The Future of Lab-Grown Milk, Chat with Fengru Lin

Yasi: Hi Fengru, welcome to the Fast track podcast. 

Fengru Lin: Hi, thanks for having me. 

Yasi: And I know that you have a career background, always being corporate sales.

So at Salesforce and the Google, how did you ended up studying and running a milk tech company? It’s kind of random, but I want to hear the story. 

Fengru Lin: Sure. So, I’ve always worked for tech companies, always love cutting edge technology. but another side of me, is I like to make cheese. So a few years ago, I started on a big cheese journey.

I even went up to Vermont, which is upstate New York to learn how to make cheese. So I know what good Milk looks like. I know, like with cheese, how should it perform? So when I came back to Singapore, I wanted to replicate those processes. So in order to make good cheese, I needed to have good access with broad milk.

So I went around the region. I was in Indonesia. I was in Thailand trying to look for different sources of milk, but soon I was exposed to things like contract farming to antibioticst and hormones that are being, coming to the cows. As a result, the milk quality is always suffering. It’s not as good. So I give up that whole cheese hobby and back then I was still working for Google.

And that was when I met my co-founder max. He was the CEO of a different tech company back then. And he was at Google. He was in my office sharing about different technologies, like, Memphis meats, BluNalu. These are cell-based meat companies using cells to make meat and seafood. So after the talk, I went to him and asked him that there’s similar methods to make milk back then there were no other companies doing it.

So we started to do a lot of research around this area. We pulled in some scientists, friends. And last year we managed to make some breakthroughs. We found our patterns and this year we’re just scaling the company. 

Yasi: And so your company is called turtle tree. Wha why is this name? 

Fengru Lin: Sure. So the turtles and trees are symbols of longevity and, we believe in the longevity of the animals and the earth.

And if you look at, our logo, it looks like the cross-section of a tree, or it looks like a thumbprint. So it symbolizes man’s print on nature. And in similar fashion, we are working on innovations to extract the best nutrition from nature. Hmm, 

Yasi: that’s very nice name and I like it because sounds very cute.

And then people can remember it. And then when you, when you think about lab grown milk and it’s called turtle tree, there is kind of like connection, it’s all about nature animals. 

Fengru Lin: Yeah, that’s right. And we really want people to be able to recognize the logo, recognize the brand and associate it with how, how milk can be sourced in different methods about sustainability, about circular economy.

So we really want to be able to connect with these values that we want to bring across. 

Yasi: And to tell the audience about turtle tree. Do you produce milk from your lab and then sell it directly to supermarket? Or do you sell the technology or exactly? What is your business model? 

Fengru Lin: So, we, we are able to, create milk using cells and this method of creating milk.

we don’t plan to go to market with our own turtle tree products. We want to be able to work with the major diary processes to measure diary brands ranging from Dannon, Nestle Abbott to Fonterra. To partner up with them to allow them an alternative source of milk, rather than working with farms or as an alternative to farms, or we want to be a technology that these companies can tap on to be able to feed the next billion people coming onto this planet.

Yasi: And do you see there’s a trend in demand for lab grown products? For example, like in the US beyond meat has gone crazy in the market. And what do you think about the future of lab produce 

Fengru Lin: products?

Sure. So, let me, let me find it like a little bit, of how this whole industry is with regards to the different players.

So we have these folks like beyond meat and impossible. these are really plant-based meat products, where they take extracts of plants, press into a petty. and really the whole thing is plant based, but it tastes exactly like. Beef a 40 cell based meat industry. We’re talking more about companies like Memphis meats and BlueNalu, and most, and, Ela farms.

So these companies are, getting cells from cows or from seafood itself, multiplying the cells to a large number, pressing these into a petty and eating it. So it would have a nutritional content. just like beef because it’s using actual beef cells, just not grown from, the beef, the cow body. but instead in a bio-reactor, so there’s a little bit of a difference.

Currently the trend is, let’s focus directly on, on milk itself. We do see a lot of, plant based milk products, gaining a lot of traction on the field. We’ve got almond milk. We’ve got oatly, and it’s a great, because it helps to replace, bovine milk for drinking milk. So you can have oatly with your coffee, you can have only for breakfast, but when it comes to making high value Davy products like cheese, butter, yogurt, you would need the entire composition of milk and not plant-based milk.

Plant base, cheese, butter, and yogurt. Usually don’t taste or perform as lucky, like bovine, cheeses. so you really need the entire composition directly, which is very similar to, to what comes out of a cow, which is why we adopt, our method, which is cell base. Generally what we’re doing is we are creating the factory that creates the milk, using the same cells that creates milk from inside the memo, just taking it out and growing it to a large number.

In, in a, in a bio-reactor environment, outside of the memo. So there is a trend, of, of interest in the VC world, for cell base milk and cell-based meat, just because nutritionally, it’s a lot more closer to, real meat than if it’s plant based. at the same time, all of these service may companies are still, either in manufacturing skill or in R and D.

There is, there’s a bit of a, this a while before the first products go to market. but people are Memphis meats of one leading the way, for, for this entire industry, they are claiming that, even as early as next year, they will have a product to market. 

Yasi: Right. Yeah. And also, as you mentioned oatly watch a documentary about how Ali went crazy in the recent years.

And there is a consistency in this liquid. That’s why people like it, especially from the, for the coffee shops, but what you mentioned, the, the complete composition of the milk that is needed to produce cheese and milk based product it’s some other replacement cannot do that. 

Fengru Lin: Absolutely. 

Yasi: And what, what had the biggest challenge in your Turtle Tree journey so far?

Fengru Lin: So I think, some of the earlier challenges, that we had was that, my co-founder and I max and I, we are not necessarily scientists. So we do have a lot of, a lot of, investors or people from the industry coming to us and ask us, you’re not scientists. What business do you have running a science company?

And I think, after almost two years now. it is precisely because we’re not scientists. We are able to have a wider range of understanding of different technologies, and we are able to pull them into our business to help us accelerate some of the R and D that we’ve been doing. So, we’re not married or attached to a single technology in st.

We are very. Business focused. we are end result driven. So we would use whatever means necessary, whatever technology necessary to be able to help the country. 

Yasi: Yup. Then you turned this disadvantage into advantage. 

Fengru Lin: Yeah. Yeah. Well, we it’s, it’s about, making use of what we have and what we know and because, we’re not scientists.

So our scientist friends are actually really open to, to share with us about the different technologies that you’re working on to help us, give us ideas and brainstorm. So now, even now we have some investors like green Monday who have expressed a lot of confidence in our leadership. 

Yasi: And at the beginning, do you already, when you work with a partner like co-funder max, do you already have sort of prototype or MVP of this technology or you worked it together and develop it later on?

Fengru Lin: Yeah, we, we had to, I mean, initially we had to bring in some scientists who’ve had previous experience that was relevant to what we’re doing. but everything, all the IP that, the team has built has been built, with, during the employment interview three. So we, we were the ones who develop a lot of the IP that we filed.

Yasi: And did you sell fund at the beginning or did you already have some investors right at the beginning? 

Fengru Lin: Yeah. I mean, from the start, we knew that we had to put in some of our own money, to reach a certain point before it makes sense to bring in money from investors. So right from the start max and I put in half a million dollars of our own money, to, to bring that company, to bring our company to that certain point.

Yasi: What kind of confidence did you have to put so much money in the company at the beginning? What makes you to make that decision? 

Fengru Lin: For me, it’s about, the timing and also the opportunity to, to make a difference. We are at a point in time where biotech business and consumer acceptance has reached a convergence point.

Where the technology is allowing us to do a lot of special things, through biologics, through cell engineering, through even, big data to make decisions a lot faster, to optimize our whole process. at the same time with the success of impossible and beyond people are getting more and more aware of what you’re consuming.

They are making a conscious decision, to, to consume things that would not harm the environment, especially for the younger generation. They are the ones who are going to make a change who want to make a change, because they they’ve seen how terrible the environment is sustainability challenges. and the consumer is pushing us, to come up more and more on new technologies to help alleviate those problems.

Yasi: Yeah. And it, as you mentioned, this is like you call this as an alternative protein industry. Right? What do you think? How would the industry be in the next few years? 

Fengru Lin: Sure. So I think, the industry will be, celebrating, salivating towards, alternatives.

it could be alternative proteins, it could be alternative nutrition. So some of the, interesting things that we observe, infant nutrition companies or specialized nutrition companies adopting is ingredients that are not just good for calories. But ingredients that are actually good for functional development, things like brain growth, gut development, and these things, can be sourced through certain special molecules that can be found in stuff like human milk.

So complex sugars, bioactive proteins. This can be found in human milk and have been known to, to help, survey some of the development for babies, geriatric care and lots of different applications. And, all partners are very interested in exploring these areas. 

Yasi: And recently years have been so many, see, so many different alternative foods.

Let’s say, for example, right now I’m using Hugh. I don’t know if you have heard about it. It’s like UK based company. They produce like a powders, but then you just need to put water and shake it and then you replace meal. But this is, this is for people I think is good that people do not have a lot of time nowadays.

They’re always in a rush and then you still get all the nutritions. And as you mentioned beyond meat, impossible. Like so many options nowadays. 

Fengru Lin: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Are a lot of options now. And I think, one thing I want to highlight is these options are great, but if you’re talking about the $700 billion dairy industry, most of it is propped up by the high value byproducts, like cheese, butter, and yogurt.

and, and it will be difficult to, to replace diary for those high value products. And we still need to be able to use technology to continue providing people what you’re used to. 

Yasi: And do you have any competitors in the market right now? 

Fengru Lin: Yes. So, interestingly, just last week, this new Israeli company that came out doing quite similar things and before that, Earlier in the year, we have another company, based out of North Carolina that also came out.

we do expect, more competitors to come out onto the field with cell base milk. but we, we are very confident that we are ahead of the game. We do have a lot of collaborations. we have accelerated of progress over the past two years, and we it’s good. It’s good to create, a sector. So, so far we’ve created a category.

And, we, we believe we need more folks on the market to be able to support, the food that people need to consume. 

Yasi: Yeah. And also grow the category together. Is there any difference that you see in demand lab grown milk, from Europe to North America, Asia, do you see any differences in demand?

Fengru Lin: So I think, the. I would say less talk about, less about the demand, but more about the regulations, just because. the regulations would determine what kind of parks can be released in the market. So when it comes to the cell base, food products, Asia is actually pretty, advanced and pretty open.

we’re working very closely with the Singapore food agency, to update them about our process, our progress. And, once we, we do have a product ready. we do expect Singapore to be very supportive in that area. And with regards to North America as well, in the us, we we’ve heard that, cell based meat companies are making a lot of progress with the FDA, with regards to Europe, they, they are a little bit more conservative, but, we, we do expect, Singapore and the us to be the first, the first markets to launch.

Yasi: Yeah. And also, I think I read a news or watch a documentary for even in Dubai, in the region, there is very difficult to raise cows and to produce a lot of milk. I’m sure there could be a lot usage there. 

Fengru Lin: Yeah, absolutely. 

Yasi: And I want to touch on, about your entrepreneurial journey a little bit. 

So since you started, beginning of your company till now, like how, how long is it?

Fengru Lin: it’s been almost two years now. 

Yasi: Okay. That’s pretty fast. And then how did you manage to progress so fast by developing the technology securing funding? What do you think that you do or you have done correctly to help you progress so fast? 

Fengru Lin: So I think, for me coming from SMU, we, we are taught to be, To be business leaders and to be able to activate the right resources to help support our growth.

So, one thing that we did very early on is set up the right systems and processes to onboard new scientists, new team members. At, at a fast speed. So we set up a CRM system, we’ve set up a system called Benchling, which is an online cloud system that allows all the scientists to upload their experiments as well as their results, onto a single platform.

So as, as we grow our science team, as we start collaborating with different collaborators, say with universities in Netherlands universities in the US. We, we have a single view of, where everyone is at and we would project manage the whole thing. a lot more seamlessly, on top of that, the usual project management tools.

And another thing is we. Once what my Ma and I do quite well is we’ve recognized that as founders of the company, we need to be able to internalize certain tasks pretty well. But once we do something really well, either finance, Pitch decks, planning, strategy planning. Once we do something pretty well, we will get our teammates, to, to take on these tasks, so that we can continue to grow the company and think about, how to strategize for the next step.

So I think, being able to pass on the knowledge and coach, our team is something that, we we’ve done pretty well. And of course, bringing on the right talent. It’s so important. We have an amazing team across, six different, smaller teams, and all of them are working in parallel to meet certain milestones, that, that we’ve planned out.

Yasi: And how many people are working in Turtle Tree now?

Fengru Lin: How you have about 20, 20 full time. 

Yasi: Okay. And so you have raised a lot of funding. Right? Recently? 

Fengru Lin: We, we have raised, we just close out our seed round, of 3.2 million. There was maybe three or four months ago. So that was led by Green Monday Ventures.

we also have CPT capital, as well as KBW, which is the fund of Prince Khalid from Saudi Arabia. We have, our tuition, which is the pension fund of Australia. and, we, we do have a lot of prolific, angel investors as well. So we’ve been really lucky. but on top of that, we’ve been really fortunate to win the Temasek livability challenge that happened earlier this year.

It was a million dollars of undiluted funding. And also more recently, we just won the entrepreneurship broke up. That was half a million dollars of undiluted funding as well. So all in all the team is pretty well funded at the moment. and we’re using these funds to continuously accelerate the progress. 

Yasi: And what is your plan for the next step?

Fengru Lin: Okay. So, next step would be series A and we expect that to happen sometime, half of next year. And that is when we raise funds for our large scale manufacturing. And, we, we should expect certain deals to be signed by then, just so that, we have a good gauge of the manufacturing capabilities that we need to set up.

Yasi: talking about funding. I think it’s one of the most. Difficult things for all the entrepreneurs. What did you think that you did it very well and to secure funding from so many different parties and angle investors? 

Fengru Lin: I think it’s, two main things. I mean coming from my tech background, for me, it’s always filling the top of the funnel. So we speak to every single investor. no matter how big or how small they are with the same amount of, passion. And that allows us to understand the landscape of investors get connected to different investors.

and that’s. Building a good brand for ourselves. the second thing would be good storytelling. So as an early stage investor, they will want to invest in founders. I never quite understood how that meant, until about a year, year and a half in. And then we recognized that, with every startup, there is, there are decisions to be made every single day.

And it is really up to the founders to, to think about how they can activate the right resources, which areas they should focus on, which talent they should bring in. And these early decisions will determine the success of the company. especially for the early stages. So it’s, it’s about telling the right story.

and being able to, to share your vision with the investors 

Yasi: ainvestor in the founders, what are, do you think, are the key characteristics or traits of a founder that angel investors are looking for? 

Fengru Lin: I would think, it’s definitely great. being able to push through difficult situations, being able to think outside the box is really important as well.

and being able to convince delegate all these are very important points. Yup. 

Yasi: Thank you. You just described your, your personal trait, as far as I know you. 

Fengru Lin: Thank you. I’m learning a lot along the way as well, full founder of my team. so these are things that I’ve picked up to be very important. when running the business, 

Yasi: How do you think your experiences in Salesforce and Google contributed to your current entrepreneur journey?

Oh, it’s a, it’s a huge impact. if I just touch on, say Google in Google, they’re all about 10 X impact for every effort that we put in, we want to think about, how it can have a ripple effect, 10 X. So whenever we, we execute on a decision here at turtle tree, we’re always thinking about whether or not it’s big enough.

Whether or not, it’s making a big enough impact. So I can give you an example. when we first came up with this idea to make milk using cells, we were thinking, okay, what is the best way to go to market? Will it be coming up with a turtle tree can of milk or will it be to partner up with industry? So we started to look at, a lot of business models around the world and one business model that.

Caught my eye was actually arm semiconductors. there is an SMU researcher, who collaborated with HBR, to, to write, a business case about, um,Arm Semiconductors. So Lyrica, we met her, last year and, we learned a lot from her. So what Arm did was they. They started off with seven founders, small company, but they wanted to make a big impact.

So did the largest chip company in the world. Now that doesn’t make a single chip. What they do is do what with Samsung. They, work, with Apple to build out the architecture of the chip for all these different companies, but Apple or Samsung do manufacture their own chip. Or do you get your own contract manufacturers.

This way, arm allows themselves to be capital light. They don’t have to spend too much on CapEx and work on the licensing and royalty model. And work with every partner in the industry. So at the end of the day, they see themselves as being the R and D hub of the entire industry. So this allows them larger access to different markets, different product types, different product lines.

So for us, we, we, we aim to be the same way. We want to be able to work with different partners through them, go through to, to work to the different geographical locations and the different product lines and the different industry focus. And this allows us to have a larger impact across the diary industry.

Yeah, it’s a very brilliant business model. 

Fengru Lin: Yeah. From SMU 

Yasi: for the audience, Singapore management university, where we studied together. Okay. So my last question is where can people try the products? 

Fengru Lin: So, there would be some time in the horizon. So let me share about what, the team is currently doing. So we are in close collaboration with four of the five largest infant nutrition companies to think about, which are the best products to come up with in collaboration.

So after the product is somewhat defined, we will sign a contract for a multi-year deal. And then, following that, we will set up the manufacturing prog process, for the kind of scale that these partners would need. So some of the ingredients that, we’ve spoken to these partners about, they will need a minimum of 20 tons a year of so to, to get it at scale, we will need quite a horizon before we can get there. so it would be a few years before, you would see a turtle tree inside product in the market. but we, we plan, we do plan to sign our first, commercial use as early as next year. 

Yasi: Yeah. So the audience should follow social media on the website to follow up if they’re interested to have a taste in the future. 

Fengru Lin: Yes, absolutely. So I’m very active on LinkedIn. if there are new entrepreneurs or friends who want to just have a chat or bounce off ideas, I’m very open to that. we are also very active on Twitter.

you can check out our website @thoroughtreelabs.com. Yeah. 

Yasi: I will put all the links in the show notes so people can find you and your website. Okay. Thank you very much for coming here. And it’s very interesting to hear such a, let’s say very new industry information directly from the co-founders.

Fengru Lin: Thanks Yasi. 

Yasi: Okay. Bye-bye 

Fengru Lin: Bye.