Hey folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. Right now I am supremely honored to be sitting down with Mike Messersmith, who is the CEO of Lasso. Mike, great to see you. Great to see you too. Excited to be here. You've been in this business for some time. A CPG veteran as it were with your most recent stint prior to Lasso at Oatly.
Yep. And helped build the US business for that brand. A lot of people don't realize that Oatly. He's not a US company. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Yeah. Where is it based and when did you enter the picture? Yeah, so Oatly was a kind of, game changing, breakthrough brand 20 years in the making Swedish company.
Swedish Origins built an incredible business. Over the, the 2010s in the Nordics and uk around 2016, seeing kind of the rises of that business and the kind of need for alt milk, the urgency of, climate and sustainability aspects of that. They were looking to expand markets and that included both US North America as well as China.
And we I came on board at the end of 2016, which seems like a really long time ago now. And met Tony Peterson and John Schoolcraft and kind of the team that had built Oatly in Europe and they were looking for somebody to. Build the business, build the brand here in the United States. We took that from the first carton the first time saying the word oat milk, a phrase that I had never, ever said in my entire life prior to learning about that business.
Describing to your parents, you now run an oat milk company is an interesting explanation. They still thought I worked for an oatmeal company for years afterwards. And yeah, we like took that from the first. Carton. And at the beginning really focused on, how do you build a category?
How do you introduce a new product that no one has ever really has a frame of reference for? And we focused on specialty coffee shops built demand, and every oat milk latte that someone shot, oat milk latte for Ray was like, oh, they're building the brand, building the category. So we built it, carton by carton and seven plus years.
From the first dollar up to a couple hundred million in net revenue. And just honestly I love that brand, the people that we did it with, just like the best experience. So really excited. I can tell how moved you are Yeah. By your experience. Yeah. It seems like you're very passionate about that business and brand.
For sure. When I talk about alternatives to traditional products, dairy-based milk versus oat milk, almond milk, yeah. I often talk about compromise and how consumers want. The experience to be similar or even exactly the experience they have with the traditional quote unquote traditional product.
Yes. How did you think about product experience when you launched Oly in the us? Yeah, I think the, one of the key parts of that and that nation of can you create something that scratches an itch of a natural consumer demand without that compromise. So we thought about specialty coffee and we had a lot of people in our team.
Who were born in the specialty coffee world and described in vivid detail from the roaster or specialty coffee, third wave specialty coffee shop perspective. The effort that went into sourcing these incredible espresso beans, roasting, caring for them, brewing a perfect espresso, and then having a consumer a customer step up and say they want a, a soy milk latte.
An almond milk latte. A skim milk latte. For real reasons. But does that, like they, they want, they have a dairy allergy. They want an almond milk latte, but does that match the quality of the espresso and then the delivery of that latte, that cappuccino, the ability like the fat content, the flavor profile, the foam ability.
And oftentimes it really was lacking. And at the time that we started Oatly soy was holding on, but almond was the predominant format. And there's very real reasons. Dietary preference, sustainability, that people might want an almond milk latte. But you've really felt this tension from a specialty coffee perspective of, I have to delight my customers. These are my, they're paying the bills. These are, but it really doesn't create that product experience that matches up to the quality of the espresso. And so from the beginning with Oatly, as our scientists created that product in Sweden, they were really looking for how do we create something that has the right perfect fat content profile that when it's very difficult to get a non-dairy based milk to foam appropriately so that you can get that la perfect latte experience without compromise. And so that it and so what we saw as we started launching the brand was both on the barista side and then the customer side. People just had this huge paradigm shift of oh, I didn't think this was possible. And that's how, you actually, I think, really have something with the product and creating a new category.
And you get that aha oh wow. I was conditioned to compromise and now I'm experiencing something that is totally different and like this is, this changes kind of the whole dynamic there and that's we really felt like we were onto something and we just kept building from there. I remember seeing Oatly in coffee shops for the first time and I wondered if the company saw itself as.
An ingredient company or a branded company or A company that's selling a brand and behind the counter, maybe I'm noticing it 'cause I'm an industry guy. Yeah. But most people would probably just overlook. Yeah. The fact that you're using well, any time, any type of brand. Totally. How did you walk that line of being an ingredient led company or ingredient focused company versus a branded focused company?
We had that debate so many times. I'm sure they're still having that debate today. I think that we. Felt really comfortable on it a couple different ways. One, we tried to make really distinct packaging. The design on Oatly was really like, a labor of love hand created by our creative team.
And oftentimes in these coffee shops, especially, independent coffee shops, your local shop, you see the carton on the sh on the counter, right? So there we felt that there was tremendous power in that kind of like. Qualified validation of you're going to that shop to have this expert barista make you this beverage.
They're using it. It's in their hand, even if it isn't fully registering, like there's such a distinct visual appeal with the packaging that it really makes that connection. Secondly, I think that if you're in a brand position where. You are trying to be the fra you're doing category creation plus brand creation, then we viewed every win around oat milk as a win for Oatly.
And so the the power of sitting in one of those early specialty coffee shops and hearing customer after customer, shout out oat milk latte for Mike, oat Milk Latte for John and. All of that. If you're standing there waiting for your order, you're hearing people say, oat milk.
And that was like doing so much heavy lifting for us that then if you are the first mover, the ubiquitous brand in olie, like we thought there's ketchup and there's hinz, right? There's what kind of like tissue do you use? We'll use Kleenex. That's the goal for a lot of brands that are trying to create measures of ubiquity.
So it like. Especially early on there, we, if you try to be too closed handed around we have to have our logo on the menu, or you have to say Oatly oat milk, and you try to be really prescriptive on those things, I think you lose the power of those partnerships and we felt that building the category.
Equated to building the brand and that those, like a win for oat milk was a win for Oatly because that was, we thought we, we do that better than anybody else and so we were willing to accept the kind of like open handedness of that, I would say, because we felt it really ultimately would benefit the brand.
It's difficult nowadays to say you're gonna build a protein X. Yeah. Category or protein, whatever. I mean everything. Protein, everything. Protein, grocery store protein, microphone, protein, watch, protein, everything. Yeah, for sure. And nowadays, I think consumers think that they know why they need protein, but it's really difficult for them to wade through I, I'll call it the morass. Totally, yeah. Of food and beverage companies and new brands that are claiming protein. Yes. And I, I think that's where Lasso is really trying to make its own mark about what protein should be, how it should be incorporated into foods.
And how these foods should taste in a way that's going to resonate with broad, a broad base of consumers. Thank you. Yeah. But let's back up for a second and talk about the origins of Lasso. Because there was a time when everybody was high on plant-based meat Sure. And everyone was really excited about the future of animal-based protein alternatives.
Like center plate alt protein approaches. Yep. There's been a ton of skepticism since Yes. Since those days of, I call it 2017. Twenty twenty sixteen. Petty days. 20, the 20 early 20 20, 20 21. Yeah. Different moment in time for that category. For sure. Yeah. A lot of questions being asked about, what is this?
What am I eating? How is this made? Yeah. So on and so forth. Is this really actually plants or is this plants manipulated to taste like something that it's really not? Yeah. But Lasso started out as a plant-based meat company. Yes. Tender foods. Talk about that evolution from.
Tender to what is now Lasso. Yeah. So the founders of my company now, Lasso Labs, formerly Tender Foods, and as a lot of startup journeys go, there's a few other names. Like you peel back the sticker on the door. There's a couple other names from the early days on there too. But the company was founded by four, technical scientific co-founders at a lab at Harvard University here in Boston who were working on kind of a multidisciplinary physics and engineering lab. And the centerpiece technology at that lab was this, we'll call it a fiber spinning technology. Think of it as a almost like industrial cotton candy spinner.
So they were. Exploring applications ranging from textiles to biopharma, to they figured out that they could take simple raw material ingredients and using physics basically like centrifugal force, weave those ingredients together to create structure. At scale without having to use chemicals, temperature, pressure, binding agents, and they looked at a bunch of other things.
People look at 3D printing. How do you make things at scale that are repeatable that, that are simple? And so they have this core piece of technology. And at the time, as you mentioned, late 2010s early 2020. You see this massive movement around alt proteins, plant-based meat.
Yet the critique that I think you saw in the market at the time, which I honestly as a consumer and not someone who's in the category at the time, I felt was super valid, was, one people might want that, right? You want you, you care about the ethics, you care about the cost, you care about the nutrition.
You care about the sustainability of long-term. All of, especially in that time of COVID, the ethics of the animal kind of industry is tricky. And there's been a lot of really significant reporting about the, those, like how that food gets to your plate, right? So I don't think it's wrong for consumers to be like, we should look at other things there, like ethically, sustainably cost-wise particularly, even in 2026, like it's expensive to eat beef and things like that.
What our technology enabled was being able to create something that was cleaner labeled. The critiques that people had was like, I like this, but boy, that ingredient list is long. And why do all, why does there have to be all these other of this, it seems like there's a lot of sodium in here.
Is that covering up for like off notes and the protein? Why is this ingredient deck like this? I like it, but man, the texture is weird. I grew up on eating chicken or pork or beef and like it's made in machines that are really good at making sausages and chicken nuggets, but it may not be, able to replace a chicken breast or a pork tenderloin or things like that.
That's something that people really struggle with. And so what our technology was able to do was basically create a line structure with simple ingredients. We were able to make a alt protein that was 6, 7, 8 ingredients and start with shredded shredded pork, shredded chicken, and be able to get to a cost structure that we thought was really competitive.
And so the founders were able to fund the company and take the idea from simple technology in the lab up to scaled deployed technology at a contract manufacturer getting going, but by the time they got there in 20 23, 20 24. Like the market had changed. And this is a piece that a lot of every brand, every founder would talk about, boy, we were visionary ahead of our time, or We did everything right, but then gosh, the market shifted around us.
And that happens. And I think what defines a company isn't they didn't. They set a, they created a great piece of technology. We used the enthusiasm behind plant-based meat to scale that technology from idea to deployable tech. And along the way we've also discovered that it isn't a plant-based meat machine.
What we're fundamentally able to do is create stuff that's very extraordinary nutritional content with structure without having to use. Chemical binding agents like gums and sugars that people want less of in their food. And we can create protein, like encapsulation. How do we deliver protein in, in novel and unique ways?
Opens the door for us to explore lots of things. And so I joined the board for our company first, got to know us really well and I said, talk to our, and our, the consensus from our investors was. We loved, we still love our plant-based meat product. We have people licensing the technology to make plant-based meat in places around the world right now.
So that idea might be ahead of its time, but we can't let that define the entirety of the success of the company. So how can we think about opening the aperture to different demonstration of different other applications that might be more commercially viable than where we found plant-based meat to be in 2024.
I have to say, and this is from an outsider's perspective, I have no connection to the company. Yeah. I don't know how much went into it. The proverbial or the the metaphorical blood, sweat and tears Yeah. That go into building a company like this. But I would think for me, I'd say, okay, this concept, tender foods didn't really work the way we thought it would.
Yeah. We're already licensing the technology elsewhere. Why are we banging our heads against the wall? Trying to create a food brand. Yeah. Or food brands, which you're now doing. And then I'm on your website now. Lasso labs.com. There's a whole bunch of pictures here of, I assume the people that work there, perhaps the founders.
That's right. And it says Hi, we are Lasso a company built to change the way food is made. That's right. So clearly the vision, the big, hairy, audacious goal for Lasso is to do something dramatically different. Yes. In the food business. Yes. Why is that so important to you and the founders? Yeah I think there's a bunch of reasons.
One of, some of it's rooted in my experience with. Oatly of first off there, there's a consumer need people, things. People are not satisfied with the state of packaged goods that they get at the grocery store. There is a like the in you walk to Expo West, brands. There's no lack of vision, energy for entrepreneurial building things.
There's a consumer demand for change. What does that change look like? Can I get more nutritional content in my food? I want more protein. In my food. I'm open to categories and experiencing that in different ways. I want more fiber in my food. For all sorts of like real reasons. I don't think that's a fad.
Like one in eight people are taking a GLP one protocol. People are listening to podcasts. They're more informed than they ever were about their food. Like they're open to change. People are frustrated at the like. Their perception of ultra processed foods. They want less dyes and gums and chemicals in their food.
They want their food to be more affordable. This is like big ticket political issues in this country right now is the price of groceries. Is like the biggest hot button defining topic in our incredibly polarized political ecosystem. So there is like massive demand for change and no one is particularly satisfied with the state of consumer packaged goods across the grocery store.
So there's an impetus there of we need change. But how does that change occur? Money. Money is helpful. And I think that's a tricky part in 2026 where you candidly have had a lot of, like the un, like there's less. Governmental and federal investment in the type of research that can enable game changing innovation in both ingredient and process technology.
Investors have been like, there's a whole narrative around the applying tech multiples to food companies has been very tricky from valuation and fundraising standpoint. So it, how can we find both consumer funds, technology funds venture funds, family offices, who are. Passionate about this space to fund the work that companies like Lasso and many others are trying to do to create big, hairy, audacious, like change visions in foods scape.
I think the limitation that I've seen when you walk around somewhere like Expo West is you have an there's a consumer demand, there's a entrepreneurial ambition to make differentiated food. The barrier is that we're often still trying to make. Our food on machines that were designed 80 years ago that are basically industrial Play-Doh presses, and were originally conceived to process industrial plastics, like, why can't we create higher nutrition, higher protein, higher fiber, clean label foods?
It's honestly all wrote, like all the food we buy at these stores is oftentimes made on the same machines. Like we haven't been able to actually innovate on underlying process tech. When we did a bunch of things with Oatly, you guys have a lot of relationships with. Like the coffee RTD space.
Booming right. The number of times I would talk with roasters, all of them have their own RTD. The difference between the espresso you drink in the coffee shop and the RTD you buy on the store, the internet, their TikTok shop, is it, all that stuff has to go through. Retort, high temperature processing and the frustration that a great coffee brewer has of, boy, my espresso, has all these incredible flavor notes when we brew it on our machine in the shop versus how that manifests into kind of this inevitable, dampened middle, after you go through processed food packaging. And it's important like retorts important, so you get to a quality process, but you're all making it through the same machine, so everything tastes the same. You lose all the nuance, you lose the innovation, you lose the point of difference.
And so what we're trying to do with Lasso is can we create a new paradigm that enables really interesting, differentiated, ownable, like true innovation? Not oh, I got two more extra, more grams of protein shoved into my breakfast cereal. But can we make it in a different way? And we started by talking about like I am somewhat of an industry veteran now.
I've spent the past 15 years in CPG. Big companies, small companies. And what I think the industry is really craving right now is more underlying innovative process opportunities. To be able to make the next generation of like truly breakthrough food products that scratch the itch of like consumers who are craving more.
And I don't think that happens. By continuing to utilize all the same machines that we've been using for the past 80 years. Do you see Lasso as a tech company more than a food company? You see it as a food tech company. 'Cause what you're talking about is redefining and reestablishing a standard for how to create.
Great tasting, great textured products that people will love. Yeah. And it feels like you're straddling that line a little bit. And I think about food companies and beverage companies, for me as Flavor First companies. It has to taste amazing or you've got no shot Totally and no shot in the long term.
Maybe in the short term, people will. A lower quality taste than they're used to because it has some sort of Not for long functional. Not for long, exactly. In the long term it's just not gonna work. Yes. But so again, are you, do you think of yourself more as a food company or as a tech company? I, again, food tech is one way you could describe Lasso.
But yeah, I mean at the end of the day it is a food br like we're ma whether it's brands we make or brands we enable a partner to make. Consumers have to love it. It's food. It's the most personal of choice, like you're, it's a reward. It's a treat. It's not just fuel. We're not that programmed right now. People eat a lot of bars, like we talked about compromise earlier. Like you're willing to accept some compromise, particularly for, massive functional benefit or cost structure. But like the win is more of everything like the eliminate, the OR statement in that, right? All and like better taste, better nutrition, better cost structure, et cetera.
So like we believe it is a technology core that creates a pla like food platforms that we think are really innovative and directly aligned with this tension that exists. In. The kind of this movement in consumer packaged goods right now. People wanting more protein, more fiber particularly, and being incredibly against ultra processed food and desiring clean labels and less gums and binders and artificial stuff in their food.
So that is an incredibly tense thing to solve because oftentimes the way you get more. Protein in, you can just dump it into your formulation. Unfortunately, you need more sugar to hold the structure together. You need more binding agents, gums, food glues, a lot of like somewhat lousy food chemistry to be able to enable those.
And so we believe that our technology fits right at the intersection of those of enabling extraordinary nutrition and delivery of like really tasty food. While also being able to do that in a somewhat revolutionary way of being able to clean up the ingredient structure, consumers. Care about the texture and flavor you're delivering.
Absolutely. The background story, everything that you mentioned earlier is much more of an industry conversation. Yes. And story for sure. And you had a wide variety I would imagine, of categories that you could get into. And you've gotten into crunchy, salty snacks. Yep. With a brand called Cronch Club.
Yep. Whoops, I just dropped that on the floor. I'll pick it up momentarily. And you got Froobies. Yep. Which is a brand of fruit snacks. Yep. Why these two categories? Why did you feel like you had permission to go into these categories in a way that consumers would understand and appreciate? Totally. Yeah. So I think, we talked a little bit about category creation earlier, whether it's alt dairy, plant-based meat, et cetera.
Like one of the pieces we talked about. First was understanding what does our technology enable? Where do we have an advantage? We have a suite of patents. What can we do? And so the ability for us to create high protein, high fiber. Texture, clean label things. Now that could manifest itself as a platform that is like low moisture, crispy, crunchy it could manifest itself in a way that is more like mid moisture, like soft bite but still shelf stable.
Starburst sort of fruit chew fruit leather sort of things. So how do we show. Breadth of the applications with platform. And then let's create some brands that are representative illustrations of what the technology can do. And as we were aiming those building companies, building brands is super hard, especially when you're trying to do something innovative.
So let's go into big. Growing, thriving categories where people are desperate for change. Salty snacks is a great example. There are a bunch of brands that have built really successful protein chips, protein crisps. I love chips. I love salty snacks is my favorite category. I started my career at Frito-Lay.
I had a brand management stood on Doritos, like I personally and professionally love that category. And I taste a lot of those protein chips. I was like, I think these guys have it wrong. There's macros for sure, but I think it's a too much of a compromise. They're not crunchy enough. Like they're a puffed pop snack that has protein in it and.
Yeah, it delivers on high protein, but it's not really an acceptable substitute for does a traditional salty snack, but does it also, does it really even deliver on high protein? Earlier you mentioned that people are willing to compromise if they're maximizing or if they're getting a product that's maximizing the amount of protein in their products.
In some of these existing protein chips, salty snack brands, you're getting maybe seven or eight grand. Seven or grand. Yeah. There's a pretty famous one that just launched here recently that was like seven. This is where I think you. Are trying to innovate and deliver on what you believe is the consumer opportunity, but the execution because of the tools you have to build.
Your brand ends up with something that is seven grams of protein per serving and a first ingredient on your ingredient deck that is oil. And I think that's tricky to really feel like you have a winner there on that. And so again, I think you see a spectrum and undoubtedly you both have an opportunity where.
Big. The biggest big CPG brands are trying to they're talking about it in their earnings reports all the time. They want to incorporate more protein, more fiber into their categories. They see that as a vulnerability of their portfolio. They're renovating, iconic like multi-billion dollar brands to try to off offer protein related offerings to those.
And you see a whole bunch of innovation. We think that's a great space to be in because we don't have to educate people on protein chips. Other people have already done that. If we can then take these, introduce them on TikTok, give the, put them in the hands of people and deliver 20 plus grams of protein, zero net carbs, like really great fiber macros and like an actual satisfying crunch.
Super cool. Fruit snacks was similar, but that's a category that like. On fire. Honestly, that one was rooted in like the consumer behavior of, boy, we have a lot of parents of little kids on our team, and we're talking about the food we can make and what we could do. And you're just talking about like the lived consumer experience of people on our team driving around.
Boston in their minivans, their Subaru Outbacks digging into the center console at 4:00 PM trying to fish out for the millionth time. To toss a bag of Cheez-Its goldfish crackers, a loose bag of Cheerios into the ravenous backseat of their car for their 6-year-old, their 8-year-old, their 10-year-old artificially flavored.
Fruit snacks? Yeah. Or just yeah. 'cause fruit snacks, like again, there's a spectrum of the like kind of like gummy candy ones that we grew up on that like they're good, like I get it, but there's no nutritional content in that. There's also brands that have created really amazing like super clean label, like fruit leather, like it's mango and strawberries.
Like I get it good for them, but there's also no like nutritional content really. And there's no protein. There's no fiber. And so when we like our. Employees who run our product team, like they talk to their friends, they're like, boy, I would love to be able to toss something in the backseat that like, I know my kids will eat and I actually got them to eat some protein and some fiber in this, so they're gonna stay full longer.
They're working out, they're growing. All those things like, could we make that? And I said, yeah. And so like we, and that's a category that's on fire. There's so much innovation there, but. There's nobody who's able to do it, like we're able to do it because of the underlying tech. And so the vision is for the business is let's launch these.
Let's launch them online, put them on TikTok. Let's sell on sell through our website, let's sell on Amazon. We don't necessarily have an ambition with these brands that we're gonna take them into nationwide retail distribution. These should be illustrations of what we can create with our technology and demonstrate that we're using that.
Both as like a vehicle to show to the industry and consumers what is possible. We're also working out all the fine tuning and the kinks on our process scale up so that when the day comes that somebody wants to like license this technology from us, we're ready that we can make a whole bunch of it.
And my goal with these isn't to, beat one of those big CPG companies out there that are talking about, boy, how do I get more protein? How do I get more fiber? Which doesn't even have to be like the multinational. It's like there's huge, big companies that are in these categories. I'm not trying to beat them with these products.
I'm trying to help them. I would love to be able to use the technology that we have here to give them. A new piece of innovation that they can put, they already have their factories, they have the best factories in the world, the best procurement teams, the best sales teams. Let's give you some new process tech underneath to give you something new to sell.
And so that's the benefit of actually being a technology company. To your question before of we're using brands, we really excited about these. We think we're gonna sell a bunch of them, but also we're really happy to partner with companies to help help them create a high protein, high fiber, amazing texture version of their own brand.
So to be clear, what I'm hearing is that Cronch Club and Froobies are more proof of concept brands than they are potential billion dollar brands. Yeah. Talk to any entrepreneur who sits in a chair like this and is at the beginning when you've sold less than a million dollars of a product. Believe me if these turned into a billion dollar like that, like I've been on the side of that with Oatly of I know what like hypergrowth feels like.
We'll have a different conversation with our board and our investors. If we feel like, oh, wow, we caught lightning in a bottle with this, you at least have optionality as a company, but as a business. It doesn't just have to be that, right? Like when you own the technology underneath. The magic, I think, is that it can be deployed into a variety of manufacturing environments, a variety of geographies to help businesses that are facing that question of boy, we're seeing some slowdown because our consumers keep telling us we want some protein in this.
We're open to this. Like, where's the innovation coming from? We'd love to work with them, like truly and license the tech to let them build something incredible on the machine that our team has built and patented. And so yeah, these are illustrative concepts that demonstrate what the technology can do to.
Already we have two more, which is crazy, that like we're launching multiple brands in the same year. But they're all built on the same machine. They're all gonna be sold through, the magic of the internet. And, I think that like channels like TikTok and Amazon are amazing for that.
And then it just continues to showcase the breadth of what is possible with new food processing technology. As much as you're learning about how the technology can be applied to CPGI imagine you're learning some things about how consumers are responding to Yeah. The messaging that you're putting out there, the packaging that you're putting out there.
Yeah. I think that and there's different kind of needs states that we're tapping into for each of them, a lot of times we talked about compromise and people looking for this, like macros maxing sort of idea before, and what people who were, you want a salty snack.
You want to treat, you want like that kind of reward moment for sticking to your plan. You don't wanna break the plan and the progress that you've put together. And can we deliver more on that? Can we deliver more protein, more fiber so that you stay full longer, that you're better delivering on your goals?
And it's a more satisfying eating experience because you get that really crunchy like texture, iconic, like salty snack thing that you're, you like have been trading off against. And these ones, like people that are on fitness journeys that are on like a regimen that are on the chips. People have been really excited.
They also, like the texture of our chip delivers the flavor really well. So we like took a lot of time to make sure the seasoning was like spot on and locked in. And we've gotten really great feedback about people think they taste great, which. Is oftentimes incompatible with the idea of, boy, I've got I've really, locked in my gains with the protein and the fiber stuff.
The, on the Froobies side, we built them with the idea of like big kid active healthy lunchbox set. What we found. Has been like a lot of adults, like this is like the classic thing about snacks that are built for kids, but like how, like at a, let me truly, this is my own personal story, like 11:00 AM every day or 3:00 PM I'm trying to bridge in between breakfast and lunch.
And I'm trying to knock it off course and can I have a little bit of something that has protein that's a little bit sweet, that has some texture, some fiber so I stay full longer. And like these sort of like micro snacks that don't derail you, whether you're just like someone who's trying to live like a balanced, healthy lifestyle.
Whether you're taking ozempic or majaro and you're just like, boy, my diet has fundamentally changed. I want to break from my, like handful of almonds. Can I get something that is just like a nice bridge snack for me? Like we've heard a ton of feedback about this on the fruit snack side that we're like excited about.
So if you can position it as boy, this has a couple brands of protein, fiber, no added sugar, super clean label vegan, like pleasant to eat, then like people are in on it. And they also don't see anything like it on the market. So it works really well as a show and tell brand of people, try it like, huh, that's different, but different.
Good. I'm interested in it. And then we just started to see some momentum pick up from there. Yeah, Froobies definitely feels like the. Older Gen Zer out there. So someone who's maybe in their late twenties, early thirties like this is, this really speaks to them. Yeah. I just called you an older genzer. Thank you.
That's a great compliment to me. Thank you. I imagine this also informs your the early traction or early sales of these brands informs you a bit about demographics and where you can go in terms of innovation. Totally. Yeah. So when you talk about two more brands in the pipeline, how does.
Innovation. How does demographics how do these things all come together to inform you about where to go and where people really wanna see more protein? In what categories? Where does it work? Totally. Because that's a big question for a lot of folks listening is, yeah, I, I want to incorporate more protein, or I wanna take advantage of this trend.
But in a way that's truly authentic to my brand and authentic to the consumer experience. Totally. And I think like we, if you had done this 10 years ago, you would've hired an insights agency to go off and do, 3000 consumer interviews and all this proprietary research and in-home studies and stuff like that.
I'm a startup. I don't have the money for any of those things. I do. We work with and really do look at there's a. Strong willingness, particularly amongst younger consumers. Gen X, gen Z millennials around, they are more, they want more protein and more fiber in their diet.
They're concerned about clean label. They're more open to experiencing the protein and fiber in different sorts of categories than generations that have come before them. So they're open to experiencing protein in, you see it in Beverage today, pasta cereal. Chocolate candy, like all of these segments that 10 years ago didn't have any functional benefit to it.
I'm not saying that the brands today have any of that. Who said who's to say? Maybe they nailed it, maybe they didn't. But there's a consumer openness and willingness to discovery there, coupled with the fact that I think you have. Commercial platforms that as an entrepreneur and as an early stage startup business, we can like aim small, Ms.
Small of doing small dial adjustments on our, offering our assortment by leaning into platforms like TikTok and direct to consumer sales where we can match products to specific like targeted communities. Whether those are. Healthy moms or GLP one enthusiasts or like home entertainment sort of audience folks or just travel and outdoors stuff.
Like we've gotten a lot of good feedback on Froobies as boy, this is perfect for me to like. Put in my backpack on a hike. I go hiking every week. I want a healthy snack. This is like convenient. It's clean. Like I feel great about myself when I have it. And so like we can get that in front of those people quicker than we ever could find our people.
Find our kind of like consumer tribe using. The platforms of kind of social commerce that aren't necessarily available or when you put it into a grocery store where you just have everybody and how do you find that discovery? How do you build that audience in, I think is trickier. So we, with our brands are trying to be very intentional about looking what does.
Technology enable what is natural to us? Where can we win, where does our advantage sit? Secondly is how do we match that to audience discovery driven by honestly like insights we, we glean off of social selling platforms so that we are able to take one of these and dial it in from the start without having a ton of excessive financial exposure or having to really, we can take multiple shots at these things and get it going faster.
I'm convinced. Amazing could be you if I had a million bucks, maybe I had invest some money. Thanks, I appreciate that. Do last yeah. Candidly I think that this is part of your job, right? Yeah. This is really convincing people as to the future of protein and Lassos role in that future.
Yes. And you've raised money. We have, you've raised, quite a bit of money. Yeah. And I, I. It's, this is a hard question 'cause obviously if I was asked to ask your investors how they evaluated Lasso, they would be able to give me, I hope, an unvarnished picture of Yep. Of what they see. Let's bring 'em in will.
Yeah. But if if you convinced them. How did you convince them? How did you get them to evaluate Lasso as a great. Long-term opportunity for their funds. Yeah, so I think, and look, it's a tricky p something that I've even had to adapt to as I've taken over the CEO of this job.
Like it isn't always a fit for what I would consider traditional consumer funds. So most of the brands that I see in your fridge are out on the shelves. If you are just. The startup journey is we have an idea, we created a brand, we're making it a coman, we're really good at selling it. But there's maybe not a tech like capital need underneath.
You can go raise from incredibly qualified consumer funds that have great track record and are, at a stage that we're at might put, a couple million dollars into a seed or a series A for X amount of the company. It alternatively, like for us, like there's like real engineering and technical, scientific needs of if you're creating something that has patents, that has a real moat behind it it requires a different sort of capital stack than a traditional consumer brand.
So therefore it pulls this into more technology. It, it's a different sort of investor pool and truthfully that's been tricky because a lot of those companies. It's been tough in the journey of the last five to seven years of food technology, whether it's plant-based meat, whether it's precision fermentation, whether it's like a lot of those haven't gotten closer to the types of exits and payouts.
And you gotta understand that these investors operate their funds on cycles and, placing bets to get to winners. And it's hard. And, I think that we're not. We're not an ingredient company. A lot of the investment in food might be in new alternative protein ingredient sources.
We are a hardware play. And so how do we position that? How do I sell that? I think one is we demonstrate the opportunity of, let me show you, let me stack the applications that we have, and let me show you the size of category opportunity We're playing in salty snacks, fruit snacks, meat snacks, we could show we could come to the lab someday, and I could show you possibilities in confectionary and consumer pet and like big segments that are highly competitive and where we could apply our technology for advantage. So is the market opportunity there, there's absolutely a benefit to me having product in a package rather than just an idea like the, like you can sell the vision when someone is able to take this home, share it with their kids, share it with their mom, and get feedback.
Kinda oh, I like the food. Yeah. That sells it. The, I just gotta interrupt you for a sec. 'cause the tangible really does matter a hundred percent. I've talked to a lot of early stage entrepreneurs who are pre-launch and don't have any packaging and are asking me, do you know anyone that can gimme money?
Yeah. I'm like you gotta have. You gotta start with something. I'm good at talking. I'm good at selling the vision, selling a deck and some samples in a plastic bag like the, I've been in those investment meetings where it feels like you're having like a drug deal over a kitchen table where it's I have a plastic baggie full of a thing and let me you see the deck and you can you're trying to talk and sell the vision.
And that can work to an extent, but there is no substitute. Look, we're on a journey of this do I have millions of dollars of a RR to be able to make it? Undeniable. No, we don't have that yet, but we're working towards it. And so the next step of this is is it tangible? Does it taste good?
Can people see the vision versus like we show them the competitive landscape of its stuff that's on the market. We'll buy them the competitive product and you take it home and do a taste. And if you don't think, see the advantage of what we can do, then you're probably not the right investor for it.
And so I think that we're able to sell now the vision of wow, these guys, like there is something different. We as a consumer, you don't have to be a technology visionary to get boy, I do feel like I need to get more protein. I feel like I'm behind on my protein and fiber. My wife's talking about them.
My husband's talking about that all the time. There's a consumer need state there. You show the breadth of applications. I don't think it works as well if it's a single category or a single product application. Like the technology can't be a fruit snack machine because that is not as big of an idea.
But if the technology can be the core to a wider aperture of like different, high profile applications that both gives us multiple monetization avenues and multiple exit opportunities at the end of the day. So like we then can sell the vision of what does let's allow ourselves to dream for a second about what does five years, eight years look like down the road for Lasso is if we can show that the technology enables really special innovation across a wide breadth of potential categories, like there's optionality there of partnership.
Acquisition both from consumer goods companies, from machine and engineering companies, from big consolidated ingredient companies who are very good at making lots and lots of protein. They need different ways to put it into things, and they're really good at going vertically integrated. So maybe they would view our technology as a means of value addition to their base business.
And so you have to sell the vision on those pieces too. And so we've made the right steps. Like it's definitely, a capitally intensive business. But on the flip side of that, the nature of our technology, the machine itself is honestly the size of a washing machine. It's it's not super large.
I've made the commitment to my investors like. One of the beauties of our company is I don't need us to buy, build our own factory. It plugs into somebody else's existing capacity. We don't need to be putting millions of dollars into building big steel tanks giant like AI data set or simulators like the machine.
The hardware are like. They work. We can build them, we can scale them. It's proven and we've taken away a lot of that technology risk. So we're making good progress. And I think that the fundraising journey is always tricky for founders and for companies. And so you have to make yourself undeniable and you have to find those partners that are true believers in what you do.
Like you gotta put your energy into finding your true believers rather than trying to convince skeptics, because there's always a reason you can say no. Like every fund, any business you bet in an investor like they don't wanna do it. There's always a reason that they can find. So you gotta find your true believers who like really get it, who they have a passion for this space.
They want a diversification of their investment portfolio to be having some access into some complimentary other plays. And we've been successful. We have great investors who've really been supportive of the journey that we've been on. Investors who are believers in what you're doing, but also investors who believe in you and by you, I mean you, Mike.
Yeah. And I think, yeah. In this role, it feels very entrepreneurial in a way that maybe your experience hasn't been in the past. I could be wrong. Yeah. As a quasi founder here, I found I eventually, I think people will refer to you as a founder of the company. Do you feel like your experience or what part of your experience has really set you up for success?
And I'm gonna be talking about, your education, your experience in the military, in the US Navy your corporate experience, your work with Oatly. Where do you feel like you are really benefited? To get yourself in a position where you can operate in this again, quasi founder role.
Totally. Yeah. I and first I would be the first to say quasi founder is probably the most I would accept that we have incredible technical, actual inventors who had back to the future style. Like I came up with it in a dream and a vision sort of moments. And there's nothing that we could be building on any of these foods without that, like the technology development.
Of our four founders and the team that have built this over the course of years grinding away on it. And so I think as the CEO steward of the company, can we take this incredibly magical, innovative technology idea and can we harness that and pull that into business applications that really work?
And so what I bring, I think is and you're right, like it is I think I expected this when I joined 18 months ago, but it definitely is intense of the, as a CEO, as the laying out the vision to founders, to potential partners. You have to really sell it. And I think that there's like a relatability that I have of like the experiences, the the wounds, the paid of like different parts of my background of boy, like I have been a part of companies where we spent.
Tens of millions of dollars building factories that were really tough. And so I'm able to talk about, boy, like the model for us is you don't need to spend CapEx on this. We don't need to build our own factory. Like it works, it's high throughput, it's scalable, it's small CapEx, like low footprint.
Low utility. So I have credibility to talk about that part. I also have credibility to talk about. The frustration. We talked about the journey and the origins with Oatly of like when you really do get lightning in a bottle on something magic, and then you're like, wow, it worked. People are on this category's on fire.
We are out to a lead. Then you see other brands who don't have, didn't put in the time, didn't develop the science, don't really care about the sustainability, but they've got big factories with slightly empty pipes, and they start making a product in the same category as you. And you're like, oh boy. What do we have here?
I've thought a lot about this idea of moats. And where is your ownable like durable moat over time. You can build a great brand. We build a killer brand with Oatly. Like it's tough to continue those things over time. How enduring is that? A channel moat, like building a coffee shop strategy?
Eventually, like that shop closes or the decision maker leaves or somebody else offers them $5 less per case. And like the moat you thought you had on that channel is really difficult. An ingredient moat. Like you look at what David is doing, like I, whether you love that business, hate that business.
Like they have successfully built a like product moat with an ingredient that they like vertically integrated and like they can't, it's harder to rip them off when they've been successful. Like people call those barcode packers and say, can you make me my version of that? The answer is not really.
And that is valuable to them. We try to build something with process mode. So I thought about that a lot with Oatly, where you really, like oat milk was on fire. And then you have everybody, lots of brands, dairy brands don't really care that much about alt dairy, alt milk, but like they're, they want to get a piece of the pie.
Private label things like where is your sustainable advantage? And so I'm able to talk about that authentically of the challenge that poses to your long-term growth horizon and with what we've built with Lasso and the technology underneath the patents. I'm not saying that like it's a moat that can last forever, but if you can build a cool brand with a great product, if I could partner with a company that has a killer sales force and a factory that's already up and running, I could give them something that like.
Is a pretty valuable advantage and a moat in this market to help them win at bigger levels. And so having walked that path myself, both the positive aspects and honestly the challenges and the hard parts about it, I think that there's an authenticity of having gone on that journey that I'm able to bring to both investors and like potential strategic partners of what are we trying to create and how could that come together for them.
That I think, has resonated and hopefully will continue to help us grow. Yeah. It remains to be seen. I think you're on the right track. Thank you sir. And that's just from a perspective of a podcaster. Yeah. So I don't know how valued there is in that. We'll take it. Nine outta 10 podcasters.
Agree. Yeah. Mike, this has been tremendous. Thank you so much for coming over. Yeah. This fun to Devon hq. I know. Your office is in Somerville, which is not too far away from our office, but you live in New York City. Yeah. So thanks for making the trip and I'm really excited for the future of Lasso and I'm excited for your personal journey.
Thank you. In this company. Thank you. Yeah. It seems you're enjoying it. It's cool. It's really fun. It's a great journey and I'm excited to bring something new and hopefully people can check it out. Hopefully. Indeed. Thanks. Thanks, Mike.
