The Entrepreneurs for Impact Podcast: Transcripts
#146:
$50M VC Funding for Sustainably Produced Chemicals Using Fermentation — Matt Lipscomb, CEO of DMC Biotechnologies
PODCAST INTRODUCTION
Chris Wedding:
My guest today is Matt Lipscomb, founder and CEO of DMC Biotechnologies. DMC is a Boulder-based biotech company that sustainably produces bio-based chemicals using fermentation, with over $50 million in VC funding and a team of over 40 people. In addition, Matt is a certified ski mountaineering guide, rock climbing guide and instructor, director for the American Institute of Avalanche Research and Education. I'll explain why those three things matter in the podcast, and he has a PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
00:46
In this episode, we talked about the meaning of metabolic engineering, how rock climbing has taught him to better manage risks as a CEO, his experience seeing glacier retreat, how DMC engineers microbes to standardize fermentation for cost-effective scale-up with no green premium. The definition of friend-shoring and how DMC improves companies' supply chains. Why his early work in chemical plants led him to where he is today. What he means to cross-train both physically and intellectually. The pains of fast growth and techniques he uses to build culture and cohesion while growing 3X this year. Why investors care that you're founding a company with a former co-founder. The difference between lifespan and healthspan, lots more reminders of your chemistry and biology courses from perhaps decades ago, and a whole lot more.
Hope you enjoy it, and please give Matt and DMC a shout out on LinkedIn, Slack, or Twitter by sharing this podcast with your people. Thanks.
PODCAST INTERVIEW
Chris Wedding:
Matt Lipscomb, founder and CEO at DMC Biotechnologies, welcome to the podcast.
Matt Lipscomb:
Hi, how are you doing? It's great to be here today.
Chris Wedding:
So, I think it will be interesting for folks to understand that you're not just PhD in chemical engineering turned entrepreneur for many years, but this path has a more visceral thread to it as well, which is you are unlike most of my guests. You are also a certified mountain guide and director, let me get this right, for the American Institute for Avalanche Research and Education. As you've been out in the field for rescue or for fun, you've seen glaciers not be in the same spot they should have been based on year and season and so forth because obviously climate change, et cetera. What might you want to say about that part of your life or path and how it's influenced, I guess, where you are with DMC biotechnologies, Matt?
Matt Lipscomb:
Yeah, that's a great question and it's something I come back to frequently, Chris, is how these seemingly different threads in my life keep overlapping. So, whether it's spending time up in the mountains and seeing the glaciers recede almost in real time, or also learning lessons from guiding clients in the mountains on skis or on rock and taking those risk management lessons and applying those to being a startup entrepreneur and CEO. Turns out, mountain guides are very good at assessing risk and creating mitigation plans to address those.
01:43
Chris Wedding:
I like that. I'm imagining or I'm picturing a very different, but similar event where I was leading a group of MBA students in Ethiopia for a social enterprise course. We had a fun weekend excursion and we were also maybe getting lost in the backlands of Ethiopia. Some students wanted to pursue that, and here it was risk mitigating with a possible uprising of these students. Anyway, it all fared well in the end, but yes, our time outdoors and risk mitigation.
Matt Lipscomb:
Yeah, in deed.
Chris Wedding:
It also makes me think about, I just came back from a three-day backpacking trip in the Smoky's and we know the Smoky's have a lot of black bear and so we kept whistles with us. We were down to the last two miles on the trip. We're starting to see like normal people, not like folks with 30 pounds on their back, we're totally home free. We're snacking beside this mountain stream and one of our fellow backpackers, he's just 20 yards away, we hear this explosion of whistle noises, he's screaming. We're like, “No, is he joking right now?” Anyway, 40 yards from us, behind my back would have been this giant black bear is running away. Anyway, you got to be prepared, right? Who knows what's around the corner?
Matt Lipscomb:
You do, absolutely.
Chris Wedding:
Black bears or a financial crisis. All right, so Matt, what's the elevator pitch? What is DMC?
Matt Lipscomb:
Sure, so at DMC, we have a technology platform where we've standardized, not only how to engineer a microbe, but how to run the fermentation process and we use those engineered microbes to make chemicals. So, these are products that enable a more sustainable product life cycle and displace things that are commonly made via petroleum-based chemistries today. The other value proposition that resonates well with people is an improvement on the supply chain. So, you've heard these notions around on-shoring or friend-shoring, so the notion that turns out not everybody in the world likes us. There's real advantage to being able to control your supply chain from feedstock all the way through manufacturing and provision to your customer.
Chris Wedding:
Okay, I love new terms. Did you say friend-shoring? Is that right?
04:08
Matt Lipscomb:
Friend-shoring, yeah. Haven't heard that one yet?
Chris Wedding:
I haven't. I feel like a newbie all of a sudden, but all right. Yes, we're not friends with every country. Oh wait, we are friends, but our governments may not be friends with every country.
Matt Lipscomb:
That's right.
Chris Wedding:
Give us an example. You're engineering microbes, what kind of microbes as examples?
Matt Lipscomb:
So, generally we use very well studied and understood hosts, things that are canonical, if you will, because there are enough challenges even with those. For those more familiar, we're talking about E. coli or yeast. I think the important thing to remember is that probably between 70 and 80% of all products made from biotechnology today are made from E. coli so it's a very well understood organism. In fact, the vast majority of products that come in the pharmaceutical world are made from E. coli. So even though it does get a bad rap occasionally in terms of the food poisoning strains though, we're not talking about those. We're talking about something very different, something that has been manipulated in the labs across the world for five decades at this point.
Chris Wedding:
Wow. I did not know that. You're right. A lot of baggage around the phrase E. coli. Certainly, for backpacking.
Matt Lipscomb:
Yup. Indeed.
Chris Wedding:
Maybe some more about, I get that the two separately make a lot of sense for why customers want to work with you. That is to say, replacing oil-based products and/or improving supply chains, but how are they related?
Matt Lipscomb:
If you think about manufacturing techniques, there's a whole world that's been built up around petroleum supply chains and petroleum chemistries. Generally, those things contain carbon and oxygen or carbon and hydrogen. There's a whole bunch of other things that you need that contain nitrogen, that contain oxygen, that contain other compounds and biology is really uniquely suited to make a lot of these.
Biology is also really uniquely suited to make more structurally complex compounds and so there are some real advantages to being able to use what biology can do natively, improve upon that in terms of yield and selectivity, and then commercialize those products. The other big advantage is that you can start with a feedstock that is itself renewable. So, think about coming from renewable carbohydrate feedstocks which the US is a global leader when it comes to, whether it's corn or wheat, but there are other global centers for that as well. So, you're no longer reliant on geopolitically unfriendly realms of the world to get a petroleum-based feedstock. Then you can run those conversions regionally, geographically, and then your customers are located in those same regions.
06:55
So, it really is a move away from globalization where 20 years ago, it was, we'll go to the cheapest place on earth where we can manufacture and we don't care about pollution or anything else or labor standards, and we're just going to try and make cheap products. And now we see that trend reversing and it turns out, well, it's really expensive to make a petroleum refinery. The last new one of those was built 40 years ago and they've just been incrementally expanded, but when it comes to making things from biology, the fermentation, it fits very well with the agricultural feedstocks, it fits very well with the supply and the scale at which you can build. It's much more cost-effective and you can locate it such that you’re in a region that's close to where most of your customers are. So, for us, that's the US. You could do a similar thing in Europe where they have agricultural supply chains that are very well established and same thing in certain regions in Southeast Asia as well.
Chris Wedding:
And so, it sounds really appealing to be using renewable biomass, let's say for your inputs to have your supply chains more local as you're describing. It also sounds like the scale is smaller relative to whatever, 40 or 100 years of oil-based infrastructure, which makes me think of cost. Are you all slash is the industry able to compete on cost yet? And if not, what gets customers to say yes?
Matt Lipscomb:
The three value propositions that we have continued to confirm with customers are certainly a cost competitiveness and so we do not assume, nor do we plan on any type of green premium. So you have to be able to provide an economically viable process independent of any potential subsidies. Then the other two pieces of that value proposition are decarbonization. There is a real move today, particularly in the chemical sector, to reduce their CO2 footprint, whether that's from the feedstock supply or whether that's with the industrial process itself. But we're seeing this come up the supply chains where customers are demanding more sustainable products and then as it goes up the supply chain, the companies are responding.
So, whether it's consumers demanding more sustainable sneakers or handbags or backpacks, whatever it may be, the materials that then go into those and the companies that make those chemicals are now responding. And so, the opportunity that most people underappreciate is that within the chemical sector, it's the number three largest contributor to the greenhouse gas emissions, the CO2 equivalents. It's number three behind two of the largest, which obviously get a lot of the press, so cement and steel industries obviously do a lot. I think you've had Loren Burnett on your show as well. So, another Sofinnova portfolio company, but chemicals are number three and they account for more than your five gigatons of CO2 equivalents per year based on a 2020 estimate.
So, it’s a real problem and this is a real opportunity. Not only are we seeing movement in the supply chain, so the chemical companies are responding to that consumer demand, some more renewable bio-based polymers, but the governments are responding as well. Whether it's the Inflation Reduction Act in the US or in Europe, things like the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism or the EU Green New Deal. There's a lot of opportunity and a lot of wind in the sails at this point.
Chris Wedding:
You alluded to some types of customers, I heard sneakers as an example. Maybe say more about, who are your top customers today or perhaps who the next types of customers will be as you expand product lines, et cetera?
10:52
Matt Lipscomb:
We definitely have a business-to-business model, so think of it as a chemical intermediate or an ingredient and in say FF, a food and flavor space or a specialty chemical within the chemical sector. For example, one of our lead products is an amino acid that goes into detergents. Any detergents that you have in your house today, dish or laundry, will have this biodegradable compound in it. It acts as a water softening agent, so it replaced the compound phosphate when that was eliminated from formulations several years ago. The idea being that you provide the water softener or the chelating agent to remove some of the trace minerals that come along with most municipal water supplies. The compound like I said, that has replaced that comes from one of our amino acids, so that's one example as a chemical intermediate space. Those customers have responded to all of the value proposition. So competitive costs, there's a supply chain driver now and there's absolutely a sustainability driver from those customers.
Another example, a very different space, we have a novel bio-based chemical that's basically an intermediate to a resin that would be found in consumer products that touch the life of every person on the planet today. The value proposition here, again, there has to be a cost attractiveness, but then there's a sustainability angle or reduction in the CO2 profile compared to the current material that's used. Then the other value add for this particular compound is that it's actually much less hazardous than the incumbent. So, it turns out the incumbent material is a real hazard to their employees and their operators as part of their manufacturing process. As a third example, in a very large volume flavor compound, we're working with another partner on this, again, it's a compound that every person on the planet would be familiar with today. There's an opportunity to make it at a better price point and with improved sustainability relative to what's available today.
Chris Wedding:
Can you say a little more about these last two examples, how they touch every person's life? What's an example of how they touch my life, let's say?
Matt Lipscomb:
I’m trying to think about how to do this without giving away the confidentiality.
Chris Wedding:
All right, okay. I was like, “I'm not sure whether there's an NDA issue here or it's a, let's lay out a platter and see if he bites.” All right, I can totally respect that. We'll call it an NDA motivation and we'll leave it there.
Matt Lipscomb:
Yeah.
Chris Wedding:
We alluded to earlier, PhD in chemical engineering. We hear parts of that for sure in what you're describing, but obviously a lot of biology going on. What took you from let's say chemistry to biology? I mean, not as if they're different worlds, but what led you from one to the other, if you will?
13:55
Matt Lipscomb:
Sure. Yeah, so my training, at least in undergrad, was very classical chemical engineering, petroleum-based chemistry, refining, a lot of really hardcore chemical engineering, including doing co-oping and internships. So, getting hands-on experience in chemical plants and that was honestly frightening to see what was going on. It definitely motivated me to shift away from classical chemical engineering and more into think of it as metabolic engineering or fermentation so the biology end of it. What's really interesting over the last 20 years has been this confluence of biology principles with real engineering principles and that really has become this whole field of industrial biotechnology or metabolic engineering. So, this notion that, how do you treat a micro much more like a heterogeneous catalyst and how do you then leverage the strengths of what we've known from other fields and apply those to biological sciences?
Chris Wedding:
All right. So, a fun term, a heterogeneous catalyst, unpack that one for us.
Matt Lipscomb:
So, there's a whole field of catalyst chemistry, so taking one molecule, converting it into another and the notion that you use a catalyst as a way to facilitate that reaction, but it's not consumed in the reaction. It's effectively regenerated. This is pretty standard in the chemical industry. The big difference I would say is that with a heterogeneous catalyst, it's just doing one reaction, so it's removing a water unit or removing a CO2 unit or whatever it may be, whatever the reaction is.
The fascination with biology is that you can take a microbe and it's capable of doing literally thousands of different biochemical reactions. So, if you've ever looked at the metabolic map of even just a basic E. coli, it basically looks like an eye chart that you would see at your eye doctor with arrows and compounds, the structure is kind of going everywhere. Just the complexity of the challenges is both inspiring and at the same time daunting. So, how do you apply engineering principles and simplify the engineering of biology to address that problem? That's really what's driven the technology platform behind DMC.
Chris Wedding:
Okay. Related but different. So, from my senior honors thesis back in college, I was isolating a naturally occurring pseudomonas bacteria near an oil well, that it was there because it was able to metabolize oil. I recall holding up a piece of, well, I forgot the word, 25 years, but anyway, a grouping of these bacteria that looked a little bit like, oh, I don't know, snot maybe. Sorry, disgusting and just thinking, “This little piece of snot can eat oil.” I mean, how cool is biology?
Matt Lipscomb:
Exactly.
Chris Wedding:
You must feel that, right? Yeah.
Matt Lipscomb:
All the time. Absolutely.
Chris Wedding:
How amazing is the snot?
Matt Lipscomb:
Yep.
Chris Wedding:
All right. So, when we start businesses, there are three ways we can get there, perhaps many more, but there's the customer, who do I help? There's the problem, what problem are we solving, or there's, I've got a cool technology. Which of those three do you think was the entry point for you all at DMC?
17:36
Matt Lipscomb:
So, I think for us, it came as a technology and addressing a key barrier in the field. My co-founder and I actually worked together previously at another startup that came out of CU. Mike and I were together in grad school. We've known each other 20 plus years. We went through this, this is not our first rodeo, if you will, and we have a lot of scars to show for it. So, this was the first realm or the first go at industrial biotechs, the 2000s. This was the biofuels day. We learned a lot of hard lessons as all of us did going through that time period.
Ultimately that company was acquired by Cargill and as we came away from that experience, we reflected on, well, what's fundamentally limiting the industry today? From a technology perspective, that's really what led to the technology platform that would become DMC today. That really has to do with, fundamentally the challenge in engineering biology is it's largely been artisanal. It's been a new strain, a new process for every single scale and every single molecule. So, how do you standardize all this and simplify the engineering of biology? That's really what we set out to do with the technology. And so, the core challenge that we saw in the field was that fundamentally it's just taking too long. It's too long, it's too much money to get an idea from concept to commercial and part of that has to do with the state of tools development, part of that has to do with people's approach.
In the early 2000 teens, I'm sure you're familiar with, there was a huge push towards using AI and machine learning types approaches that many people said, “We're just going to treat the microbe like a black box and we're going to brute force our way through this and get a computer to figure out.” Mike and I went the other direction. We said, “Yes, engineering biology is really hard and rather than just brute force, doing a lot of work on this, how do we simplify this challenge?” That really has underpinned everything we've done.
So, it's starting with the end in mind. What does a commercial, a true commercial fermentation process need to look like? What are the constraints around that? How do we build a set of genetic tools and a system that we can standardize such that we can eliminate all the environmental variables that are associated with what happens in a very large tank? And most importantly, how do we consistently have predictability when we go from all the things we do in a high throughput lab scale up to something that happens at the full commercial scale?
So, if you reviewed any sort of the literature on that through the 2000s, early 2000 teens, the stories are just legendary about, “Oh, we've got this new great strain and we went to scale and it didn't work.” So, turns out that gets really expensive, really fast. That’s the problem we addressed through the technology and then we've elected to apply the technology to many different chemicals, many different molecules. Then we've let the market dictate and we've been able to respond to markets and customers on where we should point the technology first from a business perspective.
Chris Wedding:
But wait, Matt, I thought to scale up, you just multiply by a thousand, no?
Matt Lipscomb:
That's right. You just need a really large beaker, right?
Chris Wedding:
That's how you bake. I mean, I'm sure it's the same thing.
21:03
Matt Lipscomb:
Yeah, exactly.
Chris Wedding:
You mentioned you and your co-founder have done this before and had an exit plus scars. Maybe to state the obvious, but for listeners, to the extent that when we start businesses, we can prove we've worked with our co-founder before in some other capacity, investors like that a lot. I mean, they don't need you to have had an exit to Cargill, but knowing there's less likelihood of a partner divorce or at least partner friction is a big deal.
Matt Lipscomb:
It's very a big deal, absolutely. So, having a trusted partner and proof that you've worked together successfully before, yeah, it's a big deal. We can talk more about this. Mike and I even half-joked. Oftentimes the science becomes the easy part, relatively speaking. It's the people and people skills and learning to communicate and learning to work well together, it can be a real challenge.
Chris Wedding:
Wait, I thought scientists had really, really high EQ all the time, is that not true?
Matt Lipscomb:
Yeah, engineers too, right?
Chris Wedding:
Engineers too, that's right. God bless STEM folks. By the way, my minors were biology, chem and major was environmental science, so I'm working on it. I'm working on the EQ.
Matt Lipscomb:
Yeah. Okay.
Chris Wedding:
Let's see. So, as you're describing the way that you standardized, systematized this process of fermentation, it almost sounds like something you could license out to other companies as a business. I don't think that's what you're doing, but clarify, this is just your secret sauce. You're not licensing out the how to anybody else?
Matt Lipscomb:
Correct. This is our secret sauce. This is how we do what we do.
Chris Wedding:
Okay, got it. Let's go bigger than DMC for a second. What is a belief or two that you hold strongly, Matt, maybe outside of work that informs what you're building at DMC?
Matt Lipscomb:
The solution to the climate crisis, it’s not a magic bullet. There is no one solution. It's going to be an all of the above approach and I think this is something that we're living every single day and it's something that we have to address. The reason that I'm so passionate about this, partly it’s because I've been out there and I've seen it, where we've talked about the glaciers receding. And partly that is I have an 11-year-old son that I want to be able to take him into the glaciers and let him experience this in his lifetime. I think it's something critical that we as a global society have to figure out and have to solve together. Like I said, we can be one small piece of it, but it's going to be a huge effort across many, many different technology solutions and lifestyle solutions.
Chris Wedding:
Got it. Strong motivation for sure. Tell us about the path from, “All right, so I'm inspired to do this, I've done a version of it before with my co-founder. This is deep tech, we've got to raise money to do this.” What was some of the early investor conversations like, and then hopefully how are they different today, Matt?
Matt Lipscomb:
We definitely took a little different path when it came to investors. We raised our first equity rounds. We went to the markets in 2017 and in the US, the markets at the time, the equity markets were largely dominated by investors who had gotten successful exits in tech. And so, there was a real emphasis on the machine learning and the AI piece and we went a little different direction. So, our first investors were based in Europe. Capricorn Partners based out of Belgium, led our seed round, Sofinnova based out of Paris, led our A round, Breakthrough Energy Ventures invested in us in the first round before they even had a physical office space.
25:07
We chose to go with people who had deep domain expertise, specifically in the world in which we were going to be living, so industrial biotech and investors who shared some of the scars that we had had in the first gen as well. We think that's been an incredible differentiator and our success to date. So, we went with people who had the specific knowledge and the patient capital to be with us through the highs and the lows.
If you had asked me when we started this, what were some of the top challenges you would have expected, I can tell you things like a global pandemic followed by invasion in Eastern Europe, and then a bank run and shutdown would not have been on my list in 2017. You add all those on top of all the things you would have expected, and yeah, there's been some highs and lows over the last few years.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, it's funny, as I'm recording this podcast, obviously, I'm seeing you on Zoom, I'm also seeing your LinkedIn headshot. You all look pretty similar, but I'll say the person I'm talking to has been through a few world calamities since that LinkedIn headshot.
Matt Lipscomb:
It's been a bit, yeah.
Chris Wedding:
I like how you kept that PG, it's been a bit. There are some other letters you could add there I believe as well.
Matt Lipscomb:
Yeah. Indeed.
Chris Wedding:
You alluded to some of the lessons learned along the way perhaps, but maybe talk to us more about, what's been the hardest part of this process to get from the early investor out of the EU to where you all are right now?
26:55
Matt Lipscomb:
Growth is always a challenge, so this was something we learned and we did very poorly in our previous company. That step changed from low teens up to 40-ish people or so. The culture in the company just changes so dramatically and like I said, in a previous company, we were not intentional in it. It really did not go well. So, that's something we've been very, very intentional about. We are not perfect so we've made a few mistakes along the way there, but I would say that over the last eight months, we've tripled in head size so up to about 40 people. We're not perfect, but I would say it's gone much better than it has in the past. All the rowers are rowing in the same direction for the most parts, which was more than I could say for past experiences. Growth is always hard in those step changes and in that time.
Chris Wedding:
But Matt, just to dig in there, what does it mean to be more intentional? What are some systems or tools that you will use now to maintain, let's say, better culture and cohesion versus the first go around?
Matt Lipscomb:
I think having a plan, not only for the types of skill sets that you needed, but the types of personalities and being mindful and intentional in the culture that we wanted to create. So, we intentionally wanted to create a culture that was driven by science, that valued the scientific method and the rigor that has to come with that. As you go through a PhD program, you learn to get a thick skin. You learn to answer tough questions and look at that scientific rigor with welcoming arms because that makes everything better.
Well, for those who haven't been through a PhD program, that can be really off-putting. So, how do you create an environment where you can intellectually challenge the science without feeling like the people themselves are being challenged? How do you do good rigorous science, manage the conduct of that? It's not decision by consensus, but it's how do you build people along and give them the opportunity to be a part of the process, but at the same day, at the same point, somebody has to be responsible for making decisions? That's a really hard balance to achieve and one that we still struggle with, that all companies struggle with.
Then building in systems for whether it's communication, whether it's for reporting or design or vetting experimental results, vetting decision making, reducing how we work from what's in my head or Mike's head into something that everybody can actually be an active participant in.
Chris Wedding:
The part about the PhD training is like, look, I disagree with your scientific suggestion or next step or theory, but I like you as a person, Bob or Mary, right? It's just your idea, it's pretty bad.
Matt Lipscomb:
Exactly. Like I said, you learn to have some thick skin, which is good. You learn to be able to decouple the true science from taking it personally. So, how do you have the passion and the drive to get it done and to do it well, but also be willing to take the feedback that, okay, yeah, there was a flaw in this design or I could have done this better or whatnot? It's a hard balance.
Chris Wedding:
It is. Let's switch from the focus on DMC to the focus on you, Matt. So, let's picture you hanging out with the younger version of yourself, even younger than your LinkedIn, the profile photo. What's some advice you might give that person to be more effective, happier, et cetera, along the way?
Matt Lipscomb:
I would say don't skip the cross-training. I mean that in two senses of the word. On the physical side, athletic side, I think I've grown into a greater appreciation just of the merits of cross-training from whether it's weightlifting or whatever it is. If all you do is ski or ride your bike all day, it turns out you only end up working certain muscles. So, the importance of being durable and fit for a lifetime, I think is critical.
By analogy, then I would say on the intellectual side, don't skip the cross-training either. So, coming through a PhD program, you’re taught rigorous science and how to apply the scientific method and how to ask good questions, but you're not taught anything about leadership or how to interact with people. And it turns out that that's how everything gets done, especially as you go into managing the conduct of science as opposed to actually being a bench scientist yourself. So, learning how to interact and manage and lead and inspire people is not something they teach you in grad school and yet it's critical to be successful in anything that we do. So, don't skip the cross-training.
32:03
Chris Wedding:
I love the analogy and both interpretations are pretty important. I think back to my younger self where basically, a science major and two science minors, I’m thinking, “Come on, man, be more original. Couldn't you have gotten, I don't know, business or econ or something as a minor versus just science, science, science?” To be more versatile, to be more useful, to speak other languages essentially.
Matt Lipscomb:
Yeah, no, it's absolutely true.
Chris Wedding:
Now, we'll see when our oldest, who's 17, goes to college next year, whether he takes any advice from me or not, we'll see. It'll be a fun little experiment to run. How about on a daily or a weekly basis, Matt, what are some habits or routines, like detailed, that keep you healthy, sane, or focused?
Matt Lipscomb:
So, for me, it's all about movement. I got to get out and move. Whenever time will allow, that's getting into the mountains and that's seasonal. So, in the winter, it's definitely a time on skis downhill or earning my turns, climbing up and skiing down. Nordic skiing is fantastic. In the summertime, that looks more like rock climbing, so out moving on the rocks here in Boulder. This summer it's been more about the bike, so there's long miles. It's a moving meditation, if you will, on the bike. And if all else fails, turns out Boulder is a pretty special place, even just to go for a walk at the end of the day.
Chris Wedding:
So, you're taking your own medicine, your cross-training, it sounds like?
Matt Lipscomb:
Yeah.
Chris Wedding:
By the way, I just want to say for the record, you folks in Boulder have it totally unfair. I was there for the first time this summer and to have a place like Chautauqua Park right in town with the Flatiron, I mean, it's incredible spot.
Matt Lipscomb:
Yeah.
Chris Wedding:
Anyone in Boulder better be super fit because of Chautauqua Park alone I think.
Matt Lipscomb:
Oh, yeah. You don't have to worry about that. So, living in Boulder is also very, very humbling. There was an article in Climbing Magazine when I first moved here in the late 90s, and it was this Welcome to Boulder issue. It was the statement from the editor, again, based here in Boulder and the closing sentence of the article was, “So, welcome to Boulder where you will never ever be the best at anything that you do,” and that is so true.
There are world-class athletes all around and so a long time ago, I had to give up the ego like, I'm getting attacked on the bike on these hills by both teens and 70-year-olds, and they're both kicking my tail. I'm going to go out and I'm going to do the best I can and people are going to eat me for lunch and that's fine.
Chris Wedding:
Whatever it takes to kill the ego, man. That’s it, that’s what you should do.
Matt Lipscomb:
Yeah.
Chris Wedding:
How about books, podcasts? Maybe give us a few of those you recommend listeners pick up.
Matt Lipscomb:
Sure. So, something interesting that I picked up recently was, what was it? It was Peter Attia's podcast, I think he calls it The Drive. This was interesting because it came from this perspective of – He’s an MD, no longer practicing, but he took all his knowledge of medicine, and he's now applying it to this whole theory around longevity. I think what was interesting is he's not coming at it from, “Oh, I just want to live to be really, really old,” he's coming at it from the perspective of, “I want to live a really high-quality life and so, what do I need to do today to be able to do X when I'm 80 or 90 or whatever it is?”
So, think about like, well, if I want to be traveling when I'm 90, that means I need to be able to pick my suitcase up and put it in the overhead bin. So, what do you need to do today to ensure that? It was an interesting take on this idea of not just living long, but living a full life, ensuring you can do what you want to be able to do. He comes out of physical and physiological, mental, it's pretty fascinating.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah. You probably have seen this, but for listeners, he's written a book recently called Outlive and he compiles most of what he's learned in the podcast journey into one book. Great read. Both my wife and I have read it and a good reminder of what you just described. There's like three components. There's lifespan, how long will you live? There's healthspan, how long are you healthy? Ideally, till like a day before you peace out and then another one I came across recently, it’s called joyspan, are you happy? Are you joyful? I mean, look, obviously not every day, but can you be mostly joyful until you peace out? That's a little trickier, a little beyond the physiology there perhaps.
So, Matt, we're at the end here. Is there a parting piece of advice, call to action, whether it's broadly for biotech meets climate tech, whether it's specifically for your company? What do you want to leave listeners with?
37:05
Matt Lipscomb:
On the company side, yeah, I think it's stay tuned for more. We are working our way through the very long and torturous routes of corporate communications with some of our partners. At some point we will emerge from that process and we'll be able to share more, so stay tuned later this year. Then of course we're always looking for good people. We have a few job postings up, so have a look and come check us out.
Chris Wedding:
I have a strange feeling that those corporate communications are a reference to the earlier inability to disclose these key compounds and resonance you're working on.
Matt Lipscomb:
Indeed. They are.
Chris Wedding:
They sound transformational for sure. What kinds of talent skills are you after right now for job openings?
Matt Lipscomb:
Certainly, looking for technical talents. For those of you in the know, bioinformatics, but also some automation specialists as well, so think the folks who are driving the liquid handling robots, if you will.
Chris Wedding:
That's just what I was thinking, Matt. Hey, listen, glad that you and your partner are back at it again. The world needs you all to succeed, so no pressure, but rooting for your all success, Matt.
Matt Lipscomb:
Great, and thanks for having me today, Chris. I appreciate it.
Chris Wedding:
You got it.
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