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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Fear and Greed summer series. I'm Michael

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Speaker 1: Thompson and today Australia is home to a pretty amazing

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Speaker 1: biotechnology space. These are innovative companies doing some remarkable things.

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Speaker 1: As always, this is general information only. You need to

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Speaker 1: get advice Taylor to you before making investment decisions. Stefan

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Speaker 1: von him Off is the co founder of alternative investing

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Speaker 1: community fund Alts dot Co. Stefan, welcome back to Fear

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Speaker 1: and Greed.

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Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.

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Speaker 1: Biotech and Australia we are emerging as a biotech powerhouse.

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Speaker 1: Why what is it that's about the Australian economy or

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Speaker 1: the support for startups that's really helping us kind of

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Speaker 1: get noticed in this space.

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Speaker 2: A couple of things. First and foremost, we have excellent

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Speaker 2: universities here right, which means we have world class researchers

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Speaker 2: and scientists' that's where it all starts, you know, number one.

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Speaker 2: So that's definitely one big point.

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Speaker 1: I'd say.

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Speaker 2: Another is that we have a deep culture of government

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Speaker 2: grant funding, right whereas like in a market like the US,

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Speaker 2: there's actually not a ton of US government grants. Most

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Speaker 2: of the scientific grants that are done through the private sector,

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Speaker 2: which has its pros and its cons. But one thing's

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Speaker 2: for sure, there's no question that Australia's government grant funding

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Speaker 2: has helped biotech companies here tremendously. There's also a strong

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Speaker 2: engineering culture, you know. I mean, this is a where

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Speaker 2: a smart society, where a wealthy society. And this all

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Speaker 2: ends itself very well to risky but potentially lucrative areas

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Speaker 2: of science such as biotech.

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Speaker 1: Okay, let's look at a couple of examples, because I

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Speaker 1: know throughout the course of twenty twenty five you've visited

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Speaker 1: a few of them. VOW I think is really interesting.

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Speaker 1: Vow it became through this year the first company legally

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Speaker 1: allowed to sell cultured meat in Australia. Cultured meat is

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Speaker 1: not fake meat, is it. There is a very distinct difference.

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Speaker 2: Don't call it fake me or the CEO is going

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Speaker 2: to come after both of.

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Speaker 1: Us understood, no, it did, I will scratch that from

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Speaker 1: my voicab.

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Speaker 2: Well. It's interesting though, because I think that there's a

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Speaker 2: lot of confusion over what this stuff is called and

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Speaker 2: how it works. So to be clear, fake meat would

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Speaker 2: be something like you know, you know, like tofu based meat,

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Speaker 2: or or or plant based meat or seed based meat

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Speaker 2: or something like that is not actual meat. What VAL's doing.

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Speaker 2: On the other hand, this is actual meat cells. This

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Speaker 2: is basically sell farming. They call it cultured meat, and

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Speaker 2: so their culture Japanese quail foi gras has become kind

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Speaker 2: of like one of their flagship dishes. But it's actual

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Speaker 2: it's actual animal cells, just cultured. Big difference.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, and the demand for it is it's the

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Speaker 1: right time for a company like this as people are

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Speaker 1: kind of looking for alternatives to basically killing animals for food.

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Speaker 2: I think. So, I mean, look, these guys got a

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Speaker 2: big start actually in Singapore, which you may or may

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Speaker 2: not know, has two things like really going forward. Number

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Speaker 2: one has an incredible high end dining culture. I mean

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Speaker 2: we all love, uh love that about Singapore. But what

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Speaker 2: Singapore also has is a real problem where they can't

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Speaker 2: produce enough food in the country to feed everybody, so

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Speaker 2: they import most of their food and they're always looking

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Speaker 2: for solutions exactly like what Val provides. So VAU really

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Speaker 2: got their foothold through through Singapore, and then, like you said,

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Speaker 2: just recently, Australia uh granted them the right to become

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Speaker 2: the first company to sell cultured meat in restaurants and

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Speaker 2: you know, all over Australia. So look, I've had it

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Speaker 2: a couple of times. I love it. I would I

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Speaker 2: would call it like a It's kind of like, how

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Speaker 2: would I explain it. It's it's like a high end pataie.

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Speaker 2: It's not what you'd expect. It's not as like chewy

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Speaker 2: and like stringy as as you know, what you'd expect

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Speaker 2: from meat or protein. But man, it's delicious. It's a

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Speaker 2: lot softer. Yeah, I would call it kind of like

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Speaker 2: a very high end patae.

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Speaker 1: Another one that you have visited the sea in Ventia

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Speaker 1: Life Science. What did they do? This is an interesting company.

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Speaker 2: These guys are interesting and a little under the radar.

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Speaker 2: I really like these guys a lot. That these guys

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Speaker 2: are printing living human tissue at nano leader precision. What

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Speaker 2: this does is it allows other companies and researchers to

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Speaker 2: test cancer drugs and other medications on actual living tissue.

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Speaker 1: See.

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Speaker 2: The problem is if you're doing everything in a petri dish,

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Speaker 2: that's not really the right environment to test a cancer

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Speaker 2: drug for a million reasons. But what they provide is

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Speaker 2: basically the proper environment. It's basically the closest thing you

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Speaker 2: can do to getting testing on humans without testing on

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Speaker 2: actual humans. So that's basically the business that they're in.

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Speaker 1: Okay, I'm curious here you mentioned at the stat that

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Speaker 1: there is there's good government grants, there's good government support

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Speaker 1: for companies that are working in this space. We've got

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Speaker 1: really good universities, so there's kind of great minds going

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Speaker 1: into this and often a lot of collaboration between universities

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Speaker 1: and companies in this space. Is the end goal for

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Speaker 1: all of these because we know that we've seen with say,

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Speaker 1: pharmaceutical companies, the road to making money can be a

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Speaker 1: very very long one and a lot of bumps along

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Speaker 1: the way, a lot of hoops you've got to jump

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Speaker 1: through with a lot of these startups within the biotech space.

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Speaker 1: Is the goal to make money or is it to

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Speaker 1: make a difference, particularly when you've got kind of government support,

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Speaker 1: universities collaborating. Is it still a commercial operation or is

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Speaker 1: it something more altruistic there?

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Speaker 2: I would say that as much as I would love

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Speaker 2: to answer and say it doesn't matter if you make money,

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Speaker 2: it's all for the sake of improving humanity. Unfortunately that's

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Speaker 2: not the case, right. I Mean, these are private companies

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Speaker 2: we're talking about. They need to make money eventually, but

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Speaker 2: what really can help them on that journey is a

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Speaker 2: strong funding infrastructure, and Australia definitely has that both in

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Speaker 2: government and then also with venture capitalist firms like Blackbird

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Speaker 2: and others that are willing to fund the really tricky

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Speaker 2: but really impactful, important and hopefully potentially lucrative companies like

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Speaker 2: vown and venture that are out there today.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so it might be a case of could do both,

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Speaker 1: could make money and make a difference. That's the goal, man,

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Speaker 1: That's the holy grail, all right, Stefan, thank you for

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Speaker 1: talking to Fear and Great summer series.

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Speaker 2: Thanks Michael.

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Speaker 1: That was to find vond him off from alts dot Co.

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Speaker 1: Don't forget to hit follow on the podcast. New episodes

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Speaker 1: every day during our summer series. I'm Michael Thompson and

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Speaker 1: this is Fear and Great