to be common sense, like, like, not common sense, but like things that I've just become a part of right you've just absorbed yeah.
Speaker 2:So you've just been around and it rubs off and you're like, oh, I understand that yeah, and I, you know I usually take calls for 15 minute calls and I'll just spray feedback at them and so often they're like what is this acronym? And I forget that there is a like an inherent privilege of having been worked in startups and I do think, like I know, that this is a very long way of doing it. If you've got like a banging idea that you want to get out right now, but if you have the time to at least do one year in a startup before you try and do it yourself, it'll give you so much more of a head start there is a real like.
Speaker 1:Uh, I think of this like apprenticeship. Yeah, you know quite a lot of new and young founders we have, like we've had, come to us and then, you know, work with us, even down to their new site at notting hill, um, and they're just like learning the ropes, getting exposure. And it's the same with us, like we've, now that we've supported like 35, 40 different companies, like you start to see what works and what doesn't. And we've seen people go through all of these journeys and hit certain bottlenecks, that we have this really privileged and I use that same word as well. We have a privileged position to be able to sit here and watch what's going on and then interface with the government and being like, hey, here's where we need funding and support, versus like maybe a more, I guess, like a consultant or someone coming in and doing all desktop research. It's a very different approach. When you're I don't like to use war metaphors I was going to say in the trenches, we can come back.
Speaker 1:Come on, you're a marketing expert. Can you hear good, it's a Friday afternoon, seb, I'm so sorry, I know I can't believe. I put this on you just before we're going to go out for friday.
Speaker 2:what a better time to do it but, no, I, I agree, and I think, like going back to your earlier point of, or question of, you know what? What does this background make me different as a founder? And I think like the honest answer is that my style of being a founder is execution over everything. Like I think you've just hit a point which is a lot of people. I did a lot of desk research, like before we, but even my desk research wasn't desk research Like my desk research was talking to a hundred dog owners or like going to different parks every day dragging poor Edgar out, you know, like way too many times a day and like getting in front of people like I heavily lean into execution because I worked in hospitality, because I worked in advertising, because I worked in these industries where you can't just sit there and like send emails, meal's not gonna make it. No, you gotta do stuff. It's like very physical and that's how I solve problems, which is why we came to you so early and we were like right, we're doing this idea.
Speaker 1:And if only everyone did that like honestly, so so needed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're going to build a lab and it's like we built that lab. I ordered my first thermo Fisher order, which took me like two weeks, cause I didn't know what anything was. Every single time I had to order something, I had to figure out what it was. I remember this, yeah, and then there was like 50 variations and I'm like it's not quite like Amazon. No, I was like DMEM. Is DMEM the same as Trypsin? Like I'm learning science words and I'm like what's a pipette? And I wanted to get the lab like ready, wanted to do it before the scientists got here so they didn't get into an empty lab, right, and I had this full like kitted out lab.
Speaker 2:Obviously I did my own, like little how to make stem cells, course but then I just was like, oh, I've built the lab, but now I need scientists. You know, there's a balance between when to execute. Yeah and.
Speaker 1:but, as we said again, that's I think it's comes back to that thing that you mentioned earlier around like where am I? And like having that ability to stop and reflect and be like am I doing the right thing? Am I, where am I right now? What's going on? And that to me it sounds like, whether intuitively or not, it's like applying the design thinking feedback loop of like let's go, you know, design, build, test, think about it, iterate, and that sort of approach is so, like, so valuable when you're doing a startup. Um, so I feel like we've spoken a lot now about that, but I'd love to to delve into. So stem cell banking for pets. Now, as soon as I hear that, the back of my head is like that's got to be like 15 grand. No, right, no idea. Yeah, I know right, obviously not, but like you know how, like, because I imagine that would have to be something that you deal with all the time is, people have this preconceived notion that this is probably just something for for elites yeah for wealthy people or something like that.
Speaker 1:So I'd like to understand, like because this it's not really the case with what you're doing right, like things have progressed a lot more now it's a lot more affordable, yeah, um, maybe if you could just talk us through, I guess, the whole process yeah for sure.
Speaker 2:So we look it's we. We wanted to build a model that could be as inclusive as we could physically do it in a capitalist society, like that's the fact, um, and so we really had to anchor what we wanted. Like, I won't compromise on the product itself, or the, or the service, or the experience for the customer, that's the one thing I won't compromise on. So the way that we've built the company and I mean like we went to market a couple of weeks ago so we're well and truly live but from the customer's side it feels like a software product. You sign up your pet and, as far as you know, you book your when you're. We have to tack our services onto an existing procedure, so the easiest one at the moment is to sexing, um, but we're working on on getting for any time your pet goes under general anesthesia. So you basically fill in the thing with us. You get the yep, you're in, you know, pay your deposit and then you basically tell us when your surgery date is and who your vet is, and then you just just kind of walk away and as far as you're concerned, it's done behind the scenes. We organize all the logistics, send out the kits to your vet, make sure that they've got guidelines on how to get the fat sample, and then it's just as simple as you take your dog to their normal appointment, we take a fat sample, then we get that back to our labs. We basically do a bunch of work in the back end and there's a few different products that kind of come out of that, but the key one is that you get 10 vials of 10 million cells. Per vials 100 million cells all up, so essentially 10 treatments and your vet or any registered vet really can request those. They just have to be registered and we have guidelines on different things that they can use those for. So the global obvious practice ones are things like osteoarthritis, elbow dysplasia and hip dysplasia, which is kind of wrapping back to where this all kind of came from.
Speaker 2:But the goal for us longer term is that if your pet has you know, for example, we had a customer we spoke to really early on whose dog had kidney disease and this was the kind of kidney disease that there was no real cure for and she was desperately looking for stem cells because there's some really great research coming out of America on stem cells being used for kidney disease. And that's because the way that stem cells actually work is that they go to the site of distress and they omit growth factors, or you know, there's a whole bunch of different growth factors. The one that most people know are exosomes because they're currently in a lot of skincare products. But there's all these different growth factors right which help to repair different parts of the body. And she was just trying to get her hand on stem cells because she'd seen that it was going to work and the reality was she didn't really have another option.
Speaker 2:And so, once you've got your pet cells banked, if you've got something where you don't have another option, the thing about autologous or personal stem cells that you've banked for your own pet is the worst thing that can happen is that they don't work. That's like truly the worst thing that can happen. There's no side effects. It's their own dna, it's their own biology. There's no rate of rejection like from an immunoregulatory response, like your body recognizes your own cells. Welcome back, yeah welcome back bud, um.
Speaker 2:And so storing means that you do have them for the really obvious things, like the osteoarthritis, like the elbow and hip dysplasia, and means that you do have them for the really obvious things like the osteoarthritis, like the elbow and hip dysplasia, and means that you can try something proactively that you already have stored down, rather than having to wait till a. It's so bad that suddenly your best friend can't jump in the back of the car and go to the beach with you. Right, you can go. Oh, there's a bit of a limp there. We've already got these cells in the bank. Let's just pull them out and give it a crack and see if we can prevent it early. But then on top of that, god forbid, something does happen where you have limited options.
Speaker 2:The science is progressing so quickly globally on stem cell therapies and what they can be used for. Every single day there's another use case coming out of a research institution overseas that if you're in a position where you have limited tools in your toolbox, then this is just another tool that you have in your toolbox that your vet can trial something so, on that note, I'm really curious how, how do they get to trial this like?
Speaker 1:how? Like if I go to the vet now and I'm like yo, I've got stem cells in a bank, it's in my lab Can we put them in my dog?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So firstly you'd probably go to the vet and say, hi, my dog is exhibiting XYZ symptoms, and you'd listen to your vet and they'd give you options, as they usually do. So normally you get like a tiered approach to care. Then you know you could go away and decide to do one of those or you could get in contact with us and say this is what we're dealing with and we would go through. You know we have a massive research repository here at the lab where we store what's happening globally.
Speaker 2:But if you were like I don't want to trial this steroid or you know, let's use osteoarthritis as the obvious indication for right now, if you went to your vet and said, look, we stored stem cells, we want to use those, most vets aren't going to bat an eyelid.
Speaker 2:For context, when we started the business, the first thing I did was get the Veterinary Small Animal Surgery textbook published in 1992, which is cracker of an edition which is still used. So I looked up the syllabus at like Sydney Uni and and I got it and it's actually quite a small book and I was reading through it and like not you know, not like studying it, but like just reading through it to get a general vibe and the last chapter was on stem cells and I was like what? And the thing is, the way that they are used is it's pretty standard. It's it's injected intravenously, or sometimes intra-articulately, which is just into the joint. But the reality is it's not a it's not a hard thing to do and stem cells as a category is not something that we haven't met a single vet yet who's been outwardly shocked about what we're doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it doesn't. I mean it wouldn't be shocking, because any vet is. This is what's fascinating. This is the difference between what's studied and what's applied right. It's like, to your point, they've been learning about this since like the 90s or the 2000s. We've known that it's possible and it's just it's just taken this long for you to. And this is like a classic founder story of like.
Speaker 2:Obviously this should exist, but it hasn't well, it's taken so long for it to be like consistent and accessible. That's actually what we're solving for the stem cell side of it. We're not really really solving anything Like. We have a. We have a function that's going to allow us to unlock a bunch of things for pet owners and hopefully unlock a bunch of different treatment avenues. And you know we're doing so much R and D on that side so that the people that have their cells banked will have the best options for the best healthcare for their pet.
Speaker 2:But the actual problem that we're solving for our customers is just access to something that is consistent and reliable, repeatable and transparent. Like every single animal's tissue that gets um, you know, goes through our lab, the same processes are applied to it. A tiny bit of it is cut off for R and D, which is in our service agreements. It a tiny bit of it is cut off for r&d, which is in our service agreements, which is to make it better um. But you know, as I said, like you take a fat sample, we give you 10 vials of 10 million of 10 million cells per vial. You know you have that um before. It wasn't. That it's not possible. It's not even that it's not necessarily available. I mean, you asked me about cost before. So, as I said, I wasn't going to compromise on the quality of the product, but we also wanted to make sure it was rational within the existing options.
Speaker 1:I mean vets are expensive to begin with. So like I mean I took my honey, just got a toenail taken off and it was like $900 later.
Speaker 2:So like I think people expect that things are going to be a little bit more expensive, I imagine with furry friends rather than Well, the interesting thing about vets being expensive and this is a topic and like I totally get where you're coming from but the thing about Australia particularly is that we don't pay for healthcare at all. Right, like you've never actually paid the cost of what healthcare costs, so therefore your understanding of the value is kind of skewed. In America, when you go to the doctor, you get an itemised list of what it costs, right, and even if you do have like great health insurance or whatever, you still get an itemised list. So you still have a conscious understanding of the cost of healthcare, which we just don't have here.
Speaker 2:Now. We obviously don't have Medicare, although I think we should, but whatever. So it's the only time that we pay for health ourselves, like it's the only time. So the cost of, while it feels expensive, it's because there's obviously the cost of staff, there's obviously the cost of rent there, there's obviously. But then there's also, like the cost of sterility, right, which we know as from a lab.
Speaker 2:There's the cost of the kits, there's the cost of keeping those environments sterile, how expensive it costs to run one exactly so, like I, I get, I get that, but I think it's not just that, like what we tried to do is we tried to be like, well, we want to give this really high quality to do? Is we tried to be like, well, we want to give this really high quality personalized stem cell therapy option? Right, obviously, there's all these things that we have to do to make that possible, but to make it accessible, what's the current alternative? The current alternative is donor stem cells which have a high rate of rejection that was going to be actually my next question.
Speaker 1:Which people hypothetically, if you build up enough of a backlog and say their dog dies, but they get another one, can they use those stem cells?
Speaker 2:Yeah, potentially in the future, but I think, like right now, we're focusing on what we call autologous. So there's two kinds Autologous is your own, allergenic is donor. We focus on autologous stem cells because, from the literature, the therapeutic benefits of your own cells are just higher. Right, there is obviously a future where that might be possible, but right now we're focused on this because you can get donor stem cells at the moment. Where they come from is, I think, relatively questionable. It's not super transparent, I think, relatively questionable. Um, it's not super transparent. Um, and so what we did was we understood what the cost of those was.
Speaker 2:One round of donor stem cell therapy is $4,000. If you have two joints not uncommon right, right to get bilateral elbow dysplasia or something like that that's 4 000 per joint and this is an average. They go up and down. If you then have to get another injection 12 months later, oftentimes you'll do a first injection and then six months later or 12 months later, you might try a second one. It adds up right, oh yeah, oh yeah. So we were like, okay, well, if that is the average, if that is the standard for a product that we believe is less of value, it's allergenic, it might reject. It's not got as good of blah blah. Then how can we make our product basically way better and value wise way cheaper? So at the moment, if you pay upfront, which is obviously the cheapest lifetime option, it's $4,000, and that's for those 10 vials that we talked about earlier. 10 million cells per vial, so 100 million cells all up. So you're essentially getting 10 treatments for the same price as you would get one donor stem cell injection.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I hear that and it's just like it's wild to know that there can be such a big difference.
Speaker 1:We were touching on that it's 10 to 1 versus normal treatment. Yeah, the fact that it is um, autologous, first, allogeneic, yes, because I prompted you to do that, but then you were also going somewhere else before that and then I threw that curveball in there, um, but I think, probably just speaking about the fact that the tech is way better now, but just no one's really gone there and done this yet. So I guess, maybe to lead into this because unless you want to go back to you know that where we were just before with that thread, otherwise to bring it back, which I think will still be a bit related, would be like I'm kind of curious, like what do you think the systemic barriers are for you, or that were there to stop people from doing this like? Or what's stopping you now? Is there anything? It's infrastructure, is it like just legality stuff, or is it like a cultural thing? Or is it now just the right time for all of those?
Speaker 2:I think it's the right time. I also think the cultural thing will just be educating right, like just educating that this is possible. It hasn't been possible before, so people haven't thought about it, it's not in their mind. Data set because it's not been an opportunity. I think, like, what are the structural problems that have enabled this not happening before? A little bit of a throwback to kind of what I mentioned before, like we have to build this company to be successful and do the best that we can for our customers within the framework of the capitalist society that we live in. Right, I think the reason this hasn't been done before is because majority of health is dictated by pharmaceutical companies right, it was true.
Speaker 1:No, dude, I'm with you on this one, yeah.
Speaker 2:And so we talk a lot about you know there's enough data about X drug because there's been these massive clinical trials that have been done on X drug. But those have been paid for by the pharmaceutical company. So the pharmaceutical company are the people that decide on what goes through clinical trials.
Speaker 1:So we use small molecule drugs and all these sort of things for treatments rather than using, like, stem cells or giving them healthy food. It's the same thing, same pattern that plays out with humans is there's a perverse incentive baked into the system, and it's not necessarily like it's not like it's these drug companies' faults, it's the fact that they have to pay so much bloody money to get it through, to be able to prove it. But then, yeah, all of that whole system can easily be kind of hijacked and it means that something like this, which might make a lot more sense and still has a healthy margin, but it's not as healthy a markup as it's a margin that's healthy in the sense of you know, in order to build something that is self-sustaining and will allow us to develop more opportunities from your pet's own healthy cells.
Speaker 2:That means that you avoid drugs with side effects or potentially going through invasive surgeries, right?
Speaker 1:It's working with biology instead of against it.
Speaker 2:Exactly and it's like in order for us to discover. You know, yes, we can, absolutely. You know, you can use your cells today for osteoarthritis or for hip dysplasia, for elbow dysplasia or even, uh, for crucial ligament tears. Right, these are mscs, are the cells that we work with at the moment. They're great for bone muscle. Um, that's their, that's their really healing power. There's other things that are coming up, but for us to find out more about those other things that are coming up, yeah, we have to have a bit of margin there so that we can run our own clinical trials, right?
Speaker 1:okay, that's what that was. Where I was going to go next was oh, there's a few places I was curious, like it sounds like you're going to end up becoming your own vet, potentially. You know, there's one part there and then the other is like, yeah, are you going to be doing research, further research, because it sounds like you're gathering all of this information. You're going to have quite a a deep database of of what's possible. And then I, are you then exploring? Well, here's where people have looked. Is there anywhere else that people aren't looking right now that we think is useful or viable, and therefore we're going to start exploring, doing research in that?
Speaker 2:so yeah, absolutely. I mean I think we joke that we're going to be an ethical pharmaceutical company, like.
Speaker 1:That's a like a non when are you jumping over into humans, man, no I just love dogs.
Speaker 2:I think they deserve it more. Um, no, but we, we joke that we're going to be an ethical pharmaceutical company, but the actual way that we're doing this is is actually, uh, pretty standard. It's basically commercialized research, right? So we start with what is known and what can work, and that is the bread and butter. And you know, sadly, one in five dog gets osteoarthritis. So this is something that needs more options and a lot of the options out there.
Speaker 2:People are not happy with the side effects for some of the options that are out there, the invasiveness or the cost, you know. For some of the options that are out there. The invasiveness or the cost, you know for some of the things that are out there are just not what's best for your dog, necessarily. And so having something that is natural, that is from their own body and that we know once what I said to you earlier, like the worst thing that can happen is that it doesn't work, and that is the worst thing that can happen with any well. That is not the worst thing that can happen with any drug right. The worst thing that can happen with any well, that is not the worst thing that can happen with any drug, right, the worst thing that can happen with a lot of other drugs is that the side effects are so bad that something even worse happens, right, but you know that they're safe. But they've also got this long list of except for X, y, z, right. So, like we are giving you a product where the worst thing that you know that can happen is that it doesn't work and that is a risk you take any time you go down any treatment avenue is that it might not work. Um, the best thing that can happen is that it works and you've avoided, uh, side effects, you avoided surgery, etc.
Speaker 2:But to your question around the research side of it yeah, absolutely, I mean I think there's so many diseases out there that I'd be really keen once. But to your question around the research side of it, yeah, absolutely, I mean I think there's so many diseases out there that I'd be really keen, once we're in a position that we've got, you know, the humdrum going and we're being able to service our patients and our owners really with what they need right now that we can start to put more resources into, like what's next. And I think, because we're commercialising research and we're doing it from a patient-led perspective. It means that we can also ask our patients what are you most concerned about? What are you worried about Like? What are the things in your breed that you know are predisposed that you want a better option for?
Speaker 1:I just had another thought.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can see it. This is great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know had another thought yeah, I can see it's great. Yeah, I know you're seeing it pop up. Um, I can, I'm just I'm gonna, we're gonna go there. I apologize, I'm gonna take it a bit off track. What about wildlife? So, like I'm just hearing you say all this and I was like, oh shit, like this, like the bushfires that we had in 2019, all the animals with burnt skin all this sort of stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah so is there a future where because I imagine this is cats and dogs really at the moment like probably not doing birds or parrots or Not yet We'll get there. Yeah, we'll get there. We'll get there, but like yeah, because you were saying it's being used in the equine industry and all that sort of stuff but I could imagine this could be used for I think the sky's the limit right, it goes back to look.
Speaker 2:We talk about wound healing a lot. Wound healing is a really exciting avenue.
Speaker 1:It's something that's already working.
Speaker 2:You're going for exosome research as well 100% the biggest barrier for us, which isn't really a barrier like. If we had enough patients requesting it, we could turn it around pretty quick. This is the beauty of the stem cells Once you have the stem cells, cells figuring out how to suspend that inner gel, for example, to be able to use it for wound healing less of a problem.
Speaker 1:Cells are already there, it's, it's. It's a fascinating thing because, like, have we explained what stem cells are? Probably not I can do. We want to go into that a little bit, go there, because I think helping people understand the fact that they're kind of like upstream, yeah.
Speaker 2:I have a great way of describing this in a really dumb way, which is the way that I kind of first really understood it in my brain. But our body is made up of millions and millions of cells. Every single part your hair, your skin, everything is just a different kind of cell. Right, stem cells are just cells that don't have jobs yet. So, like you imagine, a stem cell walks into a party right, he could become a DJ, he could become a bartender. Like, a stem cell is just basically fresh out of high school. It doesn't know what he wants to do. Yet when a stem cell enters the body, they go towards what they want to be next. So there are different kinds of stem cells. There are pluripotent stem cells, multipotent stem cells, which basically means like how many things they can become. The stem cells we work with are multiplotent stem cells, so they can become a bunch of different things. But probably the most exciting thing about stem cell research and development in the past sort of 10 years is again our understanding of what stem cells actually do in the body. So the best thing about stem cells is, as I said earlier, they go towards the site of distress, right, they're like you pump them in and because they're trying to find a job. They're trying to find a job where they're the most like. Like us, we look for a job where we're going to have the most impact. Right, that's what a stem cell is doing in your body. It's going where can I go that I'm going to be the most useful or I'm going to have the most impact.
Speaker 2:So if you imagine and like, let's use kidney disease, because it's one that I've been listening to a lot of vets talk about over in the us lately because I think it's a really interesting one. So if you've got kidney disease and let's say you've got an otherwise healthy dog, there was actually a case I was listening to with a vet recently where she same dog it had osteoarthritis in a knee and also had kidney disease. So she did two injections. She did one interarticular, so into the joint for the osteoarthritis, and then she just did like a general IV of stem cells and the stem cells from the general IV went straight to the kidneys, because the kidneys are basically emitting signals that it's distressed, and so she started to see improvement across both the knee because she had injected cells directly into the knee so they went to that side of distress. But then the ones that were going towards an organ were just straight into the bloodstream and just made their way to that organ because they go towards the side of distress.
Speaker 1:That makes sense to me, coming from a biology background. Right, they're just picking up on whatever the hormones might be that's floating around, but it's fascinating. Do you know how quick? Not that it's relevant. Like, is it like?
Speaker 2:I think it would depend on the indicator that you're looking at and I think it would depend on and look, I'm obviously not a scientist but I've definitely read a lot more than the average person about this. I don't think there's a definitive. What we know for osteoarthritis, for example, is that generally we start to see a change in, like the way that the animal is sort of from a limp perspective in about two weeks and then usually within about six weeks they're back to, depending on which study you look at, 40 better than they were before and then further on it kind of gets better and better. Um, so I think time depends on what you're healing and what the what, the uh like what the output of that disease is. But I think in the kidney disease one and I might have to fact check myself after this, but I think it was results within three weeks.
Speaker 1:That's insane.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like actually Pretty crazy yeah. But yeah, I mean. The other thing to add about stem cells is there was this like very big misconception about 10 or 15 years ago when stem cells first sort of got like heralded and the misconception was that they were going to go in and like regrow a bone, right like you could just pump stem cells into like a broken thumb and the whole thumb was going to regrow. That was incorrect and that's why we try and stay away from the word regenerative, because I think it puts the wrong uh, it puts the wrong idea into people's head of what stem cells actually what their power is, rather than what's actually possible.
Speaker 2:What's actually happening is that stem cells, they decide where they go, they decide what they want to be, and then they start admitting growth factors. So they start sending out growth factors that can help with that area of the body and whatever, whatever needs to happen in that area of the body in order to repair. So it's less about regrowth, or regeneration, if you will, and more about repair.
Speaker 1:Okay, repair and restoration, which in the regenerative design literature, are the steps just before regeneration. But I get, every place has different ways in which they use words and, to that point, I think a really big issue with science is like you have no offense marketing people come along and be like this shit's going to solve life, you're going to live forever. And then it's like no, actually, what do you know?
Speaker 1:It's like way more complex and complicated than what we actually think, but here's how it can be applied. And because you've sold this big vision and then you're delivering on this, they're like oh, whereas you're saying, yeah, look, there's a lot that could be there, but here's where we start now. You're not doing it the other way around, which I think Intentional.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Goodbye you.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that. Just flip the script a little bit. Who do you look up to or who you were inspired by, like on your journey? Like I know, we mentioned Tina before as someone who's doing cool things, like, is there anyone that you look up to I don't even like the word look up to, you know that makes it sound so bad. Is there anyone that you're just like damn, that's really cool, or I admire that, or that was a really useful piece of advice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so many. Um, I'll start with like the more like esoteric. I don't know them in the like. Do you know what I?
Speaker 2:mean like the, not not like in the past or in the future, no just like people that I don't know, like that I find incredibly inspiring um, celine julia, who is the founder of loyal, which is the longevity dog drug company. I'm incredible, like look her up, she's amazing, she's just amazing. So they're they're doing the first ever longevity drug for dogs. Um, I think a lot of people sent it to me being like, oh my God, competition, and I was like nah, hand in hand collaboration babes like the dogs, live longer.
Speaker 2:We want their joints and, you know, all of their organs and function to be to be keeping up with with their longevity. So, um, she's awesome. I I also just really like the way she talks about, uh, animal health and the implications that animal health has on human health, and just her general viewpoint of the world. I I have a huge amount of admiration and respect for Where's she from. Is this?
Speaker 1:America? Yeah, of course.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, Loyal Dog is the company.
Speaker 1:Really good branding.
Speaker 2:Oh, amazing, yeah, yeah, and her background actually is in science and she's just had like an incredible impact on the space. So that's one. I think there are like far more people closer to home that I have a lot of adoration and respect for my first boss in startups. His name is Craig Davis and, uh, he was the founder of Sendl and I mean, most people in the startup ecosystem will know who he is, but he was just such a calming force on me, I think, like calming yeah, I'm not very calm. He tried to get me to meditate a lot yeah same yeah, not for me.
Speaker 2:Um, he was just. He was really good at helping me navigate a world that I don't know like. His advice was always. He was really good at listening, he understood who I was, he never tried to change who I was and he helped me channel all the good and bad parts into something better. I think I mean famously, one of his like feedback points for me once was that I had a slightly unhealthy bias towards action and I was like what do you mean? He's like slow it down. But yeah, he was a massive force, just in my early startup area, I guess, of helping me channel some of the erratic into something more productive, and always believed in me along the way as well.
Speaker 2:You know he hired me at Baraha but then I checked in with him kind of each different journey point and I mean you know we check in when we can, but he's currently sailing around Europe for three years, which he's wanted to do his whole life with his wife. So it's quite sweet, that sounds fun, it sounds ideal, yeah, um. And then there's like loads of founders who I find really inspiring. I mean you mentioned tina already. I find tina really inspiring. Um, george from vow, I like, I see a lot of the kind of problems we're solving, although very different in in what they're doing, and I had the pleasure of going and seeing their site last week in sydney and really, yeah, it was sick fun, isn't it?
Speaker 1:oh, so cool there's a little glass wall between the yeah, well, they've got the second building now too.
Speaker 2:It's just like yeah, huge insane and so that was really cool to like go um to someone who's doing something like kind of similar but different to you. That's kind of in the future as in obviously it's now, but for us we're so early, so seeing what could be from someone who's done such a great job.
Speaker 1:And I think it's to your point before about how do we frame this. The privilege of that, like being able to see that, it's like the four-minute mile or you know that classic story. It's like if you don't know what's possible, then you don't know you can go for it. Going and seeing something like that I can imagine as a founder. It's like damn, like we can do this, yeah.
Speaker 2:I think we both stood there and we were like I mean also like I just think what we're doing is so much easier and simpler, but I was standing there and it gave me this understanding of the scale of what we could achieve. I think, and I mean, george has done like insane things so much cheaper than anyone else in the world would be able to do because of the like specialty that they have in house, right? So I think it was that was cool. And then I mean there's other people that like, even like katie bashing day, who also is x vow, but she's, um, you know, basically decided to just build her own yeah, media city scientific, build her own fbs replacement frs.
Speaker 2:Um, saw a. Saw a market that is inconsistent very similar to us in a funny way, again, right working with cells, but like saw a market that was inconsistent and unapproachable. And and she's just decided to build something new from her lab out in barrel. And like we again, we had the pleasure of going to barrel and oh, dude such a lovely, it's so nice yeah, like I could.
Speaker 2:I could see why people would move out there. I would get bored, but I it was beautiful for the three days we were there but got to go and see her lab. So I think like, yeah, there's so many people that I look up to and I think we're really lucky to have even like Zoe Milgram, who's got Eugene, which is, you know, at home fertility testing company in Australia. Like there's so many people that I don't know if I was doing this 10 years ago, if I would have the same chance to have as many people to look up to. And I feel very like lucky that I have that yeah, it's.
Speaker 1:it's been interesting watching this ecosystem grow to where we are now even like, and being a part of that, and watching now what feels like it might not have been possible, you know, even five or ten years ago, just because you you didn't know or you couldn't find the right person.
Speaker 2:Now it's easier to thread things together in the ecosystem, so I'm really I mean, even with you guys, like this is not an ad for CoLabs by any extent Sponsored by Alita Genetics, but I don't think we could have started this company in Sydney. I think about it a lot and it's sad, and I mean, george is a good example of someone who was able to do it, but you know, he had a connection at King's College and was able to work out of you know their labs, whereas neither of us went to a school. Actually, I don't think George did either, but I just wouldn't have known how to start those conversations. So I think the barrier to entry of even being able to get a space to work in in Sydney was really high, which is, you know, one of the reasons we moved to Melbourne. Um, but I do think there's a particularly in Melbourne. There's a lot of support in the biotech and science space. Um, like the Victorian government has done a really good job of fostering that support.
Speaker 1:They're partially back to you no, they're thinking about it.
Speaker 2:Confidential, but yeah, I just think the ecosystem has grown a lot. And back to your kind of question about my background as well. 10 years ago it would be inconceivable for someone like me to do this and I think it's really interesting because we've touched a little bit on ai as if someone like me, someone without a background in science, someone I don't I don't think I could have done this 10 years ago. I really don't. I don't think, I don't know, and maybe maybe it's like a, maybe I'm wrong. I mean, I've been wrong so many times in my life so it wouldn't be shocking. But I don't know if I would have had the even chat, gpt and things like that, like the amount I'm able to go through and not have to have someone else like when I'm doing research on a paper.
Speaker 2:My background is not academic. I did really well at uni in fine art or I did really well in my publishing masters where I was literally marking up manuscripts, but deep research on a scientific paper is not something that I have any background in, um, and so having things like AI even to just sense, check and go back and forth or ask questions about what things mean or get things dumbed down again like I. I can ask my scientists all the time hey, explain this to me like I'm five or whatever, and they'll do it. Then that comes back to like the benefit of not being a technical founder is I just don't have any ego around not knowing stuff. Like I don't care if I don't know anything, cause I don't know most things. So like it's fine. But, um, without bothering them all the time, like I just have. We have so many resources at our fingertips to be able to learn stuff.
Speaker 1:It's actually crazy the exponential access to tech and things like that that can now help people. I think even now, like just the last six to twelve months, like some of those new features that are coming out. It's deep research on chat, gpt insane, crazy, like it's crazy. And there's these new like agents that they're bringing out soon. We looked into it like, oh damn, we can't afford that, but like it can actually start doing things for you, you can be like go and book this restaurant.
Speaker 2:Yeah and it'll like yeah, that was one of our early ideas that we didn't do.
Speaker 1:That stuff is horrifying.
Speaker 2:But also I love it.
Speaker 1:It's exciting if it's used for good, not just for like scamming, oh yeah oh, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:But I mean like at the end of the day, like the interesting thing about that is behind ai. Is your intention, right?
Speaker 1:I think this all the time, with how you frame it and question it and speak with it or to it it's. It's a really fascinating exercise and even just self-awareness how you, how you interact with it with anything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like what's your like, who are you? Interesting thing to do is ask chachi piti what it thinks of you as a person yeah, do it.
Speaker 1:No, it's good. Okay, fine, that's gonna be confronting. I'm sure, um, I'm sure I don't really want that to happen. We'll do it before drinks, but I will, okay, we'll do it. We'll do it. We'll do it together. Um, no, that's gonna be embarrassing, like you were a bit of a nerd. It's fine Badge of honor. Yeah, exactly it is now. Definitely wasn't back at high school, no, no, you had to be the sporty one.
Speaker 2:It definitely wasn't me. Yeah, no, really.
Speaker 1:No, sporty, sporty, I feel like you'd be. I mean, you're really good at like verbal tennis, so I thought maybe I was really gonna debate.
Speaker 2:You're right. I don't think that most kids in high school didn't consider that a sport. God, I wish we went to the same school yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 1:So what is if everything goes well? Because, like you've said this a couple of times, like I've heard you mention, um, you know, like the, the not-for-profit background so I'm assuming that for you, success isn't just grounded in financial return on investment, like if this goes well. What does success look like for you?
Speaker 2:yeah, I think about this probably more than I should at the moment because we have to get there first, but, um, I had so many like moonshot ideas about the ways that I would like us to be able to going back to that like ethical pharmaceutical ethos.
Speaker 2:Um, you know, there's there's partnership programs that I'd love to do with shelters in the future.
Speaker 2:There's so many things that stem cells are really good for, um, and they're particularly being used for right now overseas.
Speaker 2:Like things like muscle dystoprophy, which can happen when dogs are poorly bred, right, um, a lot of dogs that get dropped off at shelters, for example, will get dropped off because of health issues, because people don't want to pay for them, and so, to me, like, if we get to a point where we can have, you know, our own kind of pledge, one percent thing, where we can kind of give back to like all the dogs that people are treated, but that would just make me really happy.
Speaker 2:But I think, like, as we grow the business because I do come from, I don't know, like a background of like wanting to build ethical companies and believing that we can have medicine without having to rely on just capitalistic ways of thinking about, like, drug development. I hope that what we are able to build is not just a company that obviously solves these problems for our patients and their owners, but becomes to actually be a company that shows you that there's a better way of doing personalised biological medicine, which can avoid, you know, things that I don't think are necessarily good for everyone.
Speaker 1:No, I hear you there. I actually never had that chat with you about all this sort of stuff, but I felt like I could tell, given on your background or your pedigree, considering we're in the pet space that yeah, there was going to be something more than just generating revenue.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I mean, like the other thing is, I don't want to come across as like being anti-medicine, because I'm not at all. I'm pro-medicine, I'm, you know, pro-vaccines. I believe that medicine has solved some of the biggest problems in the world, but it's not a binary thing, right?
Speaker 1:no, this is the stuff that it's so frustrating about when you just watch dialogue is um, there's gray, yeah, yeah, all, yeah, all of the all of the world is gray, there's no. There's no left, right or anything like that. It's like everyone has nuances on multiple opinions and perspectives, and I think it's all about context to that point.
Speaker 2:You were sort of saying it's like we're really good with medicine when it comes to acute issues, less so good with chronic less so good with systemic or preventative, like all that sort of stuff I think that's also my like big ethos that I'm starting to learn through building this company, which is like there's so much more that we could do in the preventative healthcare space and also like why I keep talking about it being another tool in the toolbox is you don't have to pick one thing. Like it's it, the best thing is if you've actually got options and you've got access to as many things as you can have, like. I know that there's a lot of naysayers on the personalized medicine thing and I think that that's going to take time to figure out how we do personalized medicine. But I don't see any negative to the idea of personalized medicine. I obviously see the financial negative that a lot of bigger companies say about having to personalize because obviously it's cheaper to batch everything for everyone. Right, maybe, maybe, but that's kind of my point.
Speaker 1:Exactly. It's because that's how we've made this system.
Speaker 2:It's how we've always done it. But if we keep doing what we've always done, then we'll always get what we've always got right.
Speaker 1:Same thing with agriculture and everything that we currently do it's like we need to get out of this mechanistic, reductionist approach to doing things where it's like just maximum, like as much quantity, or maximize this without thinking of nuance.
Speaker 2:And that's my job right, like as a founder, like we are lucky that because we're working in the pet space, like there's, there's different latitude to working in the human medicine space, which means we have an opportunity to do things differently in the hope of doing things better.
Speaker 1:And there is an opportunity and a potential that by doing this version where you pay for your own right but then you get more for what you banked essentially, yeah, no, it makes sense to me and, as we've discussed as well a little bit earlier, it's like we don't know what the future holds, like there might be all of these amazing things that can come in the next five to ten years where it's like, oh damn, there's like whole different raft of things that we can do now.
Speaker 1:We had no idea and I guess that edge case of what's emerging is going to be really fascinating for this sort of space. Yeah, maybe I'll. Maybe I'll hit you up with a couple of more cool, um, more questions, because I think what we're just talking about there kind of kind of touches on like a worldview shift in a way that needs to happen away from, you know, conventional medicine being the only way to do things it's like there's going to be elements of this narrative storytelling coming through what you're having to do.
Speaker 1:Um, and yeah, I'm curious, like, what else do you think from that world shift perspective? Do you think that needs to happen for this to become a more readily acceptable thing? Or do you think it's less about the perspective of that? Like, like, for example, do you see a future where you could be collaborating with these pharma companies?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I don't think, maybe I maybe the thing is I don't think this is I don't really consider what we're doing non-conventional. If I'm honest, I see it as like, probably because I know the breadth of the data that's happened globally, right, and I know how long this has been like noodle done, I actually see it as quite conventional. I just see it as hard to access at the moment because I don't think we've figured out. I actually think the delivery mechanism of the product is less conventional, because I don't think we've figured out I actually think the delivery mechanism of the product is less conventional. I don't think the product itself is non-conventional.
Speaker 2:I think that it's been really difficult to figure out a way to get this to the owner or the patient, but I think it's becoming far more and more conventional, even in the human space, like the amount of people that you'll hear of that have had stem cells in their knee or whatever. Have you? Um, I think that the way of delivering it, I think that the the kind of personalized avenue to understanding more disease is cool and non-conventional and I hope that that opens up both in, you know, our area of animals and even hopefully one day, in the human space. But if I could go and store some of my own cells tomorrow to like and you can do it with babies, right, but it's called blood bank, so it's kind of specific for, like, blood cancers and things like that I mean, at the moment, to be fair, it could progress from there over time, but it's much harder as an adult human to get access to that. It's fascinating, right.
Speaker 2:If someone else wants to go out and do that in the human space they'll like hit me up and I'll give you some tips.
Speaker 1:You've got some spare room in the door.
Speaker 2:No, no, no no.
Speaker 1:Oh God, imagine mixing that up.
Speaker 2:Nope, no, no, I meant I'd love someone else to build the human version. Yeah, fair enough.
Speaker 1:I'm sure there'd have to be something in America. Man Like that stuff's. Yeah, they're just bankrupt. All the billionaires are just like I want to live forever. Yeah, yeah, so sad. Well, I think yeah, yeah, so sad.
Speaker 2:Well, that's another thing we think about, right, which is like this is like a longevity offering for your pets, really, and I think they kind of deserve it more. And I don't mean that in like a pessimistic, screw the humans way, but I mean that dog life is shorter, and why shouldn't it be longer if we can make it longer healthily? And why shouldn't it be longer if we can make it longer healthily and from their own biology, why not spend more time with them? You know, I think that they give us so much and they deserve so much more than what we give them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's an interesting point, like is there anything? Or have you like just going on this journey and thinking about what it's like, like the, the healing potential of all of this sort of stuff and what's possible for for pets? Like, yeah, I was gonna say like, is there anything you think that we could learn from this as humans?
Speaker 2:yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's gonna be so much that comes out of the data that we build that the human space will learn from, like. I foresee that definitely being something in the next couple of years. I think like. What I've learnt from doing all this, though, is that we just we're so laser focused on our own problems, which I understand right, like humanity and death and life is like such a big problem that humans want to solve. It's not a problem.
Speaker 1:It's not a problem, it's not a bug, it's a feature of existence. Just throwing it out there.
Speaker 2:No, I get that, I get that.
Speaker 1:You mean health span, not necessarily lifespan, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do. But I also mean, like the amount of. You know, all of our medical resources from a capital perspective go into human disease. And I'm not against that, like I understand that we want to cure disease, like that's rational to me, but so little goes into our animal counterparts and we get so much from them. You know, they are there when we go through heartbreak. They are there when we are sad. They are unrelenting in their care and kindness for us.
Speaker 2:And it's not that I don't think we should spend resources on curing human disease. Of course we should. But I wish we would just spend a little bit more time on helping those around us, and I'm obviously thinking about this from a companion animal perspective, because that's where we're focused right now. But even back to your point earlier on conservation and things like that, why aren't we spending more energy, time and resources on problems in society that we know are happening, like the bat colonies in Melbourne that are really suffering at the moment right, or the koalas that suffered from? I think we sometimes forget that we exist in an ecosystem that isn't just about us and we wouldn't be here without them A hundred percent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're totally dependent on that. I suppose this is obviously you know, this is a topic that I've rant on about for so long yeah, um, but yeah, exactly exactly that we are deeply embedded within this web of life on which we depend for our survival, and to that point, so much of the time where we're focused on the human realm without acknowledging the more than human world that makes it all possible, and I, yeah, I just feel like you know what you're doing, the work that's happening here there might be all of these potential cascading flow-on effects for ways in which we can support that more than human world. Um, so it's going to be exciting seeing if something like that might come about yeah, we'll never say never.
Speaker 2:I mean I'm sure that if we like solve all the dog problems, I'll be like what next?
Speaker 1:and you're gonna have to have like five things on the go at once. That's just how you work exactly that's it, yeah, um, where can people find you?
Speaker 2:oh my god. Everywhere at the moment you can find me and our chief morale officer, edgar Allen Paws, who's the catalyst for the business. On LinkedIn. You can also find both of us on Instagram. You can find Alita Genetics on Instagram. On TikTok at alitageneticscom. You can sign up your pets at alitageneticscom just the sign-up button. Yeah, you can find us in loads of places.
Speaker 1:Just reach your brain and just look Email me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can find us in loads of places, just email me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, drop you an email. Okay, sweet Cool. No, thank you for taking the time to sit down.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me. I feel like we covered a lot of ground.
Speaker 1:We covered some ground. There's still a lot more ground to walk on.
Speaker 1:We can do a part two. Part two, that's it. We'll rope you back in soon, don't you worry about it. Awesome thanks, sam cool. Thank you. All right, you made it to the end, congrats.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so lots of stuff happening here at colabs at the moment. Um, we've just had a string of events on um which have been really fun, really interesting. Um, our impact program has just relaunched again for round two, so that's six months of free lab space to those doing impact oriented innovation that is, bio-led or bio-inspired. Um, so if that's you or someone you know, get in contact. We'd love to have a chat with you.
Speaker 1:Oh, and our biomaterial report in collaboration with Collective Fashion Justice is almost going live. So, for those who don't know, we're really keen to try and advocate for and support the emergence of a biomaterials hub here in Australia with a specific focus on next-gen regenerative materials that are bio-based, materials that are bio-based. Uh, we think it's a really important leverage point for facilitating the shift towards a circular, bio-based and more regenerative economy, and we welcome anyone to reach out who might be curious about getting involved, helping us set it up, stewarding the co-design process yeah, um, so if that's you, and that could be for the built environment, or for fashion and textiles, putting it out there. Drop us a line, say good day. Let's build something awesome together. All right, that's enough for me. Enjoy the rest of your day, night, morning, whatever it is, and we'll speak to you soon.
