What motivates you to keep pushing NotCo forward?

The very fact that we still have a long way to go if we really want to fix the food system. It is our day- to-day duty to improve our technology and science to allow this to happen: bring amazingly tasty foods, affordable, efficient in the use of resources, sustainable and that protects animal rights. We've done that but still in a low scale. Our ambition is to create a new way of making the food we love to eat, and that is with plants.

What made you join the NotCo team?

The idea that a combination of machine learning technologies and breakthrough science could crack one of the most challenging enigmas of humanity: creating amazingly tasty food that can also be good for our bodies, the environment, the animals and that would help us distribute nutrition using exponentially less resources than what we have today. That is disruption, when we would be able to mimic all what we really love in food but instead of coming from inefficient and environmentally aggressive sources based on animal farming, they would come from plants. The idea of finding the answer among those more than 400,000 unexplored species of plants existing in the world was always thrilling and by doing so we've understood that what we thought impossible only a few years ago is now a fact.


Why is NotCo important (in your words)?

Because we're creating a technology and science that will allow the species to live on (human and non-human). It is no surprise that the food system has become the major environmental ill known to humankind, I'm talking about deforestation, land use, water scarcity, ocean depletion... you name it. And it all starts and ends with raising and breeding livestock for meat. The industrial production of animals is the single most aggressive form of creating nutrition for a growing population. If we could go back and ask science what is the best and most efficient way to feed the more than 7 billion people that inhabit our planet, the answer certainly wouldn't be animals. The biggest theory we're trying to prove is, for millennials we've been feeding plants to animals in order to generate our milk, cheese, eggs and meat... now, could we make our milk, cheese, eggs and meat just from plants and take the animal out of the equation? cut down the middle man? that would certainly make a healthier and more sustainable food system, the challenge would always be taste... we've proven that's possible in 4 countries, now the world awaits.


What is your importance to the company? What do you bring to the table?

I'm the CEO of the company, and my main task is to maintain this ship afloat at all times; through day, night, sunshine and storm. To do that I need to make sure I'm effective and consistent in transmitting the mission and vision to the company and products: Why we do it, how we do it and what we do, in that specific order. I've been very lucky to have found great people that together form a exponencial team who are always helping me amplify that message executing strategies and planning building blocks to achieve our main goal. You only have vision, you're called a visionary. You only execute, then you become a manager or an executive at tops. My goal is to bring self awareness to the collaborators surrounding me and the company and understand that teams make great things, not just a good CEO.