Ryan Graves is the CTO of Humble Bee Bio, a NZ-based early stage startup developing novel biomaterials to replace plastics. Ryan is on a mission and it was a lot of fun to dive into Humble Bee Bio’s approach and challenges as they develop their proof of concept material.

Note: I am late publishing this episode (was meant to be last week) because I was struck down with COVID, and am still recovering.

Outline

(03:50) How synthetic biology rapidly improved in the last 20 years

(09:34) How distributed research teams helps Humble Bee Bio move faster

(16:07) Properties of Humble Bee Bio's polymer

(19:26) Why the Australian solitary masked bee makes this unusual material

(28:06) Humble Bee Bio's beachhead market

(33:21) Using plants instead of microbes as biofactories

(41:13) Contrasting drop-in materials with better materials

(43:10) Vision for Humble Bee Bio

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EPISODE LINKS

Humble Bee Bio: https://www.humblebee.co.nz/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/humblebeebio?lang=en

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/humble-bee-ltd/

PODCAST INFO

A series of conversations about new performance materials and their applications. I believe that new materials will play a big role in unlocking innovation and solving pressing problems and this podcast helps surface insights and learnings from the frontier.

Website: https://www.tsungxu.com/podcast

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3FXZPeLvyAZ5aeDtL3X1RC?si=7db4e89a52cc486e

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/materially-better/id1651542338

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@tsungxu

CONNECT

Twitter: @tsungxu

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