The Entrepreneurs for Impact Podcast: Transcripts
#122
Insects for Alternative Protein, from Y Combinator to a Mississippi farm – Trina Chiasson, CEO of Ovipost
PODCAST INTRODUCTION
Chris Wedding:
My guest today is Trina Chiasson, Founder and CEO of Ovipost, a VC-backed insect protein company creating automation software and hardware in order to scale alternative proteins. Previously, Trina co-founded and sold a tech company, Infoactive, to Tableau Software. She wrote a juggling pattern notation app and used circus arts to teach physics to low-income students. And she rode her bicycle more than 4,000 miles on a self-supported adventure from Maine to Oregon to raise money for a nonprofit. So, she pretty much is the kind of person you want to invite to a party and be, I think, lifelong friends with. Yeah, she's pretty cool.
02:09
In this episode, we talked about the kind of person that wants to work with insect protein. By the way, the answer from their website and I quote, “Fanatical, insane people. We weren't built for normal life. We hate being bored and we love adventure. As a result, each of us wove a weird, windy path to Ovipost.” End quote, great writing. The surprising fact that 80% of cultures around the world eat bugs, yum. How finishing her undergraduate degree in two years relates to her path as an entrepreneur. The amazing growth rates of her bugs, 50X growth in five weeks.
How she pivoted from a pure tech company coming out of Techstars to a bug farm operator in Mississippi and Florida. The reasons they focus on crickets, aka the gateway insect, and superworms. Delicious. Why there is no single bug solution to insect protein. How I can relate to her work. Hint: Thai-flavored cricket legs washed down with coconut milk soup. Listen to hear more. Why her commitment to vegetarianism for 25 years is not at odds with running an insect protein company and a whole lot more. Hope you enjoy it and please give Trina and Ovipost a shout-out on LinkedIn, Slack, or Twitter by sharing this podcast with your people. Thanks.
PODCAST INTERVIEW
Chris Wedding:
Trina Chiasson, co-founder and CEO of Ovipost, welcome to the podcast.
Trina Chiasson:
Thank you. It's great to be here.
Chris Wedding:
I paused a little extra on your name after rehearsing it before pressing record a minute here. I tried to say it right. Anyway, the audience can be the jury here. I like to start off with interesting facts as listeners know, and thankfully you served those up on a nice platter for me in how you describe yourself and your company online. So, I'm going to read maybe like three different pieces from LinkedIn and your About Us page. Feel free to pick up on whatever thread you'd like to elaborate on.
04:21
Trina Chiasson:
Sounds great.
Chris Wedding:
So, the first is that you describe how you finished your undergrad, typically of course a four-year degree in just two years because you've always been a speed racer, which makes me very happy to read. I think about it as maybe tough in a world of building a company to solve climate change, which always feels like we're not moving fast enough. I'm going to give the listeners two more. On your About Us, you say, “All right, so bugs are great. What kind of people dedicate their lives to insect farming?” And your wonderful response, “Fanatical, insane people.”
Trina Chiasson:
That’s true.
Chris Wedding:
“We weren't built for normal life. We hate being bored. We love adventure and as a result, each of us wove a weird, windy path to Ovipost,” even alliteration built in there, beautiful. Then the last part, “We never use a 60-thousand-dollar solution for a 2-thousand-dollar problem. We are lean, resourceful, and a ton of fun at parties.” Great fodder there, Trina. Where would you like to pick up on that?
Trina Chiasson:
It's accurate. It's all accurate. No, we're a zany crew and you got to be when you're based in rural Mississippi and rural Florida. The only way that we can recruit people to come all the way from San Francisco to our tiny, little town in LaBelle is by being interesting and fun people, working on world changing problems. Making time to laugh and go on adventures and talk about bugs, so that's what we do.
Chris Wedding:
That's amazing. Okay, so give us the pitch. What is Ovipost?
Trina Chiasson:
Yeah, we're building automated insect farms. We're doing it because insects are the most efficient way to convert abundant and cheap byproducts into nutritionally dense protein. We’re using that as a replacement for animal meat in pet food and animal feed.
For me, it was really about first principles that insects are really incredible at converting those byproducts and waste streams, and it just made sense to me from that perspective. So, I've been following the industry for over 10 years and was curious enough to make the plunge.
Chris Wedding:
There’s a compost bin, a very large bin in my backyard. I've been a long-time composter, 25 years of experiments, some successful, some not. And some years ago, soldier flies discovered my compost bin and you know what happened. They took over and the whole surface, like three foot in diameter was covered in the larva. It was either the creepiest or most sci-fi thing that I'd seen in a long time.
When my kids saw it, they're like, “Daddy, something is wrong with your compost bin.” I read more about it and I was like, “No, actually it's pretty cool. They're devouring the food you should have eaten on your plate little Johnny, little Timmy.” Anyway, that's one firsthand experience. Did you consider soldier flies? I didn't see them on your website. Maybe let’s go broader. Of all these bugs that could turn organic waste into protein, how did you arrive on the ones you arrived at, let's say?
07:41
Trina Chiasson:
Yeah. Well, first off, that's an awesome story and I would argue that there's not something wrong with your compost bin. There's something right with it, so that's very cool. The way that we see it, it's not a one insect solution to insect agriculture. I actually believe firmly that the right solution is to have a little bit of variability in a few different species that can convert different materials. And black soldier fly is very good at converting wet waste, if you will. It was actually used a long time ago as a research organism in breaking down fecal matter. So, they have some pretty interesting feed stocks that they can consume.
Unfortunately, some of those feed stocks will not be approved as a feed ingredient from a regulatory perspective in the United States and Europe. However, we can get to that later. Mealworms have their own really awesome potential feed stocks that are potentially challenging from a regulatory perspective, such as Styrofoam and polystyrene plastics. They can actually break that down and digest it. Yeah, there's some really interesting research on that. That's our species.
We originally started out with crickets and the reason we chose crickets was because they have some of the highest protein content. And they're considered actually a gateway bug in the industry.
Chris Wedding:
Right.
Trina Chiasson:
Right? I'm sure you've seen or heard of cricket protein bars and cricket powder online, so it's the more consumer friendly bug at this point in time. However, they are very fussy as an insect. They require a lot of space. They need to spread out in harborage. They have a complex rearing cycle and the feed requirements that they have are a little bit higher end compared to black soldier fly or mealworms.
What's funny is that we actually have some experience rearing a number of different species. We started out growing bugs in shipping containers in San Francisco back in 2018 right after we went through Y Combinator. We had some engineers there, we had crickets in containers and then after about a year, we were running out of money and the opportunity came along to purchase a 35-year-old insect farm in LaBelle, Florida. So, we said, “All right, kids, we're going to Florida, get your bags,” and we moved the whole team down to Florida where they had been growing bugs for decades.
When we got there, they were actually growing five different species of insects. They were growing crickets, they were growing black soldier flies, they were growing yellow mealworms, they were growing superworms, and they were growing a type of cockroach called discoid. These bugs were going into the exotic pet industry. So, they had been grown commercially for many, many years. We actually dropped a couple of those species. We stuck with the crickets. We stuck with the superworms. We still have a very small discoid colony. I do love them and we dropped the black soldier flies and the mealworms, but we did have the opportunity to experience growing a few different species.
10:40
Now, the species that we're focused on is the superworm. We really love it because it's a nice mixture of a very high protein content, a really diverse diet, and a fast growth rate. Yeah, those are the reasons.
Chris Wedding:
So, that's all so interesting and I'm very serious when I say that as a recovering environmental science major from years ago. You mentioned crickets as the gateway bug and a really funny story about the human consumption of crickets. As you know, maybe some listeners, maybe some do, some don't, in places like Thailand, it is not uncommon to eat crickets.
When we were visiting many years ago, we were on this small island, not many tourists, we passed by a little local stand on the side of the road. They're selling fried bugs, very friendly, great salesmen. I mean, young dudes my age then and I agreed to try a fried mealworm and a fried cricket. It took a lot of very coconut milk rich Thai soup to wash those legs down, but they went down. Anyway, normal varies across the world is my point, I suppose.
Trina Chiasson:
Yeah, absolutely it does. It absolutely does. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, they had a report back in 2013 about edible insects and in that report, they say that 80% of cultures around the world eat insects regularly.
Chris Wedding:
Oh, my God.
Trina Chiasson:
Yeah, that's an interesting factoid that gets passed around on the internet now. So, it's not uncommon for humans to eat bugs. It's just uncommon for us to do so in the United States. However, we eat things like honey and lobster and shrimp and don't seem to think much of it. I do think that there are ways to prepare bugs that are perhaps a little bit more palatable than trying to wash down those spiny legs. We grind our crickets up into a powder and I throw a little bit into my smoothies and oatmeal every morning.
However, it's also worth noting that our primary market and target market is not the human food side. While we will sell insect products for human food because there is a market for it, there's a much bigger market right now in pet food. There's a huge movement for more sustainable dog and cat food and insects are an excellent component of that from a nutrition perspective, and also consumers have been shown to be very, very willing to feed insects to their dogs and cats.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, and for the audience to be clear, my story about eating cricket legs was not to say, humans can't eat insects, more like, that was a funny story way back then. But you're right, how it's prepared matters a lot. That's a crazy stat, 80% of civilizations, humans around the world consume insects. All right, consider me way more educated.
Okay, you alluded to a few things earlier around regulatory constraints around what you could feed the bugs that maybe we should come back to later, which is now. So, we heard about Styrofoam as well as feces. Those don't sound like great stories to tell for folks consuming the protein, but how does regulation enter into what you can feed the bugs, which become this much more energy climate efficient source of protein?
Trina Chiasson:
Sure. I mean, the gist of it is that insects are livestock. When we're growing them on the farm, they're considered livestock and livestock feed must be approved as a feed ingredient or the livestock consuming it. You can't just grind up nuts and bolts and feed that to your cows. It's not an approved feed ingredient for cows. So, there's a regulatory body called AAFCO that helps to define what things you can feed to animals.
14:37
While it's possible that at some point in the future, they might approve certain very oddball ingredients as animal feed, it is a constraint. You do have to do the studies and you have to assemble a panel of experts and you have to push it through a process, and that's all in the name of food safety.
Chris Wedding:
Thankfully, right? That sounds like a good protocol to have. We're careful about what we feed things, which we later eat. I'm looking at my notes here, maybe we should just back up one second. I think I'm jumping in assuming it's super obvious why somebody would grow bugs. You alluded to the fact that more owners of pets are interested in say lower carbon forms of food for their pets, but maybe just take us back to 30,000 feet. Why does alternative protein matter? Matter period, matter to you guys?
Trina Chiasson:
Sure, it's estimated that livestock are responsible for between 14 and a half and 18% of all greenhouse gases on our planet, so it's very significant. Livestock also require a very significant percentage of arable land, the land that we have to live on and grow crops. And so, to the extent that we can replace animal meat in various products with lower carbon alternatives, it's a benefit.
Insects are a very low carbon alternative in part because they're cold blooded. So, when you're feeding insects, they are converting that feed into biomass rather than spending their energy producing heat using that feed. So, they have a very favorable what we call feed conversion rate in the industry. Not only that, but they can accept lower quality feeds. So, as we mentioned with Styrofoam and fecal matter, those are extreme examples, but there are a lot of other byproducts that exist in abundance that we don't necessarily have great uses for.
For our farm in Florida, we feed our superworms some byproducts of the flour milling process and then we also go to, they call it a farmer's market. It's more like a produce redistribution center that's not too far from our Florida farm and we go and we pick up some pallets of junk veggies every week. These are veggies that would end up in the landfill, they’re just a little bit too junky to feed to humans. We'll bring those back and we'll feed those to our worms.
There are a lot of other side streams and byproducts, bakery waste, dried distillers, grains and solubles, it's a byproduct of the ethanol industry. So, insects are happy to eat some of these materials, but they also are more efficient at converting that into protein than warm blooded livestock.
Chris Wedding:
I can say I've not thought enough about insect-based protein, but I've never realized that one of the main reasons was they’re cold-blooded, not warm-blooded. That makes a ton of sense.
Trina Chiasson:
Definitely. Then beyond that, they also are very, very fast growing. Our bugs will grow 50 times their weight in five weeks. They can grow in dark environments. They grow in compact spaces and they require very minimal water resources.
17:48
Chris Wedding:
Yes, okay. Let's go back to the feed for a second. Those are waste like biomass, organic content type products, would those normally go to a landfill? And if so, is there some story around they're not in the landfill, therefore, they're not methane, therefore your proteins even better from a climate perspective? Or is that too much of a reach?
Trina Chiasson:
It depends. Some of those materials might end up in pig feed. Some of them might end up in the dumpster. Some of them might end up in compost piles. Some of them might be shipped overseas. It really depends, but overall, I'd say that we are not using our waste streams and byproduct streams as efficiently as we could to generate more food for people.
Chris Wedding:
Okay, awesome. Going back a little bit, you mentioned that the reason you-all are based in Mississippi and Florida is that you acquired a decades old insect farming business in Mississippi. You also mentioned that you were running out of money in San Fran. How did you find the money to buy the facility? Whatever you can share around that transaction would be interesting.
Trina Chiasson:
Sure. We were going to, we would have run out of money if we had stayed in San Francisco forever. We had to generate revenue. We had to test what we were doing at commercial scale. So, we had the resources to be able to make that transaction happen, but I don't think we would be doing as well as we are today if we had not learned from those decades’ old facilities.
Chris Wedding:
Got it and if you can or want to say, in a transaction like that, is it part owner financing, where they're being paid back over time so you don't so much need to go out and get, say, debt to buy, part of the consideration to buy the business?
Trina Chiasson:
Yeah, it was pretty minimal. Business was failing. It was a failing insect farm in Florida and for that reason, there wasn't a large cost associated with acquiring it. It was really helpful for us to take over that facility A, because we needed to test what we were working on at a larger scale, but B, it's incredibly helpful to learn why commercial insect farms might not be doing well. To learn from those 35 years of experience, I can confidently say saved us a lot of time and money.
Chris Wedding:
Wow. What was an example or two of why either that business was failing or any insect growing business would fail?
Trina Chiasson:
The commercial insect industry in the United States has been around for about 70 years. A lot of people don't realize that.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah.
20:30
Trina Chiasson:
It started in the fish bait industry originally supplying crickets to recreational fishers and then in the 90s, Jurassic Park came out, it became cool for 12-year-olds to have bearded dragons. There was this huge surge in lizards and reptiles and exotic animals, and then the insect industry grew from there. So, you have a lot of farms in the United States that have been around for a very long time.
It's a very, very labor-intensive process the way that insect farming has existed in the United States for 70 years. So, margins are good some years and then in some years, you might have a disaster. There are a number of commercial insect farms that have suffered from building fires or infrastructure just aging out over time, or just struggling with operational complexity.
Sometimes a new manager will come in, or a new owner will come in and they just struggle to make sure that the balls that need to stay in the air aren’t getting dropped. It's an extraordinarily complex operation and so there are a lot of different areas where you could have catastrophic failures. Some farms have gone under because of disease or pathogens or pests. So, there's a lot of different things that can go wrong on an insect farm.
Chris Wedding:
Wow. Okay. You-all’s specific angle though here is to automate the insect farming to try and remove some of the reasons that businesses would fail, the insects wouldn't have the right conditions to grow. Maybe just say more about how you all do what you do, Trina.
Trina Chiasson:
Sure. We think of automation, not necessarily as inserting robot arms, but more as removing labor. As you mentioned in the very beginning, when we can figure out a cheap way of removing labor, we'll do that. Our approach involves combining hardware and software and biology. And thinking through how other agricultural industries have achieved low labor conditions, we look to the poultry industry, we look to aquaculture, and of course, we look to old commercial insect farms who have needed to stay alive for 30 plus years with very few resources.
So, we hire entomologists, we hire engineers, and it's a matter of stitching together these various disciplines to really explore the outer boundaries of what we know about these species and how to grow them at scale.
Chris Wedding:
I'm trying to think about the customer perspective. Some of the customers are customers that have been buying insects for a long time. Some of the customers are just now considering buying insects for the first time. Maybe with that latter category, as you're trying to open up new markets for folks, maybe in the pet food industry or animal feed industry, what are some of the pushbacks, the concerns and how do you address those to get to a yes?
Trina Chiasson:
Sure. In the pet food industry, say dog and cat food, concerns are around price and supply. Those are the two big ones. There are some regulatory concerns for some larger players. Those issues are being worked through, but it doesn't matter what happens with the regulatory if you can't get the supply side right. And so, that's why we are investing so heavily in figuring out how to scale insect farming and cut costs. Is that these very large players, if Purina or Mars wanted to launch a cricket-based dog food or a superworm-based dog food right now, they would have a tough time sourcing that material in North America. We need to figure out how to scale these insects efficiently in order to build that market.
24:13
Chris Wedding:
Okay. You mentioned this boundary of North America. Globally, where are most insects produced or maybe it's the most insects produced of your kind, let's say, that you grow?
Trina Chiasson:
There are larger insect farms in Southeast Asia and China for sure.
Chris Wedding:
And buyers like Purina as an example, but that kind of category, would they typically be buying inputs to their pet food from overseas? I presume yes, but don't know.
Trina Chiasson:
It depends. There are definitely a number of brands that really want to have locally sourced ingredients. Freight is also expensive, so if you can get the same product for a reasonable price without needing to deal with international supply chains, that's always a benefit.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, maybe even more of an interest post-COVID, I suppose, yeah?
Trina Chiasson:
Definitely.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah. You mentioned the word investing, so tell us about either how you've used outside capital, YC, [inaudible – 00:25:17], others, versus revenue to grow the way you want to grow.
Trina Chiasson:
Sure. We've used both. We brought in some funding from investors and we've probably brought in just as much from our own revenue. Our revenue has really helped us to be able to grow at commercial scale and learn from growing at commercial scale at an early stage without running out of money. So, it's been really instrumental for us. It's a big part of our strategy is bringing in that early revenue with these early markets.
We've also brought in a little bit of money from grants from the USDA. Yeah, I believe pretty much all from the USDA, but yeah, we've stitched together a number of different revenue and funding sources.
Chris Wedding:
Got it. Flashing forward five years, pick a number, do you imagine that you're just selling a much, much higher volume for animal feed and for pet food? Or is your vision let’s say, again, I'm making up a number in year five, that yes, it's those two things, but it's also more ground up say, cricket powder or other things to put in food for human consumption?
Trina Chiasson:
We think of our markets in a lily pad methodology. I think of it as lily pads where we're hopping from market to market. As we cut costs and scale production, we can hop to the next lily pad. And the lily pad we're on right now is live insects in the exotic pet space. The lily pad we're hopping to now, which we already started working on a little bit is the dog and cat food market. Actually, on that lily pad, I include the human food market. We do plan to launch a food grade product this year, so that's in the next lily pad. Then lily pads after that would be high-end poultry, high-end aquaculture and then the final lily pad would be just replacing fish meal in conventional aquaculture.
27:16
Chris Wedding:
Okay. All right. Well, I think the area that most listeners are intrigued by is the human food piece. You mentioned earlier, cricket powder sprinkled in smoothies or going into certain health bars, et cetera, where's most insect protein going today that humans consume and where would you hope it goes in your lily pad plan here?
Trina Chiasson:
Most of it's going to other countries. Definitely in other countries, they're more open to it. It's more of a common ingredient. Here in the United States, insect powder, you can buy it on Amazon and you can sprinkle it in your smoothies or your oatmeal or put it in your baked goods. But I don't think it's an ingredient that most Americans use on a regular basis. It's still quite expensive and again, that's based around the supply and the scale of our insect industry right now.
But we would hope to release an insect powder more than likely later this year. It could be used for those products. It's especially popular among demographics that care about health, nutrition, exercise. Think of people that are buying whey protein that don't want whey protein, that's the market.
Chris Wedding:
And so, those folks would not want whey protein because it's animal-based or cow-based or other amino acid composition or whatnot?
Trina Chiasson:
Yeah. The nutritional content of insect protein is very, very high. It has a lot of iron and B12 and various vitamins in addition to an extremely high protein content, and some people prefer that.
Chris Wedding:
Okay. I'm going to try a little experiment, Trina. So, our two oldest kids, they're both teenagers. They're boys and they're on this path to get shredded, to get really muscular. Good for them. Be healthy. So, they're like down in the way of protein and such. I was like, “Guys, you know, protein from insects, it's got all that stuff plus lots of vitamins and minerals.” Maybe I should record their expression, right?
Trina Chiasson:
Yes.
Chris Wedding:
Record it now versus in five years when it's much more normal. Yeah, I'm thinking stuff that you guys are doing.
Trina Chiasson:
Yeah, I think the important thing here is that we're not trying to force anyone to eat bugs. If it's something that you're excited about, then go for it, but no one's shoving it down your throat. There are plenty of people that are interested in it without needing to do that push.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, well, for the thousands listening, just to be clear, I'm open to eating a bug protein at that time.
30:00
Hey, it's Chris. Just a brief message from our sponsors and we'll get back to the show. Just kidding, we don't take sponsors. On the other hand, I do have the privilege of leading the only executive peer group community for growth stage, CEOs, founders, and investors fighting climate change. With monthly group meetings, annual retreats, and one-on-one executive coaching calls, our members help each other boost revenue, impact, capital raised, clarity, confidence, work-life balance, and team effectiveness. Today's 30 plus members represent over $8 billion in marketing cap for assets under management for climate solutions. If you're interested, go to entrepreneursforimpact.com and join the waiting list today. All right, back to the show.
Let's transition as we do, Trina, from the business to the person that is leading the business. So, tell us something that you strongly believe in, and this can be about business or even more interesting, not about business.
Trina Chiasson:
I’m a strong advocate of data accuracy. I don't know if you saw it, my background, I was in the data space for a while before and big fan of just allowing science to guide my decision making. Actually, on this point, I have a major pet peeve when it comes to insect protein marketing materials, which is that often you'll see infographics on the web about cricket protein, for example, and they'll have exaggerated protein content. They'll say things like, “Cricket powder 65% crude protein and beef at 20%.” Then they'll have this claim, “Three times more protein than beef,” and it's technically true, but it's egregiously misleading.
The reason is that cricket powder has had all the moisture removed and the reference beef product still has high water content. And so, if you're comparing the raw unprocessed biomass from each of the species, the protein content is actually probably equivalent. So, my perspective is of course, that insect protein is a slam dunk from a sustainability perspective and that we don't need to exaggerate the protein claims in order for it to be awesome for the many reasons that it's awesome. And so, I'm a big fan of making sure that people have accurate information so that they can make informed decisions.
Chris Wedding:
You know, all for dead accuracy. Also, you said it well, like, insect-based protein doesn't need to be better from a protein perspective than normal protein. It's just a substitute in many uses. Your path to Ovipost was not like an entomologist or something. Your prior company was in the data visualization software acquired by Tableau. Maybe tell us how you went from one to the other, Trina.
Trina Chiasson:
Sure. I had a great time at Tableau. I had a great time with my first startup and I loved the database space. I was at Tableau for about a year and a half after the acquisition and great team, great people, but I was just really getting the itch to start something new. Maybe try my hand at doing something a little more physical, getting out of the software space. So, when I left Tableau, I knew I wanted to do something different. I didn't know what it was.
33:20
I had been following insect protein as a side interest for over a decade. I don't remember where it first crossed my radar, but it just clicked and made sense as soon as I heard of it. I've actually been a vegetarian for about 25 years, so alternative protein has always been something that's interesting to me and people think it's weird. They say, “Wait, you're a vegetarian, but you run a livestock company?” Yes, yes, I do. It aligns with my values for a lot of different reasons.
But when I left Tableau, first I wanted to figure out whether or not this was actually an idea that was worth pursuing. So, I moved to New York and I actually started working on an art project in collaboration with Gorilla Science, which is a nonprofit that uses interactive art and immersive theater as a vehicle for science education. I was building what we call the [inaudible – 00:34:08], which is an edible insect diner and experience station with a menu of different insect experiences that customers or any random participant could walk up to this bar.
We took this event, or I'd say this interactive science art project to a number of different fairs and festivals. It was a lot of fun. There's actually an academic paper written about how to change people's minds through immersive experiences and science education. So, it's a lot of fun, but I spent that summer really designing this art. I was a visiting scientist at the American Museum of Natural History, hanging out in the Invertebrate Zoology Department with a bunch of leech scientists. It was really fun.
Chris Wedding:
As one does.
Trina Chiasson:
As you do. Yeah, exactly and I really spent a lot of time reading the academic literature and making phone calls and really trying to understand, is this an idea worth pursuing? I don't want to dedicate my life to it if there's something wrong here. I don't understand if it's such an obvious thing, why is it not already being done? But at the end of that summary, I came to the conclusion that there was a huge opportunity for insect protein. It wasn't being done because it was a chicken and egg thing, but there was no meaningful market for insects because they didn't exist at a scale and price point where they could be used. And no one was investing in the R&D to figure out how to scale them cost effectively because there wasn't a market for it. So, I thought, “Well, maybe I can interrupt this and do something about it.” And so, that's where we got started.
Chris Wedding:
Wow. I like that part where you said, “Look, yeah, vegetarian for 25 years and yeah, this is not at odds with those goals.” I was a vegetarian for many years. I'm like a vegetarian in terms of a southerner for sure. Although, if there's enough labels on the meat, my family and I, we still normally eat it. I'm outnumbered, let's say, in the house of five around food choices, but that's well said. At your American Museum of, was it history or natural history? Sorry.
Trina Chiasson:
Yeah.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah. It sounds almost like you were an entrepreneur in residence almost where you had a chance to explore what's new, what's next, surrounded by all this scientific intel, which sounds like a pretty fun place to be to hatch a new idea.
36:38
Trina Chiasson:
Oh, it was a lot of fun. Yeah, leech parasitologists are big nerds. They're great. They had leech themed throw pillows on their couches and their mini fridge filled with a thing of ketchup and a thing of mustard and then jars of leeches, all jars of leeches.
Chris Wedding:
Oh, my goodness.
Trina Chiasson:
It's really fun.
Chris Wedding:
All right. How about if you could give your younger self some advice, Trina, on how to be more effective, happier, faster, et cetera, on this journey, what might you tell her?
Trina Chiasson:
I don't know if my younger self would listen, but I would say to slow down a little bit. You really need to think of a startup. You'd think that this is the second startup and I would have figured it out on the second one, but I just get so excited about things. It's really easy to start sprinting in the very beginning rather than giving yourself like a nice jogging pace. What I mean by that is really taking time for the things that everyone says you should do, exercise and meditate, eat well and spend time with people and have a hobby sometimes.
It's so easy to get so excited and just start sprinting and of course, that always, often leads to burnout and just challenges down the road. So, younger self-advice is slow down and take care of yourself a little bit.
Chris Wedding:
Yeah, I was reading something today which said something like, “If you don't make time,” in this case it was for personal development, “you will make time for pain and struggle later.” Similar vein, if you don't make time for those things now, you will make time for other things which are less enjoyable down the road.
Trina Chiasson:
It's true.
Chris Wedding:
On that theme, tell us a few habits or routines that do help keep you healthy, sane and focused on your second entrepreneurial journey.
Trina Chiasson:
Yeah, I follow all the classic advice. I exercise, I meditate, I eat well, I carve out time for people I love, I maintain hobbies. In my case, I'm part of the Jackson Juggling Club. I'll take my juggling clubs to the park on Saturdays and we'll pass clubs. It's really fun, but actually, my most sacred ritual is my morning coffee. I always take 15 minutes in the morning to sit with a warm beverage while not doing anything else, nothing else on my schedule. Usually sitting on the porch listening to birds, watching the clouds and just having that one peaceful moment in the day where there's nothing else going on. That's what I do.
Chris Wedding:
I like how you said it, like it's not revolutionary. It's not a deprivation tank therapy or something. It’s the basics.
Trina Chiasson:
Yes.
39:10
Chris Wedding:
Your exercise, so what's your exercise look like?
Trina Chiasson:
When I'm lucky, I have a gym membership, but when I'm in Canton, Mississippi, not so much. I go running and then when it gets too hot to run, I do yoga. I got really into, oh my goodness, what's his name? P90X. It's from the 90s. It's these exercise videos from the 90s that are really intense and they're hilarious and they're fantastic.
Chris Wedding:
Is it where you have to stop from laughing while you're doing the exercises sometimes?
Trina Chiasson:
Yeah, a little bit. Yeah.
Chris Wedding:
Nice. How about recommendations, Trina, books, podcasts, tools, quotes that you think listeners may benefit from?
Trina Chiasson:
I'm a really big fan of the book Sapiens by Noah Yuval Harari. I know a lot of people have read it before, but it's great. It's amazing to just zoom out on how our species got to where we are and really place my current actions into that perspective of, I'd say, a much broader time horizon. I find that really inspiring and interesting. So, that's one of my favorite books. I read a lot of nonfiction and listen to a lot of audio books.
As for tools, I like TextExpander. I don't know if you're familiar with it. It's a software application. It lets you make keyboard shortcuts for various text content. Your phone numbers, addresses, EIN numbers, bios, email blurbs, et cetera, et cetera, just saves you a lot of time. It's a simple tech hack, but I use it every day and it's awesome.
Chris Wedding:
I figured when I mention tools, you would have a good one, which is true, you did. I like that. Trina, any final words to listeners, the kinds of customers or future employers, or type of investor, let's say that you want to hear from in the months to come?
Trina Chiasson:
Yeah, I'd say that we're going to be looking at some additional engineers in the not-too-distant future. These engineers are not people that want to sit in an air-conditioned room all day doing CAD. These are people that lace up their farm boots and they put on their gloves and they're not afraid to have insect poop on their circuit boards, that's part of the game. So, that's the type of person that we're looking for is someone really farm-y that understands how to work with physical things and is excited about working with bugs.
Then of course we'll be hiring in other roles as well. Passion is really big and important for us. We're building a culture of people that work really hard, but are excited about the project. So, if you're someone crazy like us and want to play with bugs all day, then we'd love to hear from you.
Chris Wedding:
An engineer who can lace up their boots and work with bug poop on their circuit board, what a great line. Yeah. It'd be hard to know that's not you on the issue, I suppose, when you read the job description.
41:59
Trina Chiasson:
Yeah.
Chris Wedding:
Awesome. Hey, Trina, we're rooting for the success of Ovipost. Good to talk to you.
Trina Chiasson:
Awesome. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
Chris Wedding:
Thanks for listening and if you want more intel on climate tech, better habits and deep work, then join the thousands of others who have subscribed to our Substack newsletter at entrepreneursforimpact.com or drop me a note on LinkedIn. All right. That's all y'all. Take care.
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