Marissa, Mariana, and Paola explain how the microTERRA bioreactors turn the excess nitrogen and phosphorus in our waterways into fish food. They also describe their experiences in launching the microTERRA pilot in Mexico, discussing what they learned about leveraging every voice on the team to create a community of creative problem-solving.
Full Transcript
Alexsandra Guerra: You’re listening to the Reversing Climate Change podcast by the team at Nori, the carbon removal marketplace. This is a show about the innovators and entrepreneurs developing solutions to climate change.
Christophe Jospe: Hello and welcome to the Reversing Climate Change podcast. My name is Christophe Jospe. I am here with my co-host Alexsandra Guerra, which means for the listeners out there, this is going to be a geeky one. We can get technical and talk about environmental science and stuff and like, how do things work?
Alexsandra Guerra: I think that’s so funny. You guys keep introducing me as the technical. I don’t do tech. I don’t work on the product at Nori. I’m like leading sales. So yeah, environmental degree, environmental engineering degree.
Christophe Jospe: You still have the engineering degree though.
Alexsandra Guerra: I’m very much still a left, right, left side brain, right side brain. Anyways, let’s talk about the wonderful guests that we have here today. We are in Denver. For those of you who do not know, Nori is now part of a program called Techstars Sustainability based out of Denver. We’ll be here for three months. So you can look forward to some really cool podcasts with some really cool guests who are in our cohort working on their startups to make the world a more sustainable, regenerative place. So today we have Microtera, or Microtera if you read it in English, with Marissa Cuevas, Mariana Elias, and Paola Constantino.
Kristoff asked me to read that.
Christophe Jospe: I mean, it’s like the resident gringo here. I just didn’t want to mess up the names too much.
Alexsandra Guerra: But then you didn’t even try to say my name for like Guerra.
Christophe Jospe: Alexsandra Guerra. It’s cool. We’re good. Maybe if you all want to introduce yourselves so we know whose voice is whose.
Marissa: Of course. Hi. First of all, thanks for having us. My name is Marissa. I’m the CEO and founder of MicroSpare.
Mariana: Hi, everyone that’s listening. I’m Mariana Elias. I’m the project manager.
Paola: Hi, this is Paola Constantino. A pleasure to be here with you guys. You are very funny. And yeah, I’m the CTOE of Microtera.
Christophe Jospe: So Marissa, we like to start off with the origin story. How did Microtera come to be? And specifically, what are you doing on the Reversing Climate Change podcast?
Marissa: Well, OK, I’ll take the first one first. So two years ago, I was invited to go to Singularity University in Mountain View in California. And there I remember having a lecturer from the Stockholm Resilience Center who talked about the planetary boundaries. And that lecture really impressed me, but most of it because she was explaining the risk of having so much nitrogen and phosphorus in our waterways or in general in the planet. And I was impressed by the fact that I had never heard about that problem, even though I’ve been an environmentalist my whole life.
So I was fixated with that problem, right? And then my other very big passion is, well, my first big passion is actually waste management. And my second big passion is water. So I started to see the connections between water and the nitrogen and phosphorus getting there. And I was just fascinated during the entire time there about these two problems and how to mix them. And later on in that same summer, I had a course on synthetic biology. And so we actually engineer a bacteria and put a DNA from a coral to create pigment, purple pigment.
And that really blew my mind. And I thought like, this is going to be the future. And if we can use nature to reverse climate change or to heal the planet, that is going to be the future. And we should be mixing it with technology. So that’s very much the background. At the beginning, I started with the idea of Putting some seaweed farms on the rivers to absorb the excess of nutrients from the waterways and create biomass that we could later on use. But then I learned that actually seaweed is a very slow biomass and that the fastest biomass on Earth is the microalgae.
Because they are unicellular organisms and similar to bacteria, for example, they grow in a couple of days or even hours. So yeah, I kept evolving and I kept pivoting and that’s what led us here. And about the second question. We are also doing the Texas and Nature Conservancy Sustainability Accelerator. So we have moved from Mexico City and Irapuato to Denver for the next three months and try to advance our startup from a business perspective.
Alexsandra Guerra: One of the things that I love about Techstars is that we have to be here together. And there are just these friendships, like every time I see you guys in the morning, hey, it’s just so nice. It’s like the best group of people you could imagine working in the same space on sustainability solutions that could integrate with each other. So just side note on that.
Christophe Jospe: I love the side note. I want to hear how you guys got involved, Mariana and Paula.
Mariana: Interesting story. Okay, well, Marissa and I were friends for a while before this. Well, a long while, actually. And on a trip, we had like a vision of this really cool plan for remediation. And yeah, also involved with waterways and other cool things that I should not... Give away all of our secrets. But she said, OK, first we need to build real strong micro Terra and do this part. And then we should go on with the remediation project. So yeah, we’re starting to build this. And then we should go on with the other projects, I say.
Christophe Jospe: And besides just being Marissa’s friend, what was the path that got you to why she was having this conversation with you? What made you so excited about this concept that just made sense to you that you wanted to join in this journey?
Mariana: Well, I’m a biologist and also an engineer. So I like to build stuff, but my real passion is life and water. So yeah, when I talk to her, it’s like we really are like passion driven about all these issues. And I see like a big opportunity of really making a change. So yeah, and it’s the way we can work together. That really flows and we actually can make something cool. Amazing.
Unknown speaker: Are you trying to allude to something here, Gustav?
Christophe Jospe: No, I just was trying to give her more credit. It’s like, it wasn’t just like, I was a friend, I learned about this idea, I was like, yeah, I’m in, but actually you’re a subject matter expert who knows exactly what you’re doing and there’s a reason why you’re on this journey.
Mariana: Okay, yeah, it’s like the perfect combination like biology and engineering in building stuff, so... And scaling up biotechnical systems, which I absolutely love.
Marissa: So yeah. And the way I sell this connection all the time is that she is really fascinated about restoring waterways. So when I came, I picked her up to go to the beach and we were just talking and talking about dead zones and what we are going to do about it. We have this shared passion about reversing the environmental damage that we see together with technology and creativity. But also a very important part that you alluded to is that we have an amazing flow in which we can be really, really creative and we enjoy that.
So it switches from being work to being like a hobby or something or hanging out. And that’s what makes it so special.
Christophe Jospe: It’s so clear that we’re sitting across the table from fellow entrepreneurs because what you’re passionate about shouldn’t feel like work, right? It’s just such a joy to come and work on these things that create the vision that you want to see in the world. So how about you, Paula? How did you get involved?
Paola: Where I got involved with Micro Terra because I’m really passionate about sustainability and I did some environmental sciences study back then living in a really remote village in the Netherlands before coming here. So it was about how can we be green, how zero waste. So it was a really different thinking. And then I got involved with a summer school, Climate Kick. Then I come to realize if I want to solve or actually have an impact on climate change, which is also another passion, it’s about the community. It’s how you connect with the same goal and how you can have fun and align all your different backgrounds to get action done.
But on the same time, I was really also like, yeah, living in Europe is cool, but I really wanted to leverage all the technology or the learnings back there to Mexico and to other developing countries. And that’s why I came back to Mexico and met with Marissa. And that’s how, for me, it was not only the goal of Micro Terra, but also if her values and the values of the company aligned with me, with my community and my mission, Then I knew it was worth to try there. And that’s how I got into Microtora.
Alexsandra Guerra: You guys are amazing. So glad that you guys are here. Did we tell you the title of this podcast?
Unknown speaker: Yeah.
Alexsandra Guerra: Okay, cool. Because it’s called the Reversing Climate Change Podcast and you’ve said reversing like four or five times.
Christophe Jospe: It’s called priming.
Alexsandra Guerra: Love it. On the same page. Yeah.
Christophe Jospe: So we like companies like yourselves for a lot of reasons, because you’re solving multiple problems, you’re finding value streams along the way. And markets, which is what Nuri is building, are quite abstract. It’s hard to see, well, okay, on the one side, there’s someone paying for this thing. On the other side, there’s a person paying. We’re doing this thing. We’re digitizing and commoditizing this asset. But you guys are actually dealing with hard technology that creates an impact in improving the water quality, reducing waste. And you figured out some kind of special way to do it.
And without giving all of your secrets away, how does it work? What’s the secret sauce of Microtera?
Marissa: Yes. So we love to say that we are just imitating nature. But it’s actually a biomimicry solution. So we were really focused on having an impact in water. And if you look at the numbers, 70% of the world’s fresh water goes into agriculture. So we took a deeper look at, okay, what is agriculture doing with it? And we found out that the biggest water pollutant was this excess of nutrients, which I was already so fixated about nitrogen and phosphorus through singularity, right? And then we saw the link like, okay, why are these excess of nutrients getting into the waterways in the first place?
And it’s because of animal manure and the excess of fertilizer. So if you look at them, they are both super related to our food security, which only let us wonder how are we going to feed a planet with 10 billion people in the next 30 years? And we went just crazy about that. And we realize, like, with a growing population and a growing food demand, this problem is only going to get worse. We have to make something, right? So when you look at... There are two ways to look at this problem, like...
One is the biggest water pollutant and the second one is like these nutrients are super important for our food security or for us as humans. So if you manage to turn it around and not seeing it as a problem but as an opportunity, what we have is a lot of food in the water that we have to take out, right? So what kind of organisms do that already? Plants. Plants take these nutrients from the water and transform them with photosynthesis into biomass. So we were just biomimicking that. And one very important fact about this problem is that you see all these algae blooms in the news and in the Gulf of Mexico, Lake Erie and all of this.
The problem about the algae blooms is not the algae itself. It’s that when the algae dies, the bacteria that decomposes that algae absorbs all the nutrients present in the water. And that’s how the dead zones are created. And once there is no oxygen in the water, no life can happen there, right? So the problem, if you look at it like really with a lens, is not the microalgae, it’s the microalgae dying inside the water. So what we are doing, and this is what Mariana and Paola developed, is creating bioreactors where the microalgae can live there, absorb all the nutrients, but then once they have grown, we harvest them and don’t let them die inside of the water.
That’s our secret.
Christophe Jospe: So just for the layman out there, a bioreactor is essentially a place to put a bunch of this green stuff. It’s green, right?
Unknown speaker: Yeah.
Christophe Jospe: It harvests the nutrients, which are the phosphorus and nitrogen and probably CO2 because it needs that to grow and sunlight. And then you have something valuable from this green stuff that your bioreactor can do. And you’ve isolated a specific type of microalgae that’s quite effective at isolating those different nutrients. And then you can convert that into something valuable. Am I on the right track? Yes, yes, So what are we talking about? Is it like Coke bottle size? Is it something that is a big carafe? Like how large are these things?
How many liters? How does it work?
Marissa: Okay, so let me start with this. Yes, you are right. The bioreactors are like the perfect house for the microalgae to thrive and live. Our current pilot already in the field, which was quite an adventure and we can tell you more about that, is two and a half meters high. I don’t know that in feet or in inches, but it’s high. And then each one has 70 liters capacity. And then we just install them in a row and then in an array, similar to solar panels, so that you can... Have as a batch system one and turn it on or off, but you can operate a continuous flow with a whole line.
Alexsandra Guerra: So you have these bioreactors. Let’s get to why are we doing this? You’re taking the algae and you’re creating what type of product? Who uses this product? How does your business run?
Marissa: Yes. So we started creating biofertilizers. And I still remember one of the first conversations between Paola and I was like, why biofertilizer? Microology can be so much more. And I was like, yeah, sure, but we need a robust system that can work on the field without a biologist or an engineer being on site. And later on, we realized with the numbers, like, hmm. Bio-fertilizer, even though it’s good and great for the soil and you’re sequestering carbon, the payback period is too long. So the economics didn’t work for us. So we went on the research and we said like, okay, we could do actually a high quality protein.
And we’re very lucky that also Paola’s background is in food science. So we developed like a formula on how to transform this microalgae into a high quality fish feed and everything on site.
Alexsandra Guerra: Who are you selling this fish feed to?
Marissa: Aquaculture farmers. So we are focusing right now, even though it’s important to mention that we have this one pilot and client, but yeah, we’re focusing right now in inland fish farmers.
Alexsandra Guerra: You always have one. Like Nori, we’re still trying to prove our concept. We still haven’t gotten a large, big buyer yet, but we will very soon. So don’t disparage that.
Christophe Jospe: I want to hear about pilot adventures.
Unknown speaker: Paola or Mariana.
Mariana: What kind of adventures do you want to know? The installation? Yeah, well, it was like a cult.
Christophe Jospe: No, I think... Consider it an open-ended question to take in whatever direction you like. I mean, I think, you know, as entrepreneurs, we learn by doing, right?
Unknown speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Christophe Jospe: So what did you do? What did you learn? How did you pivot?
Mariana: Well, it was like our first pilot installation. So we were like, okay, how are we going to handle this? Because actually we had some interns that came from Paris who were also helping us. And on the other side, we have like the... Actual farmers, people that work there. So it was like an interesting interaction, like who was going to do what and how to manage people and material and stuff. So it was pretty interesting because, yeah, we also get to build everything. So the bioreactors from scratch from the beginning, everything.
So it’s cool. It’s fun. Yeah, it was pretty fun. We also get to like prove all of our technical assumptions that we had on the lab. Like if it was going to work correctly with the farmers operating them, if it was going to be easy, the scaling up of the system. Yeah, so it was cool.
Paola: One thing to mention, like it was quite funny, but also like interesting to see how, for example, Mariana that was in charge for taking the pilot. How she changed from being in the pilot, managing all these people, working with tools, and then coming to Techstars and being a business person now.
Unknown speaker: What?
Paola: Yeah, that was quite an interesting... Mariana, don’t say anything.
Mariana: Thank you for noticing that.
Paola: But it was like yesterday, finally, no, last weekend, we went to a sports store and then she, oh, I miss this. I can use this for putting my tools when we are back in Mexico working with the pilot and things like that. So yeah, that was also really awesome for us. Like all of us, by working in the pilot, we learn how to use tools, how to build things from just from scratch to make it real life.
Unknown speaker: Have you not done that before?
Paola: Yeah. But for example, like even putting in something because we did almost everything like building together with the workers and everything.
Marissa: Yeah. Most of the things you learn in theory at school. And in engineering, and it’s like, yeah, sure, we can do that. And we prototype them a vast amount of times. But still, when you are in the field and it’s like, it’s hot outside, you have 10 people to manage, and all of a sudden it’s like, how do I assemble this? And it’s not one or two times, it’s like 50 times, right? So that was crazy.
Alexsandra Guerra: So... In this pilot, you’re getting dirty, literally. You’re going to learn something. What’s like the most, because you always learn by doing, what was the most incredible thing that you never saw or never expected that you saw out of this pilot or the most insightful thing that you were able to glean from doing a pilot in the field?
Marissa: Wow. It’s hard to pick just one, but I guess...
Alexsandra Guerra: You can do many. Go ahead. We got time.
Marissa: One very important thing for us as managers was to really put out all the strengths of everyone, right? Because we had, as Maria and I already mentioned, all sorts of crew in the pilot. So on the one hand side, there’s four people, two from India, one from Germany, one from France. Who interns from this very renowned business school in Paris who have never gotten their hands dirty. And all of a sudden we decided to brought them to the field, which was amazing. And then on the other hand, there were workers in the field, which were like looking at us doing this stuff.
And by the last week or the last two weeks, they were like, actually, we have some ideas. And their ideas were great. And it was like, why didn’t you tell us that? You know, like a couple of weeks ago. So I think like first deciding who is going to do what and second, like leveraging everyone’s voice in a way or like using everyone’s expertise is like one great insight that I was like, huh, we don’t have to manage everything, you know, like they know how to manage themselves already. Yeah.
Alexsandra Guerra: Yeah, isn’t that incredible? It goes back to what Paola was saying earlier where it’s all about the community and engaging them in the solutions. And then we had a workshop earlier this morning and the tech stars had talked about the speaker. It was about leadership and the speaker said, trust me and I’ll be smarter. And so trusting people is key to allow them to really innovate and build solutions. And maybe the laborers are like, no, they don’t trust us. We’re just here. And then they understood more what you’re doing and were able to provide insight.
Of course, they have tonnes of value for sure. Yeah, exactly.
Unknown speaker: At first it was like, can you just do this, do this? And then when you explain like, this is a bioreactor, it was like this, we’re trying to do this. And then they were like more engaged and wanted to contribute more with more insight souls.
Alexsandra Guerra: Oh yeah. Cool. Yeah. Have you guys read on the, there was a book that they gave us our first day called Dare to Lead by Brené Brown. Have you read it? Okay. It’s, I don’t blame you. I just started listening to it on like my walks and runs on audio. So like we don’t have time to read, so squeezing it in with exercise. So I get it. But I love Brené Brown and there’s this tactic that she talks about in the book, which is, you know, sometimes people would have a different idea in their mind of what was done.
So like, why didn’t you give me the recommendations? Why did you just give me a pile of stuff? Oh, what are you talking about? Of course I gave you the recommendations. So she started employing this tactic of tell me what done looks like. And then she found out that even that wasn’t good enough. So a phrase you can use is paint what done looks like, meaning explain what the processes we’re trying to do here. There’s a bioreactor, we’re doing this thing and not tell them We’re going to build this cistern here, and we’re going to build an array, and then we’re going to link them up like this.
No, don’t worry about that. Trust that person. Tell them what the whole process looks like, and then you’ll get all these wonderful solutions on. Okay, this is how we should do it.
Marissa: Yeah, definitely agree. Sounds amazing. They actually always make fun of me because every person that we meet, even if it’s for a shorter task or whatever, I’m pitching. So I’m like, why do you want to do this? And I’m like... Did you know that? But most of the people only react like, what?
Mariana: But even with the guy at Home Depot, like, I need to buy this wrench. And he’s like, okay, what do you need for? Do you not? And he’s like, okay, yeah, yeah. It’s my fridge practice.
Unknown speaker: Oh, man. Do you not get tired?
Marissa: Never, no. Because I convince them that we are saving the world and that we are securing their food and their water. So I’m like, no, this is important.
Alexsandra Guerra: That is so funny. I get so tired. Like if we’re out and like at a bar or something, someone’s like, what are you doing for? Oh, what’s your startup? I’m like, oh God, like the Lyft driver. Please don’t make me do this. So I love going to the airport with Kristoff in the car because I just look at him. I’m like, you do this for me, please. I’m so tired. Yeah. But the thing I find is so amazing. Like she can do it with the same passion, like for pitch for.
Amazing. Yeah. Like. The UN or something like that. And then the guy that’s in a bar or something like that.
Marissa: Yeah, you have to make allies to convince them. Absolutely. And just one other thing, alluding to the community part, another extra challenge of that pilot was that we’re living together in the same house, all the Microtera team and the four interns. So that was 11 people.
Unknown speaker: In Mexico?
Marissa: In Mexico, yeah. And then we were working together, coming back home, showering, making dinner for everyone. And at some point, and I’ll be very open about this, I was going crazy. I needed to run away for a couple of days. But at the end and when the interns said goodbye, they were like, thank you. You really guys made a family out of this and out of this experience and that will definitely shape the way we see startups now. So it was intense.
Christophe Jospe: That’s amazing. I’m curious about so many things. So let’s keep talking about the technology, though. One of the issues that sticks out, which is a good thing, is that you are a modular technology. And when you think about any type of technology that has a capital expense to it... If it is a million dollars or $10,000, the one that’s $10,000, we can iterate on a lot more quickly because it can break, you fix it, it improves. And so just the learning curve happens that much more rapidly. And that was a lesson that I had from one of the professors that actually both Alexsandra and I worked under, Klaus Lackner, who wrote this very interesting article called Small Modular Technology.
And it’s that general thesis that But I’m curious, you know, you compare yourselves to solar panels, which I think is a good comparison because solar panels are modular and the cost of solar has plummeted a lot because we can mass manufacture it. And you guys are just getting out of the gate trying to solve this very specific problem of, you know, wastewater coming from agriculture and also producing a value stream along the way, which starts as fish food. This is like multi-layered questions. I have a habit of doing that. But given all those premises, how do you scale in a modular fashion as the market of what microalgae can provide extends beyond just fish food?
Or does it? I guess kind of like how does it expand similar to the way that you might look at solar panels expanding?
Marissa: Yeah, so...
Christophe Jospe: Or different.
Marissa: Yeah, so... One of the reasons why we compare to solar panels is, as you already said correctly, is the modular part. And let me get to that in a sec. Just the other similarity is that we have very high upfront costs with almost zero variable costs, exactly like solar panels. And that is because microalgae live out of CO2, sunlight, and wastewater. So even though the technology is costly at the beginning, on the long term, you will get the payback. So in the modular part, when you look at continuous flow for bioreactor processes, the risk of scaling up is enormous because if you have one sick microalgae, let’s call it like that, or infected, or let’s call it like that, one sick microalgae.
It will very soon infect all of them and your continuous flow will have to be pumped out, washed and start out renew. So the risk of that and the scalability of that is limited. So we went on with the idea of uniting the best of both worlds, right? Batch system and continuous flow. So for those who don’t know what a batch system is, it’s a closed system where everything comes in, fills up and then it’s empty. So you can see at our bioreactors how they are placed and they are a patch, but underneath they connect.
So in the way that you operate them is that you leave all the valves open and you just operate them as a continuous flow or like all in one.
Unknown speaker: It’s a hybrid.
Marissa: Exactly. But in the moment when you see a problem or a leakage or whatever, you just shut down that one bioreactor and you continue your production. So we are putting like robustness or resilience into our systems. In that way, we can, and that’s what we have done before, right? Like we prototype the bioreactors a hundred of times, well, maybe not a hundred, but a dozen of times. And then the idea was like, okay, we have one that works and it’s perfect. We just have to build 50 of them. And 50 of them make up And then if you have a bigger capacity or a bigger demand to clean the water, then you just install those modules one after the other.
You’re operating them individually, which gives you a lot of robustness. So that’s actually one of our secrets.
Alexsandra Guerra: So did you originally design this as a batch system and then you were tweaking and iterating and you found you needed to do this hybrid approach?
Marissa: No, we started already knowing the benefits and cons of both systems, and then we just united them. And then the other important thing that you raised up is about the capital cost of prototyping hardware, right? And this is something that we are super proud of, is that we are tropicalizing that technology. So instead of having super expensive bioreactors, we are doing them at such a low cost that most of the mentors or investors are like, what? How do you manage to do it that way? And it’s because... Mariana can tell you more about this, but we took very known materials from the field, from the agricultural sector, and adapt them to what we wanted to create.
Mariana: Yeah, so because we also want to focus on Mexico and Latin American places because of the environmental conditions. So we are taking advantage of this and using, well, low cost materials. Also, if something breaks up, it’s easy to find that piece for the farmers, well, for us too. And yeah, so we’re focusing on this.
Alexsandra Guerra: That’s so key. We can’t continue to build solutions for people in places that they don’t actually serve, where they can’t repair it, they can’t replace it, and they have no personal investment in it. We saw this with cookstoves and solar panels in a lot of developing countries. So I think that’s brilliant. And I applaud you guys for considering that in your business model.
Mariana: Yeah, and the thing is, sorry, this technology usually is deployed in Europe or maybe the US that don’t have the conditions we have. So we don’t need that big of investment in temperature or even getting lights extra. So the thing we’re just really investing on in the system is the IoT. So we can monitor from far. Actually, we’re monitoring our system right now. It’s going great. And yeah, so it’s easy to operate and a low cost.
Marissa: And that was also one of our biggest challenges because we are all technicals and all scientists. And of course, it was very nice to mediate between Mariana and Paola because Paola wanted to see the most efficiency of a biotechnological system and Mariana was like, They are never going to be able to use it in that way. So compromising those two factors and still have a system that is efficient, but easy to operate. And in that line, our manual and how to operate it and how to give it maintenance and stuff is for farmers, right?
Or for people working in the farm. So that’s hilarious. Like font size number 14 and pictures and all of that. So it was very interesting going from... The biotech center with only scientists and geeks working on that until like, okay, this is something to be used and ready to be used for farmers. I’m so freaking lonely.
Christophe Jospe: Yeah, that’s amazing. And that goes back to what you were saying earlier, like involve the people who are part of this effort in the solution. And it’s just so important. Farmers are the best entrepreneurs out there. And they’re always thinking about like, how do I tweak this? How do I custom rig this thing so it’ll suit my needs? And so to come in and say, I’ve got this plug and play thing for you. No, that’s not going to work. But that sort of sets up a question that I’m curious about your technology.
So you’ve got this prototype that turned into a pilot and you’ve got a number of tubes that you’re now checking from your internet devices here and your internet of things, IoT. We hate acronyms, by the way, so I’m just going to make fun of you on the spot for IoT. But no, it’s super important because you want to be able to track that. How does it scale? What’s next?
Marissa: Yeah, so... So we have a plan. So for us is right now, the next steps are to build strategic partnerships with which we can then deploy a bigger scale of this technology, right? So we actually paint three staircases for our next steps in the next year. And actually one of our strategies or our goals into navigating Techstars and what we want to get out of here, because as you can imagine, it’s very hard for us to advance on all the technical side. We left our lab at home. We cannot bring the microalgae and now we are here three months.
And we’re like, oh, our specialties are like our expertise. It’s something totally different. So what we are trying to do here is to close the partnerships and use the big names of the Nature Conservancy and Techstars to close those partnerships with potential clients. And so the idea is going from what we have now in the field into a 20,000 liter system and then 100,000 liter system. And then almost in a year from now, 250,000 liter system.
Christophe Jospe: And is that all for fish food?
Marissa: We are still defining that. Like our expertise is in fish food and we can use everyone’s expertise on that. But to be honest, like the feedback here was a lot like we did that for all sorts of manure or animal manure, right? So pork, poultry, cows. All of their manure is full of nutrients and we could be doing a sustainable protein source out of that. So imagine what it would be if we can really, really feed our animals with a sustainable protein source. Like all the advantages or the impact that would have.
I don’t know the percentage exactly, but most of the grains cultivated in the world goes to animal feed. So most of the deforestation for agriculture goes to animal feed.
Unknown speaker: Mm-hmm.
Marissa: So if we can displace that and take advantage of their waste, then it’s a real game changer. And clean the water while doing so.
Paola: And something that relates more to what Nuri is doing, for example, animal protein or the protein that is used for feeding the animals is usually imported in many of the countries. USA has a big production of soy, but for example, Mexico, we are importing a lot of soy. So if we can change with our solution, not only saving water, but also reducing the footprint of how we are producing the meat we are eating, I personally don’t eat that much meat, but if we can change that, that would be nice.
Christophe Jospe: Yeah. This is like textbook circular economy.
Paola: Definitely.
Alexsandra Guerra: So I’m super curious because we don’t often get to talk to other startups outside of the US or Canada. We get a lot of Canadian people on our podcast. So, and you mentioned, and we talked about developing solutions for people in those areas. And then I think Paola and Marissa, you both lived in Europe at a time and then you moved back to Mexico.
Unknown speaker: Also Mariana.
Alexsandra Guerra: Oh, Mariana too. Where were you, Mariana?
Mariana: In Barcelona.
Alexsandra Guerra: Oh, jealous. So what is it like to go back to Mexico and be an entrepreneur and try to start something new in Mexico?
Marissa: I get this question all the time because also with my previous startup, everyone was like, you could be doing that in Germany. Everyone is so focused into styrofoam or waste and stuff. And the answer is like, we get to be so flexible and dynamic in Mexico. And that’s amazing. First thing, I think one thing that really characterizes us as Mexican is the Creativity, how you solve things is just you laugh all the time because of that, because it’s like, oh, really? I never thought of that. What do you mean? For example.
Example, please. Every time we get traffic jam, and that’s a lot in Mexico City, you all of a sudden and out of the nothing see all these vendors coming into the cars and they sell everything. Ice cream, ice cream if it’s hot, cookies if it’s cold. You make out of every opportunity a business and that’s super creative. But yeah, and also the other thing is you don’t need regulation to comply with a lot of regulation for that. So you can be very lean into testing stuff and then figuring out along the way how to solve it.
And the third thing that I love is, for example, while creating the prototypes and the pilot, you would go there, would go to a supplier store, for example, and you would tell the idea, paint your idea on a napkin or whatever, and they will come up with ideas. Yeah. And so everyone is like, hmm, I have a friend of a friend or a cousin or something that could do it that way.
Alexsandra Guerra: My hands are raised because I think that’s very Latin. I love that. So everybody always says, oh, how do you like Seattle? Because we’re based out of Seattle. And I’m like, hmm. Seattle’s beautiful. It’s kind of like the land of Oz when it’s summer. But the people, you guys are lovely, but you’re like, there’s not enough connection. Tell me about your cousin. Like, I don’t mind knowing about your cousin’s wife. And like, how is she going to help me? Like in Miami, it’s like I go home and my stepdad’s like, oh my God, this customer came in and his aunt says this and that.
And then we get connected. It’s just like, I love that. Yeah, definitely. So it can help you with your business. It can also make you have a pleasant shopping experience at the grocery store. What else? What else about being an entrepreneur in Mexico?
Paola: I just wanted to point out that it can be also quite challenging because Europe or North America can be more aware about sustainability and you can easily find networks like, for example, old investors and things like that. Back in Mexico, you will knock more doors and get negative feedback or even they will not understand you. So it’s a lot about educating, starting from your family, from your close network, and then also who even the government is. The priorities are different. That’s quite a challenge, being an entrepreneur in a sustainability impact thing.
Marissa: And I think along that line, the contrast has been enormous between like pitching and pushing in a farm. Why this is an excellent idea and getting like some people excited, some people very skeptical versus coming here into an accelerator where everyone is so focused on solving the biggest environmental challenges. So you resonate with everyone. And we have never before heard that this is a brilliant idea as much as in here, you know, in this past three weeks. So everyone is like, great. Great. I love it. And we’re like, we love that you love it.
Alexsandra Guerra: Good for you. You totally need that validation. And there’s no point. It’s hard.
Christophe Jospe: Absolutely. I want to pick up on one thing that you said, which is that there’s less policy in Mexico that might drive certain environmental solutions. But couldn’t you argue that your solution actually could use really effective policies that might incentivize or at least over time mandate farmers to do certain waste reduction practices and microtera technology is an option that they could choose from?
Marissa: Yes and no. So, on the one hand side, yes, because of the pollution, you could have a better regulatory framework in a more developed country, but at the same time, for example, the And what’s on-site mixing? Let’s define that. They do the food on-site. They decide what to feed their animals. So in that regard, we get to pilot and prove what fish are liking or not liking without going into a lot of testing or trials or complying with regulation. And on the other hand side, because this problem lies really deep and next to my heart, is that the excess of nutrients is a non-point source pollution.
That means it’s very hard to track where it’s being generated. And even though if we take, for example, Europe... They had a very strict regulation since 1993. And until now, all the waterways are full of nitrogen and phosphorus. So it’s really, really hard to enforce that kind of regulations. So in that sense, yeah, you can always play two sides of the coin, right?
Christophe Jospe: Totally. And we’ve seen countless examples of policy that have been ill-informed. And I think true to the point of like creating mandates that don’t co-create with the people who actually need to be working on those solutions, those policies are going to fail. And I wasn’t trying to promote one way or another. Actually, you answered that question exactly how I think it should be, which is that a key function for entrepreneurs in society is to identify problems and come up with a Yeah, definitely. I was giving you a hardball question and you passed.
Marissa: And along that side, as hard as it is for us, water is the most important thing for human beings. And at the same time, it’s priced so badly because it’s a human right. And you have all these opposite directions of how expensive should fresh water be. And well, that is a huge problem, but, and also if you don’t have the right regulations, it’s very hard to make the business case for them cleaning their water, right? So after a while, we were like, you cannot make this business about water. Water has to be a positive externality.
The business is about fish feed, about the excess of nutrients and how we transform them into a useful product. And by the way, we clean the water, but... Yeah. Even though it’s our main mission and like what really drives us and it’s in our hearts, we are making the business case around all the other stuff.
Christophe Jospe: Yeah. I think that’s really important, especially for environmental entrepreneurs. Sometimes you can be a solution looking for a problem and those don’t work because you come in and you’re like, I’ve got this great solution for you. But unless you’re creating a direct value to the person doing it for one reason or another, it’s not going to scale and really go up. So really happy to hear that.
Alexsandra Guerra: Yeah. So you guys have your lab in this research center and then you moved to on-field pilots, which sounded like a really fun bonding experience for you and your team. You got dirty, you learned things. What is that like, like working in that type of center? I imagine that the constraints for your work is very different. How does it look like?
Paola: Well, me being in the lab back in Mexico, it was facing two big challenges. One is the PhD, already old, kind of working there. And on the other hand, like my team, they are trained with how we think things in Mexico. And it was quite different from how I was working back in Netherlands. So yeah, it was learning two sides of the coin. On one hand, I really got to train my patients working with the bureaucracy back in Mexico, like explain. Why this was important and give them something that they can feel they are contributing to our research.
And for the team back in Mexico, it was explaining, no, no, no, we are not working on a research timeline. We are working in a startup timeline. And that means that our experiments need to be done fast and also like managing the money we are investing there, the time we are investing there. And even getting excited about this because it was... Meaning that we really need to do a lot of work. We didn’t need to write an article for a magazine in research, but mainly for how can we create value for the next pitch that Marissa was doing or something like that.
Yeah, so quite exciting.
Alexsandra Guerra: Do you work with these PhD people? No? OK, so you have a lab space there?
Paola: Yeah, but for example, imagine a university back there. Where you have somebody guiding that department. So that’s a PhD director, no?
Alexsandra Guerra: And you’re using their equipment and so you might need to ask them for more equipment and be like, oh, can I get time here?
Paola: Yeah. So it was really nice because I especially got to learn, well, instead of buying this equipment for one experiment to try if we can leverage it will be useful, it was like, what can I say to them so I can get the equipment free and do the test I needed?
Unknown speaker: That’s the entrepreneur in you.
Paola: Solving things that I really like. And also how to teach that to my team. I really like that because it’s changing the mentality back in Mexico. So it was quite nice. Yeah.
Alexsandra Guerra: Mariana. Alexsandra. That’s literally how we greet each other in the morning. Mariana. Alexsandra. Buenos dias. I think you guys are amazing. I think that it’s such a pleasure to have you here. And I’m glad that we’re here, not just on the podcast, but in Denver together. I love to practice my Spanish. Apparently, my vocab needs some work. We were walking down the hallway and Christophe asked me something. He’s like, oh, isn’t this a Spanish word? I don’t even remember what it was.
Christophe Jospe: Trato.
Alexsandra Guerra: Trato. And I was like, I don’t... Like, you mean you’re trying to do something? And he goes, no, like, deal. And I was like, I don’t know this is. So if you don’t use your language, you lose it. I’m losing it, guys. It’s been a while.
Christophe Jospe: So we love our listeners. We think they’re very intelligent, passionate people. If they’re listening and want to get involved or help in any way, what can they do?
Marissa: Well, we are always looking for allies and also for talent. So even if you live in a different part of the world and you want to try and apply your talents at Microtera, please reach out. Also, in addition, go to our internet page, microtera.com. mx. Take a look. If you think that something is not clear enough or it could be communicated in a better way, please reach out. We love that. We love proactive people telling us how we could improve. What else, girls?
Alexsandra Guerra: Is there a contact page linked on that page?
Unknown speaker: Yes.
Alexsandra Guerra: OK, cool.
Unknown speaker: It is. If you want to contribute, like maybe pitching for the cost, you can also do that.
Marissa: Yeah, some funding maybe could also be great. Exactly. We are also looking for great names as allies to back up our work or to make better introductions to other NGOs that could help us co-finance the pilot. So if there is an important person in your network, Reach out, show them the page and yeah.
Alexsandra Guerra: Are these pilots only in Mexico or?
Marissa: Yes, they are only in Mexico, but you have to be a visionary. So right now we are piloting the technology in Mexico so that in the future it can be spread out to all the world because the excess of nutrients is, as I already mentioned, the biggest water pollutant on earth.
Alexsandra Guerra: There she goes pitching again. She’s on.
Christophe Jospe: Clearly she went to Singularity University and has plans for world domination to solve the most contractical problems. Sorry, you’re outed. We know how to spot it. That’s a wrap. We would be remiss, actually, as Nori, not to mention, if you like the show and you like what Nori’s doing, you can actually go to the Verge homepage and vote for us. I think it’s Verge.
Alexsandra Guerra: Yeah, so the Verge is a... The Verge. It’s a Green Biz conference that they hold every year. They have multiple tracks. And you might have heard us talk about this with Jim Giles, who’s leading the Carbon Track, a whole new track of Verge that Green Biz has put together. And we are up. For voting right now for a pitch competition called Verge Accelerate. So if you go to at Nori on Twitter, you can find that link. We’ll pin that for you.
Christophe Jospe: We’ll put it in the show notes.
Alexsandra Guerra: Or you can Google Verge Accelerate Green Biz and you can vote in the carbon track for Nori. We’d appreciate any vote that you can give us. Any and all the votes.
Unknown speaker: I gave you one.
Christophe Jospe: Oh, thank you so much. You guys are the best. And please subscribe. Please share this podcast. Please rate and review us on iTunes. And we’ll see you next time. Thanks a lot.
