Entrepreneur. Investor. Happy warrior. Founder @fiftyyears. 🌱 powered. Helping great scientists become great entrepreneurs is my jam.
Jul 22, 2021 • 15 tweets • 6 min read
Plant-based cheeses just don't cut it: the cheeseburgers are gummy; the grilled cheeses stick to the teeth; the pizzas don’t have instagram-worthy cheese pulls.
Enter @Nobellfoods, who have engineered plants to efficiently and sustainably solve this. 🧵
fiftyyears.substack.com/p/nobell-foods
Cow milk is a complex mixture of proteins and metabolites, many of which can only be created by mammals. The key ingredient that gives cheese its tasty, melty, and stretchy properties is a biomolecule that makes up about 80% of the protein in cow’s milk -- casein.
Nov 2, 2020 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
Election predictions thread.
Tldr: sanity restored after an ugly few weeks.
Biden wins, sweeping Clinton states + WI, MI, PA, AZ, NC (maybe FL + GA).
Trump declares victory on election night, using twisted logic like being up big in PA BEFORE mail in votes are counted.
1/
Trump will immediately claim vote counting needs to stop on election night (something that's literally never happened before but it's 2020, so...)
Trump team & GOP sue to stop counting (legitimate) mail in ballots in all swing states.
2/
Sep 11, 2020 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
In labs right now are researchers working on innovations that can cure disease, end malnutrition, fix the climate crisis, connect the world.
But scientific innovations don’t solve problems on their own. By default they end up published in a journal and that’s it. No impact. 1/
Ensuring scientific innovation actually reaches its full impact potential matters.
There are 5 big changes since the old cleantech bust days:
1) broader definition of clean / climate tech 2) technical developments that make more things possible 3) employee preference changes 4) consumer preference changes 5) investor preference changes
Why now is different 👇
1st we've realized there are many good ways of attacking the climate crisis w/ tech. What was in the old days biofuels & renewable hardware is now: food tech, clean chemicals, transportation, renewable hardware & software, industrial decarbonization, etc
Broader definition!
👇
Jan 22, 2020 • 15 tweets • 4 min read
🙌 @MemphisMeats has closed a $161M Series B! The future of food is bright indeed!
With this round they'll build the first U.S. production plant for cultivated meat. THIS IS HAPPENING and sooner than most thought.
Some thoughts on where we've been and where we go from here 👇
Memphis Meats is bringing needed innovation to an industry where the core technology hasn't changed much since we started domesticating animals over 4,000 years ago in Mesopotamia.
Not many industries are using the same technology as 4,000 years go!
👇
Jan 15, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
We want to create a revolving door VC firm.
We want founders to join our team, spend a few years helping support other founders, leave to start their next thing (we'll even put up the initial $$), and then we want them years later (succeed or fail) to come back.
Why? 👇
This is the only way to keep founder empathy high.
Everyone on the @fiftyyears team is a former founder, so we naturally have high empathy for the founder journey. But the more time we spend on the investing side, the more disconnected we'll be from the founder experience.
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Jan 16, 2019 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
Can finally share!
Portfolio company @astranis_space signed a very large contract to cover Alaska in internet from space. Exciting not only because the deal is worth tens of millions of $ but because internet access is a systemic good & 39% of Alaskans are underserved.
THREAD👇
Internet connectivity is the definition of impact infrastructure. Connecting more people boosts economic growth, reduces inequality, increases social cohesion, democratizes education, leads to better government & social services, & improves public health.
