Dr. Jeremy Weisz 17:34
I was going to say it’s interesting because your backgrounds in economics and so like how did you get to biomarkers? But I kind of see the connection now. It’s like a supply and demand thing, which is directly related to economics because CPGs have an invested interest in if there’s more crops, I mean, that could decrease their their cost of goods and also obviously just make it up, you know, just more reliable, you know, so they’re not, you know, stuck.
But, you know, from a client perspective, there’s a technology side perspective. This is highly technical. And there’s like the sales side. I’m wondering how you get your first clients. I mean, did you roll up to a farm and then just say, hey, like we have this, like, how did you get some of your first clients that were on board?
Adrian Ferrero 18:26
We’re so lucky to have the support from the accelerator program. They connected us to the Silicon Valley Bank. By that time, the Silicon Valley Bank was the bank trusted by most of the startups. And they have one of their verticals in the wine business. So Illumina connected us to Silicon Valley Bank.
We found that Aguilar by that time was not there anymore. But he was great at helping us to really, you know, find those early adopters, those wineries which were at the, well, the most disruptive companies willing to try and give feedback and spend time with us. That was how we really started working with some clients. It was very interesting because one of the things we did was open a website where you can order a single page.
By that time, our business model was based on text. So you do a test, you pay a test. That’s all, simple. And we receive an order from Washington state. And it was like, wow. And we’re not ready to deliver. But I called the client and said, hey, we just started. Thank you. So you pay us $700 for five days.
That was like, great, but I don’t know if we’re going to be able to deliver. We’re going to do our best. If not, we’ll return the money. What happens is that we have to return the money because we spent seven weeks delivering the results, and I committed to six weeks. So, deliver the results, receive the feedback, and we’re still working with that client. So actually there is a growing interest.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 20:07
You kind of made it a no-brainer offer. You’re like, if it doesn’t work, we’ll give you the money back. No risk on their end.
Adrian Ferrero 20:15
Yeah, well, no risk. But they pay in advance. That’s another thing, right? So, but you knew, and these guys knew nothing about us, and they were eager to try this. So that was like, okay, a test, a proof of concept that there is growing interest in telehealth.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 20:33
Is that program still in existence? Is it called Illumina, or what is it?
Adrian Ferrero 20:39
Illumina? They have evolved now is Illumina Ventures. They are still around. And what is cool is that we’re using genetics for the whole process. They are supporting entrepreneurs, proposing innovative ideas, business ideas.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 20:53
This is it right here. Illumina.
Adrian Ferrero 20:55
Around the biotech. So that helped us a lot. I always say that the crew that by that time must have. A corny McKinney, those were the people who really helped us to be here today.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 21:17
That’s awesome. Yeah. How did you even hear about this? So because you were in Spain at the time, right?
Adrian Ferrero 21:23
Exactly. It was so interesting because we saw a tweet from the former CEO and Founder of Illumina, Francis deSouza. We are looking for startups doing great things in DNA sequencing. That was all. So we apply, we submit an idea, and have a couple of Skype meetings.
By that time, Skype, Skype meetings. You remember that?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 21:50
Oh yeah. I mean, that’s what I was using when I was doing podcasting in 2000 and 809. I would have to teach people to install Skype so we can do video over it. Over it? Yeah, totally.
Adrian Ferrero 22:04
So, three meetings, and they invited us to do a proof of concept. That was January 2015 and May 2015. We were selected. So the adventure started.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 22:17
What did life look like personally for you then? Because it’s obviously a big commitment to leave your country and go to a different country and start living with the startup. Yeah. Like, do you have kids at the time? Do you have a spouse at the time? Like what? What does that look like that you just picked up, and you’re like, I’m going to the US.
Adrian Ferrero 22:39
Well, life gives a lot of cycles to the situation. No, but I mean no. Since we were children, we were practicing judo together back in Spain. And we have a lot of confidence and trust together. And we were speaking like, if we don’t do this, we’re going to regret our whole life. So it’s like, let’s do it.
But I mean, this is a life experience, whatever happens. So we did it. Some people are actually afraid of that because of all the conditions that can be as wide as you can imagine. But actually, when you do it, everything is easier and more exciting. And actually, we’ve been living out of that idea and that action for ten years.
And the reason we are speaking today, and hopefully I can share this experience of some people getting inspired is because we did that step, and, well, you would risk for sure that the potential gain is huge and the life experience is unique. So you have to make it.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 23:44
Why? Like, tell me the initial idea for the company? Because when I look at your background in economics, I’m not thinking he’s going to start a biome company where he’s analyzing soil. Like, why this?
Adrian Ferrero 24:00
And as you mentioned, I’m an economist and I was working in a consultancy firm called FundingBox, a for funding innovation, okay, mainly R&D grants or granting schemes with the European Commission. So I was supporting and helping so many projects in Europe, and I knew a lot about funding, but not fundraising from the, let’s say, startup point of view.
And then I have one day a beer with Alberto, and we decide to, well, join forces and build our first company. He splits molecular biology, and he had this crazy idea of applying DNA sequencing from saliva to help doctors prescribe the best treatment for cancer. So that was.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 24:50
Like a saliva test. And it basically helps analyze for more specific treatment for cancer or cancer. Yeah.
Adrian Ferrero 25:01
Yeah. And what were your factors in my breast cancer? According to the scientific literature, the best way of proceeding? So it was so interesting that by that time, doctors were telling us I cannot prescribe a treatment based on a saliva test. And we were like, who cares if it’s saliva or blood or whatever? It’s a cell and there is DNA.
And so, so now it’s so common. Now, remember Covid; it was either nasal or saliva. So you can’t do this kind of test easily anyway. So the first company was this Genetic Diagnostic Center specialized in DNA sequencing in human diseases focusing on human diseases. We were working with hospitals, and some of them started to ask about microbiology.
So then we realized that not many people were using DNA sequencing to really understand or learn about microbiology researchers, mainly in academia, but not in the, let’s say, real world. Real world researchers are in the real world, you know.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 26:07
I mean, because I do see a lot of, you know, that’s why I mean, it’s interesting because I see a lot of parallels to when you’re talking about the soil biome and then you hear a lot of people talking about how important the gut biome is from, like, you know, the bacteria and all the everything interacting in the gut and how important that is for health. So I’m starting to see that. But it started off almost like for humans.
Adrian Ferrero 26:34
Well, as you mentioned, there is a clear connection. So if you think about human disorders and human deaths, they are mainly caused by gut disorders, and these are microbial gut microbiomes. And for us, nature was an aspect that is very important, very crucial. But at the same time, health, you know, so how can we combine this? So the natural link is food, where what we eat now, there is this way of thinking that states Make your food the medicine or the medicine becomes your food.
So where we eat and we eat healthy, we’re going to be healthy. And right now we see that the crops that we are receiving, let’s say, there are a lot of nutrients in the food or the load of vitamins and so on, are much lower than 30 years ago or ten years ago. So the same one, oranges have a lot of water, but they are not feeding us in the same way. So imagine if we think about this at a global level. We’re punishing ourselves because we’re growing the food.
Just thinking about the weight, the number, the pounds that we are producing. And perhaps we can decrease production by 5, 10%. If we increase the quality, we’re going to need to eat less. Now everybody is talking about superfoods, highly high-protein foods, and so on. Trying to recover seats.
And so there is a connection. And there is another trend that is called One Health. And I really believe that we’re going to save a lot of money on the health care system. If we eat better and we’re going to suffer less, have a healthier lifestyle, we’re going to feel better. And probably there is also some mental health, and how you say this.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 28:43
Mental health?
Adrian Ferrero 28:43
Health, mental health, mental health is also conditioned by our day-to-day routine. So yeah, there is a straight connection, and how can we bring value here? Obviously, biomarkers let’s go to the origin. That’s where we have a clear value proposition, and that’s what we are doing.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 29:03
I want to talk about some of the milestones. At what point do you decide to raise money?
Adrian Ferrero 29:10
Well, actually, that was from the beginning. The goal, the journey that we envisioned, was really big. So we needed to develop technology. We needed to test to build this database, to create a new market. And you cannot do it by, let’s say, bootstrapping, because there is not a market there that you can rely on to keep growing. So the just after the accelerator program, we closed our seed round with a mixture of mainly Californian and European investors.
It worked really well with that money. We completed the first journey of the first milestone, which is to develop the technology proof that we can bring value and have some clients, still some very early traction. And after that, we raised series A, so to keep growing the client base and improve the technological stack. So do things better. And in 2000, that was 2019 and 2021. We closed our series B, where you start optimizing everything and prepare to scale.
That was 2021. Since then, we’ve been growing moderately. Not like a wish. It was like a 2020 x a growth rate in their annual growth rate. But well, it’s growing, which is good. And we are optimizing. And right now we’re just looking for profitability. So we decrease the dependency of external funding. And the market will tell us what’s next.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 30:52
I’d love to hear from mentors and some of the advice you got when I’m looking. You know, we’re like at BiomeMakers.com. You have — obviously people who can check this out. The core values, the rock star team. And then you have some advisory board members. I don’t know if those would be good to talk about some of the lessons you learned from Dan and Jay.
Adrian Ferrero 31:14
Yeah. Jay and Dan are, well, the current members of the advisory board, but we received an amazing load of energy that has been helping us to really make this journey and to find the success that we have at this stage from a different perspective how to build a company, how to grow the company, how to create a team, a marketwise product wise. So all the areas also support entrepreneurs. There are ups and downs. This is a roller coaster.
It’s very it’s a topic, but it’s real. I mean, you learn to be flat in emotions because otherwise, some days you will go party crazy because everything is going great. Other times, you will commit suicide because everything goes wrong. So having those advisers in different areas is extremely important. We’ve been very lucky to have them.
Jay and Dan are helping us to mainly grow the market, so they are very influential. They know everyone in the industry and that’s how we are using them. The rest, we agree that with the latest update on the website, we’re going to have a new look and feel and take away all the people with emotion. Actually, we have personal connections and keep speaking to all of them. It’s so important to have people backing you up.
You cannot do the journey. It’s not just the family. It’s not the friends that are a key piece, a key pillar to keep you there, but all the people that are not always and this is important with a contribution expectation. So they do it willingly without asking anything in return because they share their kindness and it’s very helpful. And now we are the ones doing that to others because otherwise this will not work in the same way.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 33:18
Have you found certain events that have been valuable for you from an industry perspective, like specific trade shows or conferences that you like to attend?
Adrian Ferrero 33:29
Yeah, I’ll tell you, there are a huge number of events, honestly speaking, so you can get lost and spend all the money that you have just by going to events. And sometimes it’s not worth. It’s great because you meet the same people more or less, and you meet clients. And it’s so surprising for me that now I’m not doing as much commercial activity as I used to. So it’s great to have a commercial team, but sometimes you get a little bit far from your clients, honestly speaking.
And in some events, people come to me and say, hey, we’re a client of yours, and I start talking to somebody. I know you are. Wow. It’s, like, so rewarding, so great. But if I have to name some events in the Arctic specifically, there are two events. There are. There are many. But like big ones. One happening in San Francisco. The other one is rotating mainly.
So it was recently in New Delhi and the Biotech World Conference or the World Agri Tech Conference. At the end of the day, the names are similar. But yeah, there are many conferences that are there. All of them have a certain level of value, but I will be very selective. We are very selective now on those events.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 34:49
You know I know you know, you started with the vineyards, and you’ve helped potato companies, corn companies, and you mentioned kind of the superfoods. I’m wondering what is tropical from a tropical crops perspective. What have you seen and what have you done with it? The company.
Adrian Ferrero 35:08
We do. We’re so curious. And that’s the first thing. So we have this program that is called Fields Forever where we support farmers, agronomists, researchers who are doing things that are unique and perhaps small. Commercially speaking, we work with large growers, and when we talk about tropical crops, we’re talking about palm oil palms, we’re talking about the sugar cane, we’re talking about banana coffee, cacao.
So the main corn for sure everywhere in the world; those are the main crops that we cover. Potatoes is one of the crops where we see that the value is the highest, at least from the feedback that we receive from the clients in the US, Australia as well. And because there, I mean we found situations where the farmer got a 40% increase because they have a very difficult situation in the field, and we’re able to tell them exactly what was happening. And there were two dimensions that had to be restored, and they did it. But the starting point was so bad.
It doesn’t mean that everybody is going to get a 40% increase in potatoes by looking at the biological activity, but that’s a very good case. Or for instance, in vineyards we have so many cases. One of them is called The Golden Vineyard. So the best vineyard where they were getting the grapes for the high-end wine bottles — $800 a bottle of wine. And it was so curious that we saw that the soil was not working really well.
It’s so interesting. So there was no disease risk at all. So nutrient mobilization was really specialized. There were some blocks stimulating the overall quality of the soil. The biodiversity was really low. So they were so proud of the land. And what we told them is, hey, be aware that if you keep doing what you are doing, whatever you are doing, that field is not going to be as productive because you are literally killing the plants that are getting isolated from nature.
You know, you have to spend more money, even more, to be sure of the plants. So it doesn’t make any sense because it is in grape vines. Making the plan to be stressed by natural factors increases the quality of the grapes for wine making.
Okay, depending on what your goal is? If you’re looking for pounds, then no. So yeah, we have plenty of cases in different crops that are so curious to see.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 37:57
I want to hear more about the offerings because I know you said initially, okay, let’s just do a test and we’ll start there. I know you have a lot of different offerings, and I’m curious how people companies engage with you. So right now I’m at BiomeMakers/solutions. Can you talk through how people use you?
Adrian Ferrero 38:20
Actually, it’s very easy. We have three solutions that single. You can do one, three, three, ten whatever number of days you want to do. We received the soil samples. We deliver a report and then that’s all.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 38:35
They just mail them to you. They, like, take a test tube, mail it to you.
Adrian Ferrero 38:40
Exactly. We send the sampling kits. There are partner labs, depending on the country you are in. So yeah, that’s. And you receive the report based on the sample and and that’s all you need certain guidance or at least an agronomist who knows how to vaccinate that if you have a specific question or you are making a trial of some solution, then you need a bunch of tests and then compute the data in a certain way to get well, to isolate the specific effect of whatever you’ve done in the field.
This is how we work with most of the input manufacturers. They have a solution that they go into the field they want to test. So you do different locations before and after a control. Treat it to erase the environmental effect. And this is what we call BeCrop Trials. Okay. And what is the best in class solution is what we call the BeCrop Farm. Here is the real SaaS model. There is no price per sale. There is a price per acre.
So what happens is that you upload the field boundaries directly or indirectly through a third-party platform like Fieldview or whatever you have. So the maps go into our system. Our system calculates the biological areas in that farm where they need samples, and sends you the sample kits with the sampling map. We receive the samples and then we deliver the results in a map with a really high level of resolution. So you don’t need to see one report and then see what I do in the whole farm. Now you can see the map, kind of heat map, in a visual way.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 40:31
Looking at it here. Right. Like this is kind of what we’re looking at.
Adrian Ferrero 4034
Exactly. That’s how we usually are.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 40:36
See this like a map here.
Adrian Ferrero 40:39
Is. Yeah, probably if you go down or dive into the farm, you will see some more specific examples. And what is extremely cool is where you go. What is extremely cool about this and this is where the AI happens. So there is some AI in between with the sonification and sample placement and so on.
Adrian Ferrero 41:00
We provide a digitally generated recommendation on biologicals. So we tell you which specific product category, not the brand. We’re independent. We’re brand agnostic. But which product? Product category. Algae-based biostimulants are microbial-based biostimulants with Bacillus. Whatever is best for your field in order to increase the yield, and we all know it could condition soil health.
Okay, because that’s how it works there. The maps will show up. So there is also a map of needs. Not many farmers are currently doing precise applications of biologicals, but there you have the information ready to go. So it’s the first time there is a tool available for recommendation of biologicals. And they believe me that the sector has huge doubts on what is best biologically for them to sell to their clients, and this is the question we solve.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 42:07
First of all, this is fascinating. There are so many moving pieces to this, and it’s I just want to thank you for sharing the journey and the lessons along the way. Encourage people to check out BiomeMakers.com. I have one last question. I’m just curious what’s been, what’s seen as a growing market for you? I don’t know why.
You know, I’ve been hearing a lot in the cannabis space. I mean, this applies to any type of crop. What have you seen? Because you probably get firsthand of the inquiries. What’s been what you see as a growing market from your experience, from a crop’s perspective?
Adrian Ferrero 42:48
From the crop perspective. The usual suspects in corn are the main crops. We were not expecting that, but this is happening. Brazil is one of the markets that is growing very quickly because of the extension they have on corn, soy, potatoes, and tomatoes. We’re growing a lot of tomatoes as well. So progressively is increasing the opportunity. We currently have 270 crops active. So most of the industrial crops, watermelons, and golf courses are growing very quickly.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 43:21
Golf courses.
Adrian Ferrero 43:23
Yeah, yeah. What is very interesting also is to see the trends in agriculture. Now, you’ve probably heard about regenerative agriculture where people start mixing different crops in the same space because there are positive synergies between them. And they can save a lot of inputs and manpower. So there are benefits, and the production, let’s say, the profitability of the farm makes sense.
So it’s positive. It’s higher than just doing industrial grow flat crops. But the usual suspects are the main markets. We want to see more and more people really lowering their fear of this new dimension. That is soil biology, the life of the soil. Most of the agronomists have not been educated on this dimension. They had 1 or 2 courses during the school and so. Well, you know, everything is about fertility plants now. It’s about fertility plus biostimulants plus biocontrol plus all kinds of things. So we need tools like the ones we develop.
This is my commercial pitch. No, but this is real. We need to make this easier for the people who are in charge, and they have all kinds of variables to try to control. Weather is the main one that we cannot control. We can forecast that it is going to rain, but that’s not the main problem. The temperature is going to rise or not. But beyond that, all the variables. If we can help the agronomists, the farmers simplify the whole process and give them the best conclusion recommendation inside, then we’ve done what we need to do.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz 45:15
Adrian, thank you so much, everyone. Check out BiomeMakers.com to learn more. We’ll see everyone next time. Thanks so much.
Adrian Ferrero 45:23
Thank you very much.
