Dr Zack Abbott of Zbiotics
On this episode we are excited to welcome Dr Zack Abbott of ZBiotics. Alex Shirazi chats with Dr Abbott about his background, the founding story of ZBiotics, and how a few connections were made along the way.
Learn more about ZBiotics
00:00.07
Alex Shirazi
And thanks for joining us on the Cultured Meat and Future Food Show. We’re really excited to have Dr. Zach Abbott on the show today. We were just chatting about how we kind of go, maybe not way back, but we kind of go back and we’ll cover on some of that on the show. But I’d like to say, Zach, welcome to the show.
00:17.88
Zack Abbott
yeah Thanks so much, Alex. Yeah, I mean, it is and it kind of like surprisingly way back at this point. ah
00:23.89
Alex Shirazi
and but and And so, yeah, I guess maybe you know I’ll tell you maybe before we go into what zbiotics is and and your background and I really want to get into that stuff because that’s gonna be really exciting but I want to actually tell you that I learned about zbiotics before I even met you because I was doing some design work for this really awesome entrepreneur. He had multiple, ah very successful like ah ah companies, exits, investments, and he he was a partier, and he would always go to these like i think YouTube concerts. Really awesome, dude. He he started one of our meetings one day, and he looked at me and my and my partner that were there, and he’s just like, puts his little bottle on the table, and he’s like, guys, I just flew back from, I don’t know, Las Vegas or wherever it was, he’s like, I flew back from
01:15.68
Alex Shirazi
a YouTube show. And this is the reason I can meet with you guys today. And I’m like, I’m like, why is he talking about?
01:20.96
Zack Abbott
Hahaha!
01:24.38
Alex Shirazi
And he’s like, this is the Biotics and I and and this kind of makes it so I never have a hangover. And so that was like my first introduction. um But I’ll pause there.
01:36.44
Alex Shirazi
And and, you know, maybe you can tell us what it is and and where that story comes from.
01:40.84
Zack Abbott
That’s, that’s hilarious. Yeah. So, um, I would say, you know, that was probably in the early days of z-biotics. So, you know, probably, um, you know, kind of an early adopter kind of super user.
01:51.58
Zack Abbott
So I appreciate, um, the endorsement there, uh, for, to, to you, cause it, it introduced us, which was great, which has been really fun, um, to kind of have this connection. um But yeah, so our first product, so, you know, a company dbi our first product is called and the idea is that we took a you know probiotic bacteria And then we genetically engineered it to give it an additional function um that it could dedic could perform ah when you ingest it or when you eat it. um And ah this function is the ability to break down acetaldehyde. Acetaldehyde is this toxic byproduct of alcohol metabolism that um actually initially a lot of that acetaldehyde forms in the gut. So the idea is in a kind of
02:37.81
Zack Abbott
diffuses into the body um and wreaks havoc before it’s kind of efficiently processed by your liver. um And so the idea was that we could engineer a probiotic to help you deal with this gut-derived acid aldehyde that forms, sorry, the most important part of this, of course, is called pre-alcohol. This acid aldehyde forms in your gut when you drink alcohol. ah So a small amount of the alcohol you drink is converted into this acid aldehyde in the gut, and this acid aldehyde is very toxic. um So we helped engine of this probiotic to help your body deal with this gut-derived acetaldehyde when you drink um so that ah you can feel better ah the next day and kind of stick to your healthy habits and your routines and stick to your plans the next day. um Even if you had a couple of of drinks the night before um which would otherwise maybe make you feel lots of great.
03:21.16
Alex Shirazi
And it works, and that’s the cool part. so i mean so And thanks for breaking that down for us. So tell us about your background, maybe what you studied academically, and where the kind of idea for ziobiotics came about.
03:35.77
Zack Abbott
Yeah, totally. i yeah So I guess i get the most most relevant or most interesting part of this story, I guess, is like so i you know I got my PhD in microbiology. um And there were a lot of things that kind of like came together to to form what would become z-biotics and our mission and our and kind of what we’re trying to accomplish. um But in general, like kind of at the highest level, the simplest thing here is that I recognize that bacteria you know We often think of bacteria as sort of agents of disease and and sort of like infection. um And of course that’s true. And that’s a really important part of our interaction with them. But interestingly, you know, one of the things I learned in my PhD was um how valuable bacteria are ah to our health in a positive way. So, you know,
04:23.94
Zack Abbott
a lot of the biological functions that that keep us going and they keep us healthy are really the result of bacterial functions, not even human cell functions. And there’s a lot of interactions happening there. And so I really became fascinated with this idea of like bacteria of agents for good. um And, you know, most of the bacteria we interact with are net neutral or beneficial. It’s only a really small percentage that cause disease. And so thinking about ways that we could leverage that um and I think that, you know,
04:51.34
Zack Abbott
While we’ve known about the human microbiome for a pretty long time, um it’s really only been the last kind of 15 or 20 years that we’ve really started to dig in and and kind of appreciate the benefits that are happening there or the leverage for human health that we could be ah utilizing. um And so zebonics was really started with this idea that like, well, we eat all these like kind of like safe edible bacteria all the time, but what are they really doing for us? um You know, in large part,
05:19.18
Zack Abbott
um these probiotics are kind of like the the traditional probiotics you kind of see on the grocery store shelf today are kind of the leftovers of the dairy industry for the most part, or just kind of random bacteria we found in nature that we know are safe to eat. And they’re capable of performing thousands of biological functions. But most of those functions, um if not all of them are really for the benefit of the bacteria.
05:44.23
Zack Abbott
And then, so we sort of give you these and we say, well, I hope that tangentially some of these functions might be beneficial for you. um And in some cases, maybe they are, but it’s very inconsistent and and unreliable as to which probiotic bacteria will help you at any given time, give it depending on your microbiome or whatever. And so the idea was that, well, we could take this as sort of and use it as a chassis, right? Like we know these bacteria are capable of performing all of these valuable functions.
06:12.68
Zack Abbott
um excuse me, all of these biological functions. And so we could engineer it to perform one additional function that we know would be valuable to you. um and so And so that was really the idea behind zebiotics was that like, we just sort of like, leverage the bacteria’s ability to do things biologically in your gut. And then and then harness that and direct that towards a very specific thing that we know would be useful. um And so i that idea was kind of the seed of things. And so in my PhD, I learned a lot about how bacteria kind of perform these functions and when they turn them on and off um and how they make those decisions. And so leveraging that expertise to engineer a probiotic bacteria, say edible bacteria, that could reliably perform a useful function to you in your gut.
06:58.94
Zack Abbott
um And then I say that the other the other side of the coin or the other the other element that kind of came together beyond the technology was um my personal passion for um leveraging biotechnology for good for human health and you know there’s ah walk through the you know before starting zba i sort of like walk through the grocery store um and see this non-GMO butterfly everywhere. And that really frustrated me. And not to say that there wasn’t any reasonable concerns around GMOs as a whole, um or sort of specific i should say ah specific applications ah of genetic engineering, but um all of these brands that had nothing to do with this conversation were sort of like like piling on and
07:42.72
Zack Abbott
and throwing genetic engineering under the bus to you know make their brand look better. um And that was, in my opinion, really dangerous. It was a precedent that was being said that all GMOs are bad no matter what, and people are sort of conflating the technology with um with sort of bad applications of that technology, which was a really, I felt really risky. So I really wanted to do something about that conversation. I wanted to elevate that conversation. And I thought, what a great way to kind of marry these two things. I had this really good idea for an application of genetic engineering. And if I built something that people were really excited about and they understood, and I was transparent about the fact
08:18.23
Zack Abbott
that benefit ah that I was building was created because of genetic engineering. um That would be a great way to sort of like in one fell swoop um apply a technology I was a passionate about and hopefully elevate this conversation around GMOs and genetic engineering beyond good or bad or is it or isn’t it into something more reasonable rational nuance like um you know the genetic engineering is a technology that can be used for good or bad and really at the end of the day it’s the products we should be evaluating not the technology that was used to build them.
08:47.41
Alex Shirazi
And I think it’s on this show where after interviewing more people talking about the future of food, I realized how, you know, GMO is such a great thing, especially if you talk to scientists.
08:58.71
Alex Shirazi
Um, and, and I, I, I want to say, you know, some products, they have like a, you know, proudly GMO label on it. It’s not a label. It’s maybe just a statement. I was looking for my Z-biotics bottle, but I couldn’t find it.
09:11.24
Alex Shirazi
Does Z-biotics say something like that?
09:13.13
Zack Abbott
It does. And as far as I know, ah you know I’d love to know others.
09:13.81
Alex Shirazi
It does. Okay.
09:16.50
Zack Abbott
I didn’t know that anybody else used that. So we say proudly GMO on every bottle and every box. It’s all over our website. Proudly GMO is also an advertising strategy we use. So we have Facebook ads and and Google ads that say proudly GMO as like the hook.
09:31.35
Zack Abbott
um And I think it sort of flies in the face of this whole non-GMO movement. and um And I’m on a ah mission here to set the record straight that customers are excited about benefits. And so if you if you use modern biotechnology to make a product that has a unique benefit that they couldn’t get otherwise, and then you’re transparent about the fact that the reason that benefit exists is because of genetic engineering that consumers will not care, they will not reject a product because it’s a GMO. And there’s a lot of brands out there that believe that they will, but the fact of the matter is they won’t. And so part of, you know, part of the proudly GMO label is for for us is about kind of proving out that point, that consumers can be treated like with honesty and integrity and transparency, and it will not, it’s not a business liability to you to do that, to be honest. I, you know,
10:30.87
Zack Abbott
Candidly, i have you know I know companies that yeah make incredible products with genetic engineering. right They use biotechnology in incredible ways to make incredible things that are sustainable, align with people’s values, um you know protect the planet, i and and they’re hesitant and or shy away from being transparent by the fact that they use biotechnology to make that those products possible. And so um part of ah our kind of crusade here is to show that um can be transparent and customers can be trusted ah to to kind of like hear that information and not like just throw you in the trash can. Like they’ll still be excited about your products even. And I argue, especially because of the fact that you’ve used modern technology to solve a problem that could be solved before.
11:16.87
Alex Shirazi
I love that, and i I do use the term Proudly GMO ah quite a bit, so so I gotta start attributing it to you guys, I think.
11:24.00
Zack Abbott
yeah yeah I’m not trying to take credit for the idea at all, but I will say that like, yeah, I see so few products out there that use that label.
11:24.28
Alex Shirazi
ah
11:32.70
Zack Abbott
like ah you know I mean, what are what are ah any what are other brands? I’d love to know this. This would be great for me to kind of point to as well. like What are other brands that you know of that that use the Proudly Juma label?
11:43.94
Alex Shirazi
Yeah, I’ll take a look. Soylent comes to mind, but I don’t know if if if they have it or if they say it or they are GMO. I mean, I don’t know that much about Soylent other than…
11:54.97
Alex Shirazi
you know um But I was speaking with ah ah somebody from UC Davis and and she was also all about it. and And we were kind of geeking out saying like, hey, we should have a proudly GMO podcast.
12:08.30
Alex Shirazi
and So so maybe maybe this is the…
12:08.34
Zack Abbott
Yes, I would be love to be on that um Amazing I’m all for it
12:11.35
Alex Shirazi
Yeah, maybe this is the the joint first episode or something like that. but So when you were doing, you know, when you were in your PhD program, did you ever think I’m going to start a company?
12:25.31
Zack Abbott
um Honestly, no, that was not really kind of on my radar. i During my PhD, my PhD itself, the actual like focus of my studies was much more um you know on bacterial gene regulation, and so i i was it was a very academic project. I wasn’t working on anything that would directly become C. biotics, although I will say that the My study of bacterial promoters and stuff, was I definitely leveraged that when I built our product, but um but specifically speaking, I wasn’t working on something related to probiotics or genetically injured probiotics. While I had this idea kind of kicking around in my head, I never really thought of it as a company idea. I really just thought about it as like a technology or a scientific experiment.
13:09.97
Zack Abbott
And so I even um entered a pitch competition um in grad school ah with this idea, or with something kind of similar to this idea. um And even then, I was not thinking about this as a company. like I was really pitching this as like like, I was just really excited about the idea of genetically engineered probiotics. And I was sort of surprised when I did a Google search and um that I didn’t really see a lot of companies working on this, especially not in the consumer space.
13:39.38
Zack Abbott
There was a handful of ah um pharma companies that seemed to be kind of exploring this. and um there was you know ah But like the idea of ingesting a probiotic bacteria that had been engineered for function was like, there were some academic papers, but there really wasn’t like a lot of companies out there. and so So I thought, like well, what would be the reception to this idea? um So I sort of pitched that at a pitch competition. and um
14:05.61
Zack Abbott
It was, you know, the reception was, it was mixed. I think that people will really, A, I didn’t do a very good job of pitching it at the time because I didn’t know what I was doing. And B, like people didn’t really understand it, but there was definitely like interest in some of the opportunities there. um So, you know, that was kind of.
14:21.36
Zack Abbott
a formative experience and the idea like, oh, maybe this could be a company, but it wasn’t even on my radar. Really. I was really mostly focused on just like, Hey, this is a cool idea and I want to see it in the world. Um, but at that point in my life, I was really mostly thinking about like, um, finding somebody who was working on this already, a company that was working on this already and like being part of that or following it. You know, I was just mostly passionate about it as an idea.
14:46.11
Alex Shirazi
I want to ask about the Z in the Z Biotics.
14:49.40
Zack Abbott
Yeah. Yeah.
14:49.90
Alex Shirazi
And I, is it, is it Zach? Like what’s the Z?
14:52.03
Zack Abbott
it um Unfortunately, yes. And like, so it was really that came from that pitch competition, actually.
14:55.31
Alex Shirazi
I love it.
15:00.84
Zack Abbott
So I was, as I say, not intending to start a company. And so when I entered the competition, they asked for a company name, I hadn’t even formed a company or anything. So I just just made something up on the spot and just like not even thinking about the fact that this would someday be be a company or that if we did if I did have a company that this would be the name and so I really was like uh like originally actually I had uh pitched or I put down on the application uh zab labs uh which is zac abbot would be zab um and I just because I thought it was funny
15:32.19
Zack Abbott
Um, and it turned out like, so I put that in and then they rejected that name because I guess it was a company that already trademarked that name.
15:38.93
Alex Shirazi
Wow.
15:39.28
Zack Abbott
And so I literally on the spot when I showed up there, they’re like, yeah, you need to have a different name. And so I was like, okay. And I just said, uh, like, you know, Z biotics, like Zach probiotics and, um, I was like, you know, didn’t even think about it. And then when I actually, then later, when I decided to start the company, I didn’t want to waste any energy thinking about a name. And so I just was like, whatever, I’ll just use e-biotics for now. I’m sure if this ever becomes a thing, if I ever get any traction or success, we’ll change it. Um, and then, you know, as it became a thing, and as we started to look to like launch the product, we did a bunch of naming exercises and people just liked that name. They liked it better than anything else we’d come up with at least.
16:15.67
Zack Abbott
um They thought the Z sounded sort of sciency and we could come up with like, you know explanations for like whatever like, you know as Like from A to Z we come up with new probiotic, you know, I don’t know all kinds of different sort of stuff But at the end of the day, it was just people liked the name and and we owned it It was unique when you Google it nothing else came up and so like, you know, we’ll just we’ll stick with this at work So so yeah, so unfortunately that Z is from my name, but it’s working out for us. Okay
16:41.22
Alex Shirazi
It’s cool, yeah. And it’s ah it’s a very strong brand. I mean, and and the Z is kind of embedded into a logo, which is, you know, into the logo, which is really cool.
16:48.98
Zack Abbott
Yeah, we we would have a fun with it for sure.
16:49.54
Alex Shirazi
so
16:51.32
Zack Abbott
it’s ah it’s a great It’s a great letter to play with and so but have we have fun with but that.
16:56.94
Alex Shirazi
Yeah. And the bottles look cool. And I mean, I think when you’re, and I know and I want to talk about, you mentioned first product just is pre-alcohol. Um, but, but I want to just say that it’s kind of when you’re going out, when you’re about to party, you know, it’s kind of cool to have this kind of, uh, high end brand with you. And I think you guys were able to achieve that with the the bottle design, the logo design. And so that’s really cool.
17:19.54
Alex Shirazi
Um, so, so, so you mentioned prebiotics as a first product. Can you tell us what might be next on on the horizon?
17:27.80
Zack Abbott
I can say that there, yeah, yeah pre-alcohol is our first product.
17:28.96
Alex Shirazi
All right. Sorry. Sorry. Uh, pre-alcohol, I should say.
17:33.39
Zack Abbott
I can say i could i could ah sort tease out that we are not quite ready to announce, but our second product is imminent.
17:44.25
Zack Abbott
We are planning to launch it in the next month or two. ah And so we’re very excited and it’s totally different than the first product. It has nothing to do with alcohol um or alcohol consumption or anything like that. um It’s a totally different product.
17:58.87
Zack Abbott
and i mean It’s still the same kind of platform, right? A probiotic bacteria that’s been genetically engineered to perform some novel function in your gut that didn’t exist before. um And this product’s really exciting, much like the first one, kind of like addresses something that there wasn’t really a good solution for before. And in fact, in this case, um it’s like just a function that really doesn’t exist at all in the market. um And so we’re we’re really excited about kind of expanding the story around genetically engineered probiotics and telling all the things we can do. um Basically, our our target here is
18:29.65
Zack Abbott
um helping healthy people be healthier. right like A modern human ah deals with a lot of kind of modern challenges to their health that they that yeah we did not evolve to deal with. Alcohol being a good example of this. right that like you know Humans have only kind of like intentionally been consuming alcohol for the last like roughly 6,000 years or so, um but you know obviously humans are a lot older, or evolved a lot long before that. and so um This is sort of like a modern health challenge. And similarly, things like, you know, processed foods, and pollution in the air, and pollution in the water, and heavy metals, these are all things that, you know, humans didn’t have to deal with. And modern technology, or modern human advancement in one form or another has sort of created some new challenges. And so it makes sense for us to leverage modern biotechnology to create solutions to those problems. And so that’s exactly what we’re doing. um And we’re really excited kind of with the future products
19:23.93
Zack Abbott
Not only the second product, which we’ll be launching very soon, but we have a a very exciting pipeline. And I think that’s been the fun of building in this company is giving to kind of a ideate on the future and all the really cool stuff we can do with this tech. So there’s we’re excited about the future.
19:41.48
Alex Shirazi
Very cool. So we’re going to take a quick break and then we’re going to jump back in and and really talk about the challenges of building a company like ZBiotics. So I’m going to cue the ballpark noise. Here we go.
19:55.83
Alex Shirazi
Okay. So we are back and, you know, you, you, you were talked about how the company kind of formed and, and from the pitch competition, you went to establishing the company Z biotics as a name. What are some of the challenges of building a physical product company? I mean, you’re dealing with inventory boxes, bottles, like what are some of the the big challenges that you’re dealing with?
20:23.27
Zack Abbott
Yeah, ah it’s all of those things um that you know you mentioned earlier about kind of having a nice bottle. um I mean, all these things are really important, right? So we wanted to build a whole new category.
20:35.18
Zack Abbott
of genetically engineered probiotics. and So that required earning people’s trust. um You know, if we want to convince them that, hey, a probiotic that is genetically engineered is going to be better than what you what previously had available to you, um we really need to like prove to people that that’s true. And one of the things I learned kind of early on, um you know, obviously kind of naively as a scientist, I assume that you make a great product i that works. and you’re you know
21:06.26
Zack Abbott
you know, dust off your hands, you’re good to go like you’re done and everybody will love you and they’ll love your product and you’ll have no problems. And of course, I learned that like good science is table stakes. It’s only the beginning. um You build a great product, that’s step one. um But then you have to, you know, there’s so much more that factors into um consumer trust and consumer love. I mean, that’s the other thing is why we really wanted people to Love what we were building and be excited about GMOs because that’s the deeper mission um And so that required people having a really great experience A to Z So, you know building a great website that had all the right information like not too much science that people there was over people’s heads but not like too fluffy and to marketing which you know would kill our credibility and so
21:50.52
Zack Abbott
really working on that. I mean, everything from the product name to the way the brand looked to the logo, everything is like people make all of these decisions about whether they trust you or not based on a lot of those things, right? If you have a junky website, we have a bunch of typos, people see that as a lack and for good reasons, he has a lack of like, kind of attention to detail. So, so So fixating on the right questions was important.
22:11.57
Zack Abbott
So building a great brand was important. And, you know, obviously when I started this company, I didn’t have any training in that. And so we did a lot of customer discovery. Um, we handed out, Mike, my co-founder and I, Steven, uh, we handed out like 10,000 samples before we ever launched the product.
22:26.61
Zack Abbott
And, and by hand, like literally we would go to parties, we’d go to, to bar crawls, we, you know, um,
22:27.43
Alex Shirazi
10,000 samples. Wow.
22:34.95
Zack Abbott
hand it out to our friends, you know, we’d host happy hours and we’d give people the product and we’d and ask us what it was and we and we’d answer and we’d explain it and we’d take in all the questions they were asking, all the skepticism they had around this category as a whole, right? Like this category of like kind of like that next day effects of drinking is rife with tons of snake oil. So beyond just the gen genetically engineered probiotic part, which transparently people actually didn’t really care about. They didn’t really care. I mean, like, explaining how it worked was important for them to kind of like recognize that it was different than all the other stuff. But like, really, the biggest thing was like, they were just very skeptical of like, all the snake oil that was already out there. And they’re like, are you just another one of these things is vitamin things are these like, you know, electrolytes
23:16.00
Zack Abbott
things like why why why do I want this? And so explaining the technology was more about getting them to believe that we were different than all the junk that didn’t work than it was about like really like getting them excited about GMOs. And so that was like a big learning. and And so we spent just all this time kind of learning about all of these people wanted, what they wanted to see. and And so all that informed kind of the brand we built. And then you hit the nail on the head that manufacturing was way harder than I expected it to be. i you know Growing bacteria is easy.
23:42.72
Zack Abbott
And so I assumed that it would be easy to get, you know, people to just grow this in a big bat and, uh, in a big bioreactor. And, and then, you know, we’d have our ingredient and we would be off to the races. But as it turns out that like, well, while it is absolutely very true that it’s easy to grow bacteria in a bioreactor.
23:59.20
Zack Abbott
The industry is not set up for new ingredients in the space. um They really want you to pick from their menu of the things that they’ve been putting in products for the last 30, 40, 50 years. um And so you come to them and you say, hey, we have this new one. They’re like, what? We don’t, we don’t do that. And so we’ve got a lot of, we don’t do that. um ah You know, literally, you know, dozens are or over a hundred different kind of contract manufacturers before we found somebody who’s willing to work with us.
24:24.42
Zack Abbott
on on our novel strain. So that was a huge hurdle. And then of course, you got to stand up the process and then you got to get all that moving forward, you have to get all your quality controls in place and all that kind of stuff. And then yeah, you got to decide on packaging, you got to get that packaging manufactured, you got to get it shipped.
24:42.89
Zack Abbott
You got to get everything to kind of like coordinate. And so all that stuff, though, at the end of the day, once you get past that first hurdle, um putting a product together is you know it’s the same as any other product. ah you know What’s unique to ours is what’s in the bottle. And so um those challenges are hard, kind of building a physical product. um But they’re hard problems that a lot of people a lot of companies solve. And then so that I think the problems that were unique to us were then kind of finding the right balance of communicating our product to the customer in a in a way that they cared about, they were interested in, that built our credibility, it built established trust, and all those kinds of things. And so there’s a lot of work. I mean, to this day, we’re still we still iterate and improve and and do customer interviews and surveys to try and get better and better at that.
25:28.93
Alex Shirazi
And how did you meet your co-founder?
25:31.93
Zack Abbott
um i’ at I met Steven, actually, you know you mentioned Soilin earlier. um He is childhood friends with some of the founders of Soylent. He was finishing up his JD MBA and he was looking to potentially, he was considering his career options and he was looking to potentially get involved in a food or ag tech startup. um And so he reached out to his friends who were in the startup community and and said, hey, do you know anybody? And they posted his resume
26:04.76
Zack Abbott
um on a an internal forum so I done a startup accelerator um and Y Combinator and and he and and so at Soylent and so they posted his resume on that internal forum and I saw that resume and I reached out and I was like hey I was I’m looking for a co-founder and you know I was thinking to myself hey this guy’s got two degrees for the price of one even better you can do the you know the business stuff and the law stuff um And so ah they were like, I don’t know if he’s looking for a startup of one. I think they might have was looking for something a little more established. But yeah, sure, I’ll connect you. And so we connected for phone call. He was like, Yeah, this is exactly what I was looking for. But you know, I
26:45.58
Zack Abbott
In sort of like five minutes of talking to Steven, I could tell that he was like this incredibly intelligent and thoughtful person. He just exudes like trustworthiness and honesty. and so I thought, like this is the guy I want to go into business with. I basically then for the next like four months put the full court press on him until he sort of like agreed to join the company and got excited enough to like see you what we were go were going to build together. It was off to the races after that. Definitely definitely the single best business I’ve ever made um was partnering with Steven.
27:16.20
Alex Shirazi
Well, and you know y-combinator and all these different accelerators always kind of ah kind of hype up the network. And that’s a really great example of how the network does work.
27:27.45
Zack Abbott
Yeah, it worked. It definitely worked. It was great. And, you know, I’m so grateful for that community beyond that as well. Whenever we have sort of ah a challenge or something, there’s always somebody who’s been through it or at least been through something analogous and can help. So it’s it’s it is genuinely very helpful to be part of. I mean, I think any of these accelerators kind of put, you know, having that community is just so valuable.
27:50.70
Alex Shirazi
So where’s the company located, headquartered, and how many people are part of the team now?
27:56.42
Zack Abbott
ah We’re headquartered in ah San Francisco Bay Area. So our office, we have an office in San Francisco, and then our lab is down in Mountain View. um But most of our company is remote. We mostly do remote work. um And only, so obviously our scientists have to be in the lab. And then we have the office, which is largely for customer service, so we can do like, we can ship replacements and things like that. um And anybody who’s located in the bay has the option to go into work at an office if they want to.
28:25.26
Zack Abbott
But largely, we you know we love the fact that we can our head of food quality, for instance, is in rural Ohio. And we never would have found her um if we had kind of restricted ourselves to the Bay. And so I’m really grateful that we’re able to get like expertise from all over the country um to kind of the best person for the job. um And in terms of size, we are currently at 27, but hiring for a couple roles. so you know, going to be in the probably in the year around 30 people.
28:56.81
Alex Shirazi
Very cool. You can learn more about zbiotics at zbiotics, just how it sounds dot.com. And we’ll put that link in the show notes along with a couple other links and and goodies. Zach, as we close off, I wanted to ask you, do you have any last insights for our listeners today?
29:16.58
Zack Abbott
Um, I’d say, okay, the one big thing that we didn’t really talk about too much, i I talked about it a bit, but the most important takeaway, if I could impress one thing, is really that like consumers are not, I think everybody believes that everybody, or most people believe that everybody is anti-GML, and that’s just definitely not true. And so we’ve we’ve seen this over and over again with our product, but there’s lots of,
29:44.26
Zack Abbott
um unbiased surveys that demonstrate the same, ah that people want great products and they’re not going to outright reject your product because it’s a GMO. and If you’re using genetic engineering to make great products, then it is incumbent upon all of us to make sure that we advocate for that technology with our products and with our companies um and not try and hide that. The more you hide it, um the more it reinforces for people that they should be scared of it. And while they everybody doesn’t, most people just don’t care one way or the other right now. um There’s sort of this vocal minority that’s kind of creating this narrative that, quote unquote, everybody is, antigmo but that’s just not the case. and so
30:21.15
Zack Abbott
But the more we hide it, the more we reinforce that and the more that we let the tail wag the dog. um So I deeply advocate for transparent and open and and not just like not just making a disclosure somewhere on the package, but like putting it front and center, using it as an asset, not a liability that this is a differentiator. This is how we’re able to make something so incredible is because we use modern biotechnology. and the more we do that the more we’re excited about it we demonstrate our excitement for it the more we can kind of elevate this conversation beyond good or bad or is it or isn’t it into something more rational nuance and generate public excitement as well so um that’s my my kind of soapbox my my big pitch at the end there
31:00.60
Alex Shirazi
No, that’s great. and And I’m all for it. In fact, the more I looked into it, I was doing some searching while we were recording. The more I looked into it, the more I realized I’m pretty sure I did like first see proudly GMO from the Z Biotics model.
31:17.66
Alex Shirazi
and And I was telling you earlier I was kind of serious about having a podcast called proudly GMO podcast I even got the domain name back and I’m looking at it now November 9th 2020 which must have been After you because I you had we were talking about earlier you had hand-delivered some zbiotics Bottles to my apartment in Walnut Creek
31:36.64
Zack Abbott
Yeah.
31:40.08
Alex Shirazi
for CMS 20 online, we sent it to the volunteers and attendees. And so so maybe this end statement is a call to action that we need to get other folks talking about being proudly GMO.
31:54.00
Zack Abbott
I would love it. I mean i would be i would you know be so happy ah to be part of that in any way. Definitely a big passion for me. and And I think there’s a lot of really great things out there that we could be highlighting.
32:05.88
Zack Abbott
um So I love that idea.
32:08.25
Alex Shirazi
Well, Zach, thank you so much for joining us on the Future Food Show.
32:12.40
Zack Abbott
Awesome. Thank you, Alex. It’s been a blast.
32:14.92
Alex Shirazi
This is your host, Alex, and we’ll see you on the next episode.