Three Founders, Two Truths, One Lie: The Future You Didn't See Coming

Jordan Tyler: Hello and welcome back to Founders in Focus. This marks the second season of a co-branded podcast from Plug and Play, a global startup accelerator, and BSM Partners, the largest global pet care consulting firm, where we're taking you behind the scenes with entrepreneurs redefining the future of animal health, agriculture, and sustainable food innovation.

After an incredible inaugural season following founders through the Plug and Play AgTech and Animal Health accelerator program in Topeka, we're back with a fresh cohort of innovators. Over the next several months, we'll be following three founders as they navigate the real-time challenges and opportunities of building transformative companies. We'll also be featuring other founders, mentors, investors, and otherwise movers and shakers across the start of ecosystem, bringing you double the content the season with a new episode every other week.

Today, we will introduce Anna Agnello of Pointer Health, Selcuk Ugurlu of ChemCode, and Annette Graneli of Green-On—three founders tackling some of the most pressing challenges in animal health, food safety, and sustainable innovation.

Each of these founders brings a unique background and perspective to their work, and their stories remind us that the path to entrepreneurship is rarely linear. Let's dive right in with Anna Agnello, CEO of Pointer Health, who's developing what she describes as the most advanced disease prediction platform in veterinary medicine today.

We're your hosts, Jordan Tyler—

Mark McAllister: —and Mark McAllister—

Jordan Tyler: —and this is Founders in Focus.

Anna Agnello: So, my name is Anna. I am the CEO of Pointer Health, which is a precision medicine company for animal health. What we do is foundational modeling for veterinary medicine, and we predict diseases in dogs so they can live longer and healthier lives.

Jordan Tyler: Fabulous. And we'll get deeper into that for sure throughout this conversation, but Mark and I thought it would be kind of fun to kick off with a little game. And so, we wanted you to come up with two truths and a lie, and we wanted to see if we could figure out which one the lie was. And having spoken with you before, you have an interesting background, so I think this is going to be really hard, but take it away.

Anna Agnello: Okay. So, I am writing a fantasy novel. I moved away from my parents [at] age 12 into a different country. I am in the process of buying a horse.

Jordan Tyler: Okay. I totally believe the horse one.

Mark McAllister: The context clues from our last conversation would disqualify that…

Jordan Tyler: Yeah. I think I believe that one.

Mark McAllister: That, or it's like the age of when you moved to a different country is like, that could be a wrong age.

Jordan Tyler: Hmm.

Mark McAllister: I feel like it's like 11 or two or 13.

Jordan Tyler: Yeah. Devil's in the details.

Mark McAllister: Yeah.

Jordan Tyler: I'm going to say I think the lie is the fantasy novel.

Anna Agnello: Okay. Mark, what have you got?

Mark McAllister: I'm going to stick with the horse. I think the lie is the horse.

Anna Agnello: All right. Mark's right.

Mark McAllister Yes!

Jordan Tyler: Dang it!

Anna Agnello: I would love to be buying a horse probably when, if and when I IPO the company.

Jordan Tyler: There you go—something to look forward to.

Anna Agnello: So, yeah, the fantasy novel is about 250 pages in.

Jordan Tyler: I love fantasy, so when all of this is over said and done, and when you're finished with the book—

Anna Agnello: I’m going to send it to you.

Jordan Tyler: Please!

Anna Agnello: I wouldn't wish reading it on my worst enemy, but it's Brandon Sanderson-esque…

Jordan Tyler: Love it. I would happily read it, and I won't even give you any opinions if you don't want them, I'll just read it.

Anna Agnello: Oh, perfect. My first reader.

Mark McAllister: Yes. Send over an editor copy. Well, Anna, we got some nuggets there but would love to just open the floor. Tell us your story—what makes you tick, what gets you excited about life?

Anna Agnello: So, I am originally Italian. I grew up in Italy until I was an early teenager to be shipped off to boarding school in the UK. I ended up there on a scholarship because I was riding horses, and I really, really wanted to keep doing that at a serious level. I then went to the University of Oxford for my undergrad and then Columbia Law School. I worked in law and finance after university, and some of the companies that I worked for were large roll-ups of vet clinics. So, I got to see a lot of the structural inefficiencies in these large organizations, which led me to think about how important the use of data for proactive care would be and [had] a little frustration to see that that wasn't really done at all.

I kind of suffered the experience of those systematic failing or systematic inefficiencies when I, like a few years ago, I had a golden retriever, Goldie—not a very imaginative name, but a very well-loved dog—who died of undiagnosed kidney disease very young, and I felt like, and my family and I felt like, we had failed him. The dog had never had a urinalysis, Goldie had never had a blood test apart from his puppy test when he was younger, and we just didn't know how it would've been for a breed that has some predispositions to kidney issues, to put him on the right diet to try to manage it. And knowing that now it feels like Goldie’s life could have gone differently or we could have taken much better care of it of him if we had had Pointer.

And so that experience kind of stayed with me as I looked at companies in the veterinarian space or the animal healthcare space from an investment perspective or from, like, an industry perspective. And that's one of the ways in which the company came together.

And of course, the company is only really possible because of my incredible co-founder who used to be a senior scientist at Pfizer, and a lot of what we do comes out of his work and research and he was working on predictive analytics. So, that has been a key focus of the company, and it's been a great working with him and seeing both of our backgrounds come together.

Jordan Tyler: Yeah, it'll be great to have Alan on a feature episode, maybe the next one with you in October to get some flavor behind your dynamic duo there. But for now, so you mentioned it's a predictive analysis tool, but take us into the weeds and how does that, what does that look like to like an end user?

Anna Agnello: So, the backend of the company is large models that are a combination of predictive models that we build in-house, causal models that we also build in-house, and large language models. And this allows us to use enormous amounts of historic data together with a lot of domain knowledge to create what we call like the next generation of foundational modeling. And this allows it to be significantly more precise and accurate than just using one type of model or having a lot less data.

And we're only able to have this amount of data because, you know, we can work with two generations of dogs over the course of 20 years, which is how long we have electronic health records. We can look at like unified healthcare records and all of these things where we wouldn't be able to do in human healthcare. So, it's an interesting case study for how much animal health can almost leapfrog human healthcare by allowing this extreme focus on technology while retaining consolidated studies that we can—we're like continuously showing evidence that what we do actually works.

We then distill all of this information into a software platform for veterinarians. We predict in the software platform over 170 conditions for dogs, and we give lifetime risk. So, we give a probability prediction and then we look at how early-stage interventions can prevent these risks.

So, an example is: how does the dental prophylaxis affect the dog's 80% chance of developing a heart condition? By, you know, decreasing the systemic inflammation that exacerbates heart condition that is caused also, or exacerbated in turn by, bacteria buildup in the mouth to your oral disease. And we look at all of these systems so that we can make it available. And this in clinics drives proactive care, and also drives a better relationship between the client—what we've seen is a more trusting relationship between the client and the veterinarian because of an objective, easy-to-understand visualization of why the recommendation of the veterinarian are so important.

Our interventions are drawn by our data. They're refined with domain knowledge, but the reason why what we do is so advanced is not because we can take just someone's opinion on it, but we look at the history of millions and millions and millions of dogs and we know that historically these decisions—like, from the data that we have, this is all real-world data—we know that “X” led to something else. We work with correlation and causation. We refine that with domain knowledge. So, we know that “X” causes “Y” because of the domain knowledge from studies and veterinarians, and then we supplement that with our huge amounts of data.

So, we work on both ways because we can marry real-world data with domain knowledge and studies and veterinary opinions, and we can have this system that is very comprehensive and that is all traceable. So, for everything that we show, we can exactly say why and how.

Mark McAllister: I think the data aspect of your platform is by far the most interesting feature. Give us a little context on how you assembled that, what you can on who you've partnered with to bring that in.

Anna Agnello: Yeah. So, we've worked with a variety of institutions, clinics, and we took enormous care in ensuring that the data was reflective of the distribution in the US between GPs and specialty hospitals, breed types, mixed-breeds, disease types, geographical distribution by states—all of these things were like the utmost importance. So, it took us a really, really long time to work on assembling that data, and it was really important that we could create our own data set that was reflective of the real world, actually what happened in historical data.

Mark McAllister: Tell us about the, the accuracy claims. Uh, so I think you guys claim 95% accuracy across the 170 reported health conditions…

Anna Agnello: 96%.

Mark McAllister: That's got to be the hardest part of this, right?

Anna Agnello: Yeah. So, we run large retroactive studies in-house with hundreds of thousands of dogs to show our accuracy claims. We actually, and this is kind of the most interesting news in the past few months, one of our clients commissioned a fully third-party validation study on our models. To our knowledge, we're the only company that does anything like what we do that has fully submitted our models for third-party review, to an independent evaluator who did a 20,000-dog retroactive study on our models.

And what it showed is that on all types of conditions, we scored an average LR+ of around 36, which means that if we flag a risk, the clinician should know that it's 36 times more likely that that alert turns into an actual diagnosis than if we didn't flag it. So, it’s a really—it's kind of the gold standard for a lot of diagnostic metrics, and these are all studies that can be made available to anybody that we work with and will be published later in the year slash early next year.

Jordan Tyler: Super exciting. I want to circle back on something really quick; so when Pointer is making these recommendations, what kind of interventions are on the table? Like are they primarily pharmaceutical or are they more geared toward preventive care and like lifestyle focused?

Anna Agnello: So, we actually don't look at treatments at all, for now. We only look at early-stage interventions and environmental interventions, or specific early treatments that like vaccines, flea and tick prevention, dentals, some diets, some prescription diets, and how those can prevent risks in the future. What we say is these are preventative care steps that, in our data, have shown to have a positive impact on lowering the risk of certain conditions later on. And these are all things that we make available to the veterinarians, not to the pet owners. So, we help with, you know, education pet owners if the veterinarian wants, but we work exclusively with veterinary clinics.

Jordan Tyler: Inside baseball but in a good way, right? You're letting the experts make the expert recommendations.

Anna Agnello: And most of the time we're not really telling veterinarian anything new. We're giving them objective numbers and resources to justify their recommendations.

Mark McAllister: Let's shift to more of your just broader experience, and this can either be fantastic advice you've gotten from mentors, from your advisory board, or advice you'd share with other founders, but give us some insights into recommendations for other founders in the pet space, in the predictive health space. You can get as specific or as broad as you'd like here, but give us some insights from a founder.

Anna Agnello: I think being able to like, re-assess and learn from a situation, and then whilst staying true to like the overall mission of the company or the overall idea has been really important. I think we've changed and reiterated so many times, what the product look like? What does our first product do? How does it fit into the workflow of a clinic? Those things we have had to reiterate over and over and over again, but I think that the first and the key mission of Pointer has been the same from day one. So, learning from that feedback's important. It's absolutely key that you learn to take on feedback, even if it's a scathing—usually the most scathing feedback is the most useful. But also knowing, like, who the feedback comes from and why, and that has a really strong impact on, on the changes that you should make.

Jordan Tyler: Yeah, definitely a process.

Mark McAllister: Give us a quick roadmap into the next 12 months and how folks can support Pointer, either ecosystem, investors, vet practices.

f like corporate pilots until: 2026

We are planning on a larger raise, I think in early 2026 or late 2025, and we'll be continuously—continue to roll out and fill our pilot schedule for next year. Keep adding more features, keep improving the accuracy of our models, keep adding more conditions, and continue to grow the product.

Jordan Tyler: Pointer Health is taking millions of data points to predict health risks before they become problems. And this is the kind of proactive approach that could fundamentally change how we think about pet healthcare, moving from reactive treatment to more preventive approaches. But now, let's shift from predicting disease in our pets to preventing contamination in our food supply.

Our next founder, Selcuk Ugurlu, took an interesting path to entrepreneurship. He fell in love with chemical engineering and biosensor technology, then went looking for the right problem to solve with it. What he found was mycotoxins, toxic compounds produced by certain fungi and mold that can contaminate crops and cost billions in food waste while also posing serious health risks to humans and animals. His company, ChemCode, is making lab-quality testing accessible to everyone in the supply chain, from farmers to truck drivers. Let's learn more.

So, give us two truths and one lie about yourself. They don't have to be in that order, and actually I'd encourage you to not put them in that order, because then it'll make it really easy for Mark and I to guess which one is the lie. But, give us what you got.

Selcuk Ugurlu: Okay, okay. Then I will try to make it as hard as possible. So, I have graduated from a military high school. I made a solo jump from a plane with the parachute. I gave a concert to 5,000 people as a lead guitarist. Choose your destiny.

Jordan Tyler: Oh my gosh.

Mark McAllister: This may be the best set of three we've gotten so far. I am completely stumped. Um, just once as a lead guitarist?

Selcuk Ugurlu: I mean, I gave a lot of concerts, but like my most populated concert was like 5,000 people.

Mark McAllister: Okay.

Jordan Tyler: I believe that one.

Mark McAllister: Yeah. Plausible. Very plausible.

Jordan Tyler: Very plausible.

Mark McAllister: Hmm.

Jordan Tyler: I also totally believe that you solo jumped, like coming back to the whole like, entrepreneurs are crazy thing.

Mark McAllister: Yeah. I'm actually split on this. Because also, graduating from military high school is generic enough where it could go either way. It could be generic because it's untrue. It could be generic because it is true. Hmm. I'm going to go with my gut., I say it's military high school. I say that’s the lie.

Jordan Tyler: Okay, I'm going to go with Mark on this one.

Mark McAllister: Really? I thought you were going to go solo jump.

Jordan Tyler: Okay. No, I'm going to go with Mark. What is it?

Selcuk Ugurlu: It's the solo jump.

Mark McAllister: So, lead guitarist? You're in a band?

Selcuk Ugurlu: I mean, I used to be, but like, after I started at the university, like, I'm a chemical engineer and,it was hard enough that I had to quit playing guitar. I just played myself at home. Like, I actually gave concerts like in the bars as well when I was in university, but like, not anymore. It's just me.

Mark McAllister: Let's hop into it. So, obviously we want to start out with a little intro of, of you, obviously we'll get into the technology, so we'd love to know the story arc of how you came up with the idea, how you commercialized it, and then where everything stands now. But give us the background on Selcuk.

Selcuk Ugurlu: Sure. I was born and raised in Turkey. I became a chemical engineer after the military high school, and the thing is, I guess the point that I decided I want to be entrepreneur is like for my senior year lecture, actually, it was called like “project planning and organization.” Until then we were like just designing something, like talking about thermodynamics and fluid mechanics and it was kind of boring for me as well, so it was a lecture that they asked us to create a project and like, define everything in terms of marketing, like technology, where you want to build your factory, and et cetera. And in that lecture I kind of really get excited about like creating something, creating an idea, creating a new use case, and I guess that's how I started to thinking about being an entrepreneur.

The day of graduation, it was the day I created my established, my first startup, actually ChemCode is my second startup. Being in entrepreneurship is like you get a virus in your blood. It's like, it's hard to take it out, you know? So, like I was waiting for the right time to establish ChemCode and I created ChemCode. I guess before establishing ChemCode. I kind of came across the biosensor technology—like overall, not the technology we are using, but—I kind of see the power of it. But afterwards, like in biosensor technology, I recognize that like I can produce everything in a lab space, and I can produce millions and like, so effectively. There are many industries that are looking for analysis and getting results as well, but how I started ChemCode is we actually kind of came across the electrochemical analysis technology and the technology has grown so well in the hardware manner. Not the biosensor manner, but the hardware manner. So, basically you can put, insert a single device in your mobile phone. You can insert your biosensor in it, and you can perform analysis and get the results from your mobile app. Currently, we are able to analyze like temperature, humidity—that kind of stuff is, like, very limited, but the chemical analyzers are like, nobody can do it, like, very well. Nobody can integrate them with the mobile apps or like data and stuff.

oxins, we’ve lost a lot. In: 2020

So, when I started to get into it, like, I kind of recognized it's a segmented problem because the problem is like about food sources, about the customer segment, about the climate. So, like, there are lots of variations, and variations help startups to be successful. So, that's why I choose ChemCode and started in 2021.

Jordan Tyler: I think it's interesting that you said you came to this solution kind of backwards. You know, you, you love the technology and then you were trying to find a use case for it. And I think, um, you know, combating food waste, that's huge. That's something that is on a lot of people's minds. There's also the food safety aspect of it. Like, if mycotoxins go undetected in food, like they can cause serious health problems for people and for pets as well. I know that's a big thing in the pet industry is, you know, how do we sample for this stuff?

But tell us a little bit more about the, the actual technology. So, it sounds like you're really taking this tech and making it super accessible for the people that are going to be using it and actually implementing it. So, take us through what the tech looks like and how it functions from, like, a user perspective, if you don't mind.

Selcuk Ugurlu: Yeah, of course, of course. I mean, we currently come with the idea for two designs. We are almost finished with our first prototype. But the thing is, we actually have done what a startup should be doing in the beginning. It's like Startup 101—before starting R&D, go talk to people about their problem. Right? Nobody does it. It's like so simple. If you do it, you are successful.

So, the thing is, we checked out the technology used in the current days, everybody's consideration is like accuracy of the solution. Even the competitors are like rapid test kits. But, they're not successful on the accuracy as well. So, it is a huge problem from their view as well. But the thing is, we recognize that they have a solution and they are trying to fit the solution in every situation, and it's like, the situation they are trying to fit is not working. We kind of figured out that we need to have a different approach.

So, because we are able to talk to people from, like, farmers, wholesalers, food storage owners and et cetera, we definitely recognize that it should be accessible to anyone. So, our approach was before considering about accuracy or repeatability, we needed to create a device that should be done by anybody. Everything must be as automated as possible. They just need to put the sample in it, locate the biosensor, push, analyze with it, and get the results. Also, we were thinking about the, like, it should be rapid, because, like, in some cases they have like a hundred tests in a day. A hundred samples in a day, which means like, according to the food source, it means like 500 different analyses, according to different mycotoxins as well. So, we should be like thinking about it should be fast.

The other thing is like, it should be—we should be able to take it on-site, like field applications. So, we have, like, dimensions on mind. We have a time limit in mind. We, afterwards, we have accuracy in mind as well. So afterwards, we start to perform our R&D, and it kind of quite worked. But the design of this simpler product, we kind of made it very similar to brew your own coffee from coffee grounds. So, everybody knows how to do it. What they do is like using, like, you ground the coffee, you weigh it, you put in your pot, you brew it, and you put it in your cup. Right? In our solution also: you get the sample grounded, weighted like for five grams, instead of putting it in the pot you put in the extraction module, and after the extraction module you filter it—we use kind of filter like French press as well—you filter it, you put it in your analyzer solution and push analyze button, and you get the results. So, that's the key for us as well.

So, a farmer can do it, a truck driver can do it, and all of our products can fit in a backpack. We were also considering the weight, as well, people can carry. Like, it shouldn't be like 25 kilos… or, like, 50 lbs. So, this is how our product works, actually.

Mark McAllister: Let's double click on that a little bit. On the Ag Tech side, our team has done a bunch of work on landscaping a lot of soil and leaf tissue analysis companies. The form factor that I see most commonly, I think, is maybe similar to what you guys have, which is simply miniaturizing a lab test, putting it in a box, taking it out in field, and then just shrinking the cycle time of how quickly you can test. Tell us about the differentiation of specifically the devices you're creating relative to the rest of the market and why you think it's new and novel.

Selcuk Ugurlu: Yeah. Yeah, I guess I forgot to mention that we perform electrochemical analysis. So, the thing is, the electrochemical analysis, basically you get a biosensor. It seems like, you know, the glucose strips that diabetic people use to measure their glucose and use the insulin for it. So, the technology is very similar to that. What we love about it is like you get the result exactly and you get a signal—electrical signal, and you can process the signal so easily compared to other technologies. Mainly the technology they use in the market is like lateral flow assays. That technology is like [what] they use in a pregnancy test. It's like two lines, one line analysis. Yeah. So, this kind of analysis, like, yeah, of course you can kind of put the data in the, like, [in a] mobile app in some manner. They also have some kind of the devices that measure concentration, but it's like, it's not that simple actually, because like they also, for this analysis, they require labs as well. They require specialists because like human error can create accuracy problems in that test as well. So, you have to precise about it.

So, we kind of want to use this electrical segment and that's why it was easy for us to integrate to the mobile app because the food safety management is also like operation management, and you have to be precise about it as well. Currently, people cannot perform as many analysis because of the current technologies, like, they require labs and et cetera. So, we are able to create a lot of data so they can see the situation like in one page, in one screen, and they are able to decide with, like, data-based decisions.

Mark McAllister: Let's shift maybe to more of your advice to the rest of the startup ecosystem. You've obviously learned a bunch of lessons through this process. If there's maybe a set of advice or maybe some top advice you'd give to other founders trying to build in the biotech space, what advice would that be?

Selcuk Ugurlu: Sure. I guess, like, one of the first advice I would give that, like, you have to understand the people who you are dealing with and what their problems are because, like, when you really understand people, people start to give you so much valued information, as well. So, you exactly know what they want, what they want to do, what triggers them actually to buy your product, as well. So, if you listen them carefully, you kind of try present them with a solution, it works, you get the money, like, for sure.

And the second advice, like, as I said before, as a startup, we want to, like, be successful fast. But like this year, I guess I was able to understand, finally, [that] you have to take one step each time and it works quite well. You have to be like consistent about it, for sure. Each step you have to be looking for one higher step. It shouldn't be like the same level of step that you are going through, you have to go to a higher place and higher place and higher place.

Jordan Tyler: Yes. One step at a time. I think that's great advice. I'm going to steal a page from Mark's book here and kind of ask you, as you're going through the Plug and Play program, as you're, you know, building out ChemCode, what's kind of your priority in terms of—are you looking for investments? Are you looking for partners, mentors? What's your priority?

Selcuk Ugurlu: Yeah, I guess our priority is like investment, but it's like, everything is connected to that. Like, to be able to get investment, I needed to get pilot applications and network and traction for it, for sure. But we are looking for strategic investors. This is very important to us, and Plug and Play actually helps us quite well for it because like to be able to get investment from United States, it's like you, you know, it's much more easy to do United States market and it'll increase your value as well.

So, our priority is getting investment. We are supposed to talk like with a lot of companies, like corporate companies, for pilot applications as well, like very soon. It's like, it works quite well as well because like everything like we do in this program, it's like we gain leverage all the time. Like we will be starting on mentors as well, and mentors are not just like corporate workers or someone like who has some idea about like startups as well. They're like CEOs, like they're like founders and like, we are able to talk to people who actually walk to path that we are supposed to walk and it helps a lot.

Like, we value everything we can gain. And because like, for mentors, for pilot applications, for investments, like, it's quite—actually until now, it's going quite well. We are so excited about it.

Jordan Tyler: ChemCode's approach to democratizing food safety testing—making it as simple as brewing your coffee—shows how complex technology can be made accessible when you truly understand your user's needs. Selcuk’s goal of reducing global mycotoxin loss by 5% in the next 20 years might sound modest, but when you consider the billions of dollars and countless health impacts at stake, it's a mission that could transform food security worldwide.

Speaking of transformative missions, our final founder today is taking sustainability to an entirely new level. What if I told you we could make food without farms, without soil, without photosynthesis? That's exactly what Annette Graneli and her team at Green-On are doing: making fats and oils from electricity, water, and CO2.

This is not science fiction. It's the cutting edge of what's called “power-to-X” technology, and it could revolutionize how we produce essential ingredients while saving rainforests in the process. But, before we get into all that, let's meet Annette.

Annette Graneli: Okay, so two truths and a lie. Uh, so I've been a state champion in alpine skiing, and I've been doing the longest bike race in Sweden, three times of 300 kilometers, and I'm playing in a big band. These are the three.

Mark McAllister: Playing in a big band… What's the band's name?

Annette Graneli: The Big Band Company.

Mark McAllister: Well, everyone in in Sweden skis, right?

Annette Graneli: Pretty much.

Mark McAllister: That's probably accurate. Yeah, Jordan, weigh in here. I don't know. All of these… this is good. These are good.

Jordan Tyler: It's got to be either the skiing or the biking, because I mean, there's no way you have time for both.

Mark McAllister: Three times for a 300-kilometer ride. Hmmm... How recently did you complete?

Annette Graneli: Not very recently.

Jordan Tyler: I feel like these are all true…

Annette Graneli: I wish.

Mark McAllister: Okay, I want to say no on the band. I think the band is a lie. Jordan, what do you think?

Jordan Tyler: I was going to say the, The Big Band Company seems a little too on the nose, but it, I mean… I'm going to go with the biking. I think it's the biking that is the lie.

Annette Graneli: Okay. It's not, it's the alpine skiing. I have been—I mean, I love alpine skiing, but I haven't been racing, so I'm not the state champion in that. But I have been doing the bike ride and I play saxophone in a big band here in Gothenburg.

Mark McAllister: The Big Band Co—tell us about the band! This is awesome.

Annette Graneli: It's just a standard big band, and we play each week, and we are more happy than good.

Mark McAllister: How long has the group been together?

Annette Graneli: Oh, for, uh, 10—no, 15 years I think now.

Jordan Tyler: Wow.

Mark McAllister: Do you guys play little gigs here and there, or is it just garage band? Enjoy yourself?

Annette Graneli: No, no, no. We play a couple of times here and there. Yeah. Birthday, parties, other companies hiring for company parties and that sort of things. So yes, we play.

Mark McAllister: The Big Band Company.

Annette Graneli: Yeah.

Mark McAllister: Love that.

Annette Graneli: Storbandsbolaget, in Swedish.

Mark McAllister: Say that again?

Annette Graneli: Storbandsbolaget, in Swedish. The Big Band Company. Yeah.

Mark McAllister: Alright, I'm going to learn that one.

Jordan Tyler: Yeah. I'm not going to try it today, but I'll learn. But Annette, let's get more into your background. Tell us a bit about yourself and how your experiences have led you to where you are today with Green-On.

Annette Graneli: Yes. So, I started as a PhD in Material Science and Biochemistry. So, I'm really a biochemist from the beginning, and started out with doing academic research. I did a post-doc in New York, and we also started a biosensor company out of my PhD work, basically.

But after my post-doc in US, I moved back to Sweden to Gothenburg and continue my academic career for a while, but then moving to a research institute, and that's really where I began working with sustainability, sustainable materials and sustainable food and that sort of thing. And from that, we started our company, Green-On, with this invention that we have—making food from electricity without agriculture, basically. So, that's what we do.

Mark McAllister: Tell us a little bit more about the actual science of Green-On. Walk us through where it started and then where it's developed so far in the journey of the company.

Annette Graneli: So, it started out as a project at the Research Institute of Sweden called RISE, and we are three founders and that's where we all met. And basically, the science behind it is that you take electricity, carbon dioxide, and water, and in a step-by-step process, you make fat—and oils, but the fat molecule—and we make the exact same molecules as plants and animal produce. So, it's nature identical and we can make saturated fats and we can make it basically of any size that's needed, which makes us very versatile. We can be custom-made to fit a lot of different applications, basically.

And it's, of course, since we bypass agriculture, it's sustainable with no fertilizer, no pesticides, and no arable land, and a very small amount of greenhouse gas emissions and so on. So, there's a lot of good things that come with this solution, making fats and oils in this way, replacing animal and tropical fats, basically palm oil, coconut oil, and dairy, for example.

Mark McAllister: So, for this application, for fats and oils, what was the validation point, either at university or in the early stages of the company, where you felt like you could turn this into a commercially viable product?

Annette Graneli: Yeah. So, what was done first was just a concept—made one kilogram of this fat, basically. So, and then, we were talking to a lot of people and we realized this cannot go further without commercializing it. So, we need to test it basically, and we need to start a company and build in value within the company and taking us forward. And now we have prototypes together with partners and other companies and so on. So, we have been moving forward. But we are still in the developing phase. The next phase we want to take is to build a pilot so we can produce approximately a hundred kilograms a day. And that's where we are right now.

Mark McAllister: How much infrastructure investment do you need to make that leap?

Annette Graneli: We are currently raising a seed round of €3 million, and we expect that to take us to the next step where we can really scale this technology.

Jordan Tyler: Very cool. What are the primary markets that you're targeting right now? I know a lot of people that implement technology like this may start for like fish food or like animal feed and stuff like that, and kind of work their way into human food. And so, I'm curious what that pathway looks like for Green-On.

Annette Graneli: So, there are a couple of sectors that are more interesting than others. For example, the vegan dairy space is one where the structure of the fat is really important and the functionality of the fat, and that’s what we bring—we bring sustainability, but also the functionality of a certain type of fat.

So, basically, meaning that you get the right meltability of the cheese or the right creaminess of ice cream or crunchiness of chocolate and that sort of thing, that type of function that comes from the fat ingredient. So, that's one thing.

But also, bakery and confectionery, where there’s a lot of use of palm oil, for example. I mean, we know that there are certain environmental factors coming with palm oil and deforestation of the rainforest and so on, so that's needed to reduce the need for palm oil or being an alternative to cutting down any more rainforest, basically. That's what we do, and that's one other sector, but of course, we are also looking in parallel into cosmetics, as well as pet food.

Jordan Tyler: Yeah. That's so interesting. And we'll definitely go deeper into some other applications for this technology in later episodes, but let's not give away too much too soon and instead shift to how you measure success for Green-On.

Mark McAllister: And maybe we can start specifically with the environmental impact. That's obviously a core component to the platform you're trying to build, but expand on that in how you view both your goals and objectives as the organization and what you feel like success would look like over the next few years.

Annette Graneli: So, we have certain steps that we want to take in order to become successful in the end. So, for every kilogram we produce and use, we can say that we have saved a certain amount of rainforest, basically, because the deforestation of rainforest is ongoing and due to food and palm oil production, the increase of that type of production. So, we offer an alternative to that. So, that's one thing. And for each kilogram, basically, of our fat, we save 3.4 square meters of rainforest. So that's one success factor to measure.

But to be able to come to that, we need to take certain development steps. As I said, we currently—we have been producing batch-type mode for a few to 10 kilograms approximately, and the next step is to build a pilot plant where we can produce the hundred kilograms to be able to make prototypes, for example, to be able to start regulatory applications and that sort of thing. So, that's of course, having the pilot plant up and running. That's one thing. And then the step after that is building a plant where we can produce much more. One good thing about this technology—or, there's a lot of good things, but one important part is that it's highly scalable. So, we can take quite a big step toward the first more production plant, so to say.

Jordan Tyler: So, you spent time, obviously in the US as well as in Sweden. I'm kind of curious how your time in more of the Nordic startup space has kind of influenced the development of Green-On. I know that this came from university, and you obviously have a very scientific background, but give us a window into, kind of, the startup ecosystem where you're based and how maybe—any advantages that you might have gleaned from being over there while you were developing this.

Annette Graneli: Yes. So, being in the climate space, that's been a good thing, I think, being in Sweden, because we have kind of highly striving to being net-zero basically, and there is a lot of acceptance for climate solutions and looking for solutions. So, I think that is one thing. Of course, that is all over the world basically, but in Sweden it's, I think, it's more implemented into the politics and policies and so, on than in the rest of the world at least. Europe is coming along and moving quite fast, and that's good when it comes to policy and so on. We think that can be a good and positive thing, influencing a lot of different other countries basically.

And then, of course, I mean this is a global solution and, and we are looking out as well globally basically. We want to build a factory in each—in a lot of different places around the world, basically, because this is a global solution. Wherever there is electricity and water and CO2, then we can build this type of factory there.

Mark McAllister: Feel free to pull this from your personal experience or maybe advice you received, but what advice would you give other founders who are looking to build solutions in the broader sustainability space?

Annette Graneli: Yes, make sure that you have a product that you can sell that someone wants, and maybe add something to the sustainability—not only being more sustainable, but also something else that's better. That helps. I'm very sure that we need all the climate solutions, but it's easier if you have another thing as well. It's sustainable and more functional.

Mark McAllister: So, in that, as you're building this, it feels like the next step is a larger pilot agreement raising some funds to build out the infrastructure of what you're building. What is your ask of the network listening? How can folks support you, either corporates or investors or ecosystem? What kind of support are you looking for particularly over the next 12 months?

Annette Graneli: We need, I mean, investors; we’ll be happy to take calls from investors, for example, but also corporates that have a need for a sustainable and functional fat ingredient. That's the perfect partner that we want to add to our partner list moving forward, making prototypes together with when we have the pilot up and running. That would be perfect.

Jordan Tyler: From Anna to Selcuk to Annette and the teams behind them, these early-stage companies are aiming to solve problems that affect millions, both human lives and animals. They're helping veterinarians predict health risks before they become tragedies. They're making food safety testing accessible to anyone in the supply chain, while also reducing food waste and protecting human health. And they're creating sustainable ingredients while saving rainforests in the process.

And our next episode, we'll meet another founder currently traversing the Plug and Play accelerator program, and he's focused on transforming canine longevity through science-backed nutrition. You will definitely want to hear his unique story and approach. Check back in mid-October as we continue following Anna, Selcuk, and Annette through their Plug and Play journey, watching them transform groundbreaking science into scalable solutions.

To all our listeners, thank you for tuning in today. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe, leave us a review, and share the episode with a fellow entrepreneur, innovator, investor, or friend. We've got more incredible founders and industry disruptors coming your way soon, so be sure to stay tuned. Until next time, thanks again and stay curious.