On Fri, Jul 4, 2014 at 4:13 AM, Ryan Pandya <ryan.pandya@gmail.com> wrote:
This sounds good to me -- tentatively. I would be willing to spend some time at the end of every day writing up a summary (and as you said, we do already do this internally, I would just take out the parts about company strategy/investor relations).Which brings me to my other, and far bigger, point: Muufri is for-profit. We are, and we can't really budge on that. We think that the best way - frankly, the only way - to disrupt this industry is to do it as a business.
That's interesting. What do you think the advantage of a for-profit is here? Investor opportunities? I can understand that. It would probably be more challenging to go another route for scale-up, though partnering with existing companies could be one way. I am sure there are other more creative ways that this could be done.
The Real Vegan Cheese project seems to have a different focus entirely. If I understand correctly, you guys want people to be able to buy vegan cheese online and/or make it themselves. Which is awesome! But what I want is: short term, "real" vegan milk becomes available for people who aren't happy with soy/almond/whatever but avoid dairy for any number of reasons. Long-term, the milk you buy and the dairy you consume in processed foods, becomes vegan, because it uses "real vegan milk" on the back-end.
I want the same as you. I know that several from our team want that too. You will notice that nothing we have done precludes starting a for-profit to scale up this technology, or other people starting for-profits to do the same. It just does not grant any one company exclusivity. We are developing the technology in an open manner, but if you or anyone else wants to start a company using that open technology then go right ahead!
I personally really dislike the tendency of for-profits to eventually become controlled by profit motives through investor or shareholder interference or by being bought up by one of a few powerful megacorps, usually to the detriment of ethical, environmental or social concerns. I would much prefer to see people use our new tools of global collaboration to find creative ways around being controlled by the few and the powerful. Crowdfunding is one such tool, but it has its limits. New laws around micro-investments may be helpful. Getting business hackers and law hackers involved is probably necessary.
However, if you want to do a traditional for-profit, then I'm not stopping you. If we are to collaborate, I would ask you to commit to openness in a legally binding way such that future investors or owners suddenly decide to close everything down, as recently happened when Makerbot sold out to the incumbents.
I am also aware that you have to pick your battles, and the importance of getting this technology adopted as soon as possible may outweigh concerns over openness and transparency. This is somewhat reasonable given the amount of animal suffering and environmental damage it could alleviate. However, if getting fast mass adoption is the overruling priority, then wouldn't we all be better off if we made it 100% public domain and got some of the world's largest dairy corporations or companies experienced with large scale bioreactor manufacturing to use this technology? Certainly they have the resources and expertise to spin it up faster than anyone else. (I'm not _really_ arguing for this, just putting it out there).
In short, we want to get on shelves. Meaning: large-scale production, distribution, and being taken seriously by chain stores. Since this will require funding, it also means being taken seriously by investors.
I don't really agree that investors are a necessity. I think they are the easy and traditional way to go. I would encourage a holistic approach where we take into account that we probably don't want to live in a world where we have to worry about being taken seriously by a few powerful people who managed to claw their way to the top. I think we are smart enough, and together resourceful enough that we can come up with better ways of running the world. I understand that this is yet another thing that takes time away from focusing on the science and getting the product to market, but if we don't change the way the world is run then who will? We are the privileged few with the knowledge and power to make a difference, and we are capable enough that we can care about how we do things, not just getting them done.
Now, the main things I'm not sure about are: will investors require us to file patents? And, will we lose any investor appeal we may or may not have right now by sharing everything? What about sharing most things, but keeping a few innovations close to heart? (My guess is, that's a no-no from your perspective.)
I understand your concern. I am by no means an expert on business strategy and patents, but still I think you may be overvaluing the importance of patents for a small corporation. Yes, they have some appeal, but it is likely that anyone with enough money to throw at the problem will be able to compete by doing things just differently enough that they route around your patents, or if they already have a large patent portfolio they can simply find one or more of their patents that you are violating and force you to agree to their licensing terms.
I think it is more likely that a dedicated team with expertise, infrastructure, lots of community support from people who want to see the project succeed, and collaborators in the bay area will be seen as having value. If there are valuable patents to be had, they are probably not in the base technologies we are developing now, but rather in processes for optimizing high-volume production of high-quality product, which will come much later.
Anyway, those are my thoughts for now. I appreciate that you guys are staying up insanely late to talk about this - feel free to call it a night and we can pick this up later.
Cool. I was working on other stuff as well (we just moved our hackerspace into a new location). I'm just gonna call it an all-nighter and go get some breakfast :)
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marc/juul
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