Sewitz: Insect protein industry could be viable in 10 to 30 years
Greg Sewitz · Magic Spoon & Exo: Gabi Lewis and Greg Sewitz · Feb 12, 2024 · at 35:12
Greg Sewitz, co-founder of Exo, reflects on why insect protein economics did not work for a venture-backed startup despite long-term viability.
0:00 / 0:10exact quote · 10.6s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“And I do still believe that on the time frame of 10, 20, 30 years, it was totally something that could be viable as an entire industry”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Greg Sewitz
Sewitz: Novel food products succeed on taste and utility, not intellectual interest
“You also had to really convince them that it was going to taste good and also meet the nutritional needs they were looking for from a protein bar, because ultimately the product was going to live or die on whether people kept buying it for the use case that we…”
Sewitz: Cereal manufacturing requires massive scale and capital intensity from start
“There's no way around the fact that you have to be running these machines for eight-hour shifts, you know, pumping out tens of thousands of pounds of cereal to even make it worth anyone's while, and so it's just, The whole product category operates at a much l…”
Sewitz: Crickets share an allergen overlap with shellfish
“Crickets
Have an allergen overlap with shellfish.”
Sewitz: Magic Spoon could not have launched 10 years earlier
“10 years ago, we really couldn't have launched this business with a formulation that we felt was close enough to really make that trade-off worth it of, you know, nutrition for flavor.”