Ryan Bethencourt: This is the Future of Dog Food
Species Unite
elizabeth novogratz
5.0 • 911 Ratings
🗓️ 22 October 2020
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
"…when I say people had no idea, these were investors, right? These were people who thought they had a crystal ball on the future. And I was like, look, our world has to change for so many reasons. The fact that we're slaughtering animals and doing so in really horrific ways, that is not the future.
And so, if that is not the future, what is? It's embracing biotech, it's embracing food science, it's embracing the things that will remove these animals and the environmental impact of this out of the system." - Ryan Bethencourt
30 percent of the meat consumed in the United States is eaten by our pets.
That is a staggering number. Ryan Bethencourt thought so too, which is why is doing something about it.
Ryan is the founder and CEO of Wild Earth, a sustainable, meat-free alternative to dog food. It's the Beyond Meat for dogs. You may have seen Ryan pitch it on Shark Tank – not only did the Sharks taste his dog treats, Mark Cuban invested.
Ryan is a scientist, entrepreneur, and a biotech investor. He has led, built and advised more than 80 companies, including: Shiok Meats, Memphis Meats, Geltor, New Wave Foods, Clara Foods, and Finless Foods.
He co-founded IndieBio, the world's leading biotech accelerator and was head of Sciences for the XPRIZE Foundation. He's currently a partner at Babel Ventures, a consumer biotech fund.
Ryan believes that using biology as technology will solve some of the world's most intractable problems.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | And so I started to think about it. I was like, is that a, is there like a post-vegan world where it's like people no longer identify it's just like, why would you eat a slaughtered animal? Like that doesn't make any sense. And I was like, huh, it's probably a world where we have a bunch of breweries and different |
| 0:16.1 | proteins come out of the brewery and people have different taste preferences and it's like we no longer |
| 0:21.7 | have to say vegan or not vegan, we just say, well, you know, what's the cell line? Hi, I'm Elizabeth Novigrats. This is Species Unite. We have a favor to ask if you like |
| 0:40.6 | today's episode and you have a spare minute, |
| 0:43.8 | could you please rate and review Species Unite |
| 0:46.5 | on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to Podcasts. |
| 0:50.8 | It really helps people to find the show. |
| 0:56.0 | Today's conversation is with Ryan Bethancourt. |
| 1:00.0 | Ryan is the founder and CEO of Wild Earth Dog Food. |
| 1:03.8 | He's also one of the founders of the biohacker movement, |
| 1:06.9 | a biotech entrepreneur, and a biotech investor. |
| 1:10.2 | He has led, built, and advised more than 80 startups, including Memphis Meats, Clara Foods, and Geltor. |
| 1:16.0 | He co-founded Indie Bio, the world's leading biotech accelerator, |
| 1:20.0 | and was head of sciences for the X Prize Foundation. |
| 1:23.4 | He's currently a partner at Babel Ventures, a consumer biotech fund. |
| 1:27.7 | He believes that using biology as technology |
| 1:31.1 | will solve some of the world's most intractable problems. Hi Ryan, thank you. Thanks for having me on. Really excited. |
| 1:43.0 | Hey, so before we get into everything, Thank you. Thanks for having me on. I'm really excited. |
| 1:53.0 | Hey, so before we get into everything that you do and there's so many things, I want to talk about |
| 1:58.3 | pet food in the United States especially and the numbers. |
| 2:02.6 | Will you talk about, first of all, |
| 2:05.0 | how much meat our pets are eating? |
... |
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