Simon Newstead on developing alternatives to animal protein

How I Learned to Love Shrimp

Simon Newstead, entrepreneur turned impact investor, is a founding co-partner of Better Bite Ventures who back food-tech founders in Asia.

In this episode, we deep dive into the world of alt protein and the different technologies available in the alternative protein space. We look at Asia specifically where Simon’s work is focussed as well as the challenges this industry is facing as a whole. We also quiz Simon on his view on the timelines we should work towards to see this global shift in consumption towards animal-free alternatives.

Relevant links to things mentioned throughout the show:

• Better Bite Ventures: Website
• 80K podcasts;
  • Bruce Friedrich, Good Food Institute
  • Seren Kell, Good Food Institute
• Rethink Welfare Range Estimates
• David Humbird: Scale up economics for cultured meat
• Regulatory approval of cultivated meat in the US
• Good Food Institute
• Impactful Animal Advocacy Slack
• Red to Green podcast
• The Counter article on the difficulties of cultivated meat
• Jacob Peacock’s research on the price, taste and convenience hypothesis on the EA forum
  • Johannes Ackva’s comment thread about analogues to environmental technologies
  • Bruce Friedrich (GFI President) first reply and second reply

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Κεφάλαια

1. Intro (00:00:00)

2. An animal related view that Simon changed his mind on recently (00:01:44)

3. What is Better Bite Ventures (00:05:10)

4. Why focus on Asia (00:06:28)

5. What are alternative proteins? (00:08:40)

6. Why a for-profit fund instead of non-profit campaigning? (00:10:39)

7. Being vegan can be expensive (00:13:15)

8. What alt-proteins strategy success would look like (00:17:39)

9. How to balance moral impact and profits when investing (00:24:58)

10. How do BBV measure impact? (00:28:52)

11. Examples of funded companies (00:33:53)

12. How long do those companies have to become profitable / impactful? (00:36:12)

13. Challenges with trying to maximize different figures (impact vs profits) (00:37:35)

14. When will alt proteins be seriously competitive? (00:40:06)

15. Challenges for alt-proteins (00:46:32)

16. Where will innovations come from (private vs public)? (00:53:05)

17. Public investments impact on public perception (00:55:27)

18. How do BBV prioritize where to invest? (00:57:03)

19. What are the chances of success of those technologies? (01:01:54)

20. The Rethink Priorities study on prices (01:06:24)

21. Shrimp paste (01:12:11)

22. Closing questions (01:16:03)