It's ON: Innovation Program for Researchers

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James Petrie:  Having failures against your name in the startup world and in the commercial world is actually a good thing because it shows that you're learning and that you're not afraid to try again and that's certainly where we ended up. So our first, first approach didn't work out and the second one hit.

[Image changes to move through a blue background with arrows rushing up and across the screen then text appears: ON Track, Episode 3, James Petrie, Nourish Ingredients]

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So Nourish Ingredients, we’re in our series A funding round, we've raised around 40 million US. We are in the scale up part of our journey. So we have two product lines now. One is called Tastilux and the one is called Creamilux.

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Tastilux is a meat taste and aroma solution based on authentic animal type meat lipids and the Creamilux is a new type of dairy lipid which works really well for mouthfeel and dairy taste.

[Image changes to a blue background with black text: How did the Nourish Ingredients journey start?]

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We entered the ON Program as a leaf oil tea, and we tried to spin a technology out of CSIRO around leaf oil, and so we established a company called Folio and we sought to get funding for that, capital investment. We, we failed. And as it turns out, like I understand why we failed. So I understand what sort of technologies now are more viable for venture funding path, which is quite different for corporate funding path or organic business growth.

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But because we kept talking with people in industry, we kept hearing the same sort of question about, you know, this whole plant protein food area is pretty hot. Are you guys able to do fats and oils for that to make it more authentic? And of course we thought the answer was yes, we could. We got a lot of good pointers during the ON program about what we needed to look like in order to be investable, and we also made the connections. And so when my co-founder and I, when we eventually made the decision to call it quits on Folio it was not long after actually that we said, well, why, why don't we see if we can go down this other path? And we were able to really kick start that whole discussion.

[Image changes to a blue background with black text: What’s been the bidets mind set shift for you going from researcher to entrepreneur?]

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So one learning that came out of the ON Program that I that I wish I'd learned earlier, it is about how you tell the story and how you frame the story, okay. This is critically important, arguably more important than the underlying technology that you are building. And this is heresy to many scientists, but it is reality. And so I'll paint you two pictures, right? One of them is a startup company who does yeast engineering and has some cool new traits and is able to build a prototype scale products gradually moving toward commercialisation. That, that is one reality, and it's being echoed in universities across the world where you have yeast, metabolic engineering and synthetic biology groups left, right and centre.

On the other hand, you have a cutting edge startup company who has deep integration with customers, and the industry in which they operate, deeply understands the problems and the needs of that space and is able to match that up with synthetic biology and yeast and be able to build cool new products. Both of those stories are true. Which one of those stories you tell is going to make or break your pitch. You are painting them a tapestry of what the future could look like with your technology and how you can grow it. And I wish that was something that I had learned earlier because I think it does help in how you can accelerate your advancement.

[Image changes to a blue background with black text: What advice do you have for researchers looking to explore alternative pathways for their research?]

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There's a couple of things I'd say to people who are feeling stuck in a research rut, or interested in exploring further. First of all, there is absolutely nothing wrong with an academic research career and you can be at peace with that, and that's cool. If you are really keen to try and get, to try and move into a different, into a different sphere and try and move into the commercialisation of innovation world, then I think that something like an ON Program is a good starting point, but it's going to give you enough of a taste of that world to see if you want to do it or not. Now, because it is a very drastic change in terms of mentality, in terms of your day to day work, in terms of the sort of challenges you deal with, and it will equip you to find out whether that's for you or whether you are more comfortable in the research sphere.

[Image changes to blue background with two arrows pointing up. Text in black: ON Track. Subheading in black: Look out for more episodes via csiro.au/ON]

[Image changes to white background with CSIRO logo and text in blue below: Australia’s National Science Agency]