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Welcome to this deepest discovery podcast. My name is
Andrew Aldridge. The idea of these podcasts is to bring to
life the people and the companies behind each capital.
To that end, I'm delighted to be joined by Pavel, who CEO and
founder and in tropics, invested company within deepish life
sciences, EIS and seis funds. Rob, great to see you. Thanks
for joining us. Right. It's good to be here, Andrew. Thanks.
Great. So first and foremost, could you just give us a bit of
a background to and tropics and kind of your background before
starting on tropics? Yeah, sure. So in tropics is young biotech
company, we're based locally here in the Northwest. And the
ambition for en tropics is to develop enzymes that are capable
of degrading plastics. But the underlying technology that we
have for developing enzymes and improved performance can be used
in a whole range of different industries, from diagnostics, to
detergents, to pharmaceuticals, to foods. And in fact, the first
customer interests that we've had, it's been in the diagnostic
sector. So that's what we do. In terms of the background and the
development of the business.
In many ways, it was a product of COVID. Okay, so my co
founder, Professor Dave Hornby had been a professor for 20
years or so at the University of Sheffield. He decided during
COVID that he would leave his full time role.
And he approached me we've been friends and colleagues for many
years, Dave and I. And he approached me with a number of
ideas and technologies that he'd had in mind for the development
of improved enzymes. Okay. And both of us thought that this was
enzymes thing you knew about before was that go professors
kind of? Well, really, Dave is very much the biotech brain
behind the company.
Even though I've done a handful of different things in my
career, I hadn't really done real biotech, molecular biology
in the past. So my background, I did train as a scientist, so I
trained as a physicist, yep. Which, in this particular
industry is almost the wrong type of scientists. And then,
but really, in my career, I've spent my career in a variety of
different industries. So even though some of them have been
technically based, the majority of my career has been in
business management, starting off, originally here in the
Northwest, by the chemicals industry. So typical graduate
role joining a big Chemical Company ici spent the first 1011
years and that's only about three miles down the road from
from where you base now. Absolutely, yeah. So obviously
based in does bring out and in fact, some of my technical work,
before I joined ici was in Duxbury as well, so I'm almost
recycling some of my activities. And, and then after ici 1011
years there, I worked for about 10 years in the early stage tech
industry, did some venture capital work in my own, worked
with IP group investing in university spinouts and worked
in the seed fund in Liverpool. And then the last 10 years of my
career, I went back into industry. And I worked in a, an
international privately owned engineering group in Canada, as
a director of that group helped to run one of the divisions, did
some acquisitions. So it must be quite kind of coming out and
tropics and it must be quite nice for you and make you must
feel quite comfortable cuz you've kind of got the although
the wrong type of science, you've got a kind of science
background, but also you've worked with startups and kind of
raising VC and all that kind of stuff. That must be very
interesting for you. Yeah, I think it's, it's a nice
culmination of many different things that I've done in my
career.
Whether it's the, you know, having the experience of working
with big companies, big organizations, which we hope to
do in the future as we develop our technologies,
whether it's the the knowledge of getting companies up and
running off the ground, which is something we very much do that
IP group process and the kind of the the stages that companies go
through. Yeah, commercializing technologies, recognising the
importance of intellectual property and all of that,
recognizing that it's not always a linear path, that there are
real challenges along the way.
So, in many respects, yeah, it's it helps that I've had a range
of different experiences and different areas and careers. I
think you kind of know what good looks like. And you kind of I
guess you've seen things, people do things badly things, seem
people do things. Well, and I guess it's trying to take the
best bits, I guess. Absolutely. And, you know, hopefully the
benefits are a few gray hairs.
I've seen, you know, some successes. I've seen some some
problems and failures. And I'm sure we'll encounter both of
those as we as we develop and tropics over the coming year. So
kind of you started in tropics relatively recently. And I know
you've got some good traction on and you're doing some really
interesting things, but kind of what are your biggest challenges
today kind of getting a business off the ground and kind of
starting? Right, so I think I've put them into three or four
categories. The first one is COVID. Yeah. So we, the
foundation date for the company was the first of April 2021
actions. April Fool's joke. But really, the company didn't get
up and running properly. Because we were mid COVID. We were on
the lookout for some facilities where we could basically
company.
And yeah, it was it was difficult to find them, it was
difficult to visit them and see what was available. And in fact,
a general feature in the Northwest is that there is
something of a shortage of real high quality development labs
for young businesses, which offer flexible capabilities.
We're quite fortunate in Cheshire, in terms of we've got
Cytec Dansby where your base, you've got Ollie Park, etc. But
when you look beyond that, I think no, you're absolutely
right. Yeah, we take those out of the equation, there's,
there's Yeah, there was a dearth, right for availability.
Yeah. And even in the places where we looked, the
availability was pretty limited.
So even though facilities do exist, they weren't always
available when we needed them. But COVID, I guess, was the
first challenge, we really couldn't get the business up and
running in the right facility as quickly as we wanted.
And then, like many young businesses, one of the second
challenges was cash.
And, obviously, David and I, as co founders, we funded the
business during the early stages. But we didn't have the
resources to realize all the ambitions, obviously, in the
future, but I guess, because of your background, you kind of
knew what kind of capital you wanted. So I think that's what
if founders are inexperienced, understanding the different
types of capital, what you actually want? What's the
purpose for your, your company, etc, I guess you kind of had
that knowledge already. Yeah, that's right, and building the
story about how much cash we needed, what we'd achieved with
that cash over a certain period of time, and what we'd hoped to
achieve.
And, you know, building the financial case for that,
building the commercial case, as well, and try to put it in the
context of the industry developments at the time and the
competitive issues at the time, trying to highlight what we felt
that we had, that was a little different, or unique points. So
yeah, I had some of the experience of pulling that sort
of investment case together. And fortunately, you know, as we'll,
we'll talk about a little later, then we secured some capital
from deep bridge. So we sorted out, you know, the COVID
challenge, we sorted out the cash challenge. And the other
issue was colleagues and other see. So trying to find the right
people to join the business and having that extra strong
foundation of the capital behind us, gives us the credibility and
and also the, the longer term potential to bring people into
the business. You kind of mentioned that dearth of kind of
available space. If you aren't in terms of people and skills in
the area. Are you confident that you've got the there's a talent
pool there for you to to utilize? Well, our first
employee who joined us in October last year, once we
established the lab in Duxbury,
he had actually been Dave's final PhD student at this time
in Sheffield. Great. And so those close connections were
very important to us.
We also then had a continuing connection with the lab in
Sheffield. Yep. So in fact, one of our our next recruits is also
coming from that lab, because we've got some very specific
requirements. You've had people get work in that kind of area
and get it then satirize. But on top of that, we we were keen to
hire somebody who had capabilities and computational
biology, bioinformatics and machine learning. That's a
really important part of our technology to identify patterns
and trends in gene sequences that are associated with certain
functions in enzymes. And so that's a very specialized area,
machine learning for Bioinformatics and gene
sequences. And we've managed to identify somebody will be
joining us shortly as well, but that will
is much more of an open challenge trying to contact labs
that we knew who were skilled in this area.
And we've managed to recruit a handful of people who will be
joining us over the course of the coming weeks and into
continue to grow the business. So how was the kind of company
evolved to date? And I guess kind of importantly, how did you
kind of first funding USCIS funding help you kind of evolve
the business.
So, I mean, the comparison, it's like, night and day, you know, a
year ago,
we were, you know, like many great tech companies who started
up in a Garriage, like Amazon and Hewlett Packard and apple.
Not that we put ourselves in that category, but we were
working out in the garage,
all the best kind of companies.
So
So Dave, because we didn't have access to facilities, David
converted a workshop at home so that he could do some of the
early scouting work behind our technology.
And we had no employees. So in terms of the progress during the
course of the last 12 months or so
we recruited our first member of staff, by the end of the summer,
we'll probably have around half a dozen people working within
the business, either directly as employees, or working through
collaborations that we've established with a couple of
universities, we've been able to invest in some equipment to
increase the efficiency, and the throughput and the effectiveness
of our operations in Daresbury. So we've got some high
throughput, protein production and screening capabilities,
we've been able to invest in DNA sequencing technology, which is
an important, these are almost the tools of the trade in enzyme
development, and some robotic equipment as well for liquid
handling, and pipetting. And all of these will really radically
change our throughput and our efficiency. You mentioned DNA
sequencing there. And obviously, that's that's a, I don't know
what the trends the right word, but it's massively kind of
topical at the moment, etc. And kind of what are the
opportunities that availing themselves to in tropics and
kind of why is that and and kind of what's going on out there. So
I think the, when we look at the way that those opportunities
will avail themselves, then the trends that really stand out for
me, one of them is the trend for sustainability. And obviously,
our target to develop enzymes that are capable of degrading
plastics feeds into that real issue as challenge of
sustainability in terms of waste. But there's another
sustainability angle to the use of enzymes, because
increasingly, big organizations are turning towards bio
manufacturing as a means of developing products. So products
that may well have been developed through conventional
chemical processes in the past, fossil fuel developments,
increasingly, people are exploring bio manufacturing
guests to that which are more sustainable. And in fact,
McKinsey report just last year suggested that up to 60% of all
physical goods in future could be derived through by
manufacturing processes. Okay. So there's that another trend
that we see that we're playing into, into is the need for
plastics etc. And
there is a desire to, to reduce and eliminate plastics where
possible, obviously, we're keen to develop methods for handling
plastics in terms of recycling, recycling them back to their raw
materials and make them more sustainable.
But more generally, there's a drive to more sustainable
manufacturing processes away from some of the more
conventional ones. And I think the other trend that you you
hinted at as well,
was the just the, the growing capability of some of these
biotech developments? Absolutely. So, you know, I
think biotechnology will be one of the great industries of the
21st century.
It's already a phenomenal industry. And it's for me,
having not been so closely involved with it in the past.
It's a real privilege and exciting opportunities and kind
of the trends and the way that the world is moving. That's
right. And, and many of many of the tools of synthetic biology,
molecular biology, have just been transformed in recent
years. I mean, one of the great success stories of the UK
biotech industry, Oxford Nanopore, they've helped to
revolutionize DNA sequencing to make it much more cost effective
and high throughput. And that's something that we're
capitalizing on. For example, the manufacture of genes that we
use as a starting point to develop our enzymes.
You can you can order genes, and they'll, you know, people will
synthesize the DNA involved in that gene. And you'll receive it
in a, you know, a few weeks time. And that that type of
tool, that capability certainly wasn't available decades ago.
And so those trends of sustainability, you know,
improved capabilities and molecular biology, then, you
know, we're certainly developing them. And I think,
I picked up a quote, which I noticed yesterday from
one of the directors of Kerry, who recently bought an enzymes
business they did,
called selector in Leipzig. And he suggested that the food and
pharmaceutical industries are on the cusp of a new wave of
innovation, where new developments in biotechnology,
synthetic biology, and precision fermentation, are radically
transforming these sectors. This includes disruptive new enzymes.
So again, we're building on that trend. And we're, we're part of
that development.
So we kind of talked about the challenges, we talked about the
kind of the bigger world, but kind of what what have been the
kind of standout highlights for you since kind of taking that
plunge during COVID to kind of crack on with their within
tropics? Well, one of the first highlights for me is always
customers. So we were able to sign up a customer who was a
previous collaborator, collaborator of Dave Hornby when
he was at Sheffield. And we were able to run our first
development program, where we create a range of enzymes, we
screen them for performance, and then we identify the ones that
have high performance that might be useful for our customer. So
having gone through that development cycle, that's a
great sense of achievement. Yeah, that was the first one
that we've done.
Another highlight was that kind of the moment where you kind of
thought, yeah, but we can do this. This is this is yeah,
exactly what we're Yeah. And, you know, just as we were saying
earlier on, it's never a straight linear pathway. So
there were hurdles along the way,
we had some really significant delays in a couple of our
suppliers, when we were developing some of those
products.
And that improves the learning that you have the next time you
do it, it's almost like turning the handle on your pipeline
machine and, and seeing which bits work well. And you know,
which bits need oiling, and which is improving. So, you
know, customer development was certainly a highlight the other
highlight, I have to say it was getting cash on the bridge,
because that provides a really strong foundation for the coming
months and years, it enables us to achieve what we hope to
achieve over the next year or two. And what was obviously you
would talk to me about the challenges of getting that early
cash in etc. And kind of what was it about deep Veg or why
were deep with a good partner for you.
So, as a, as a brand new business, then I think many
venture capital investors are looking for some more traction
company a little more maturity in the business, maybe more
stability of early revenues, before they make their
investments in in a company. There aren't too many companies
who really invest at that embryonic gap seek on stage. So
we certainly benefited from the seis the seed enterprise
investment scheme component of the first part of the investment
from deep bridge.
And
I think on top of the
sort of stage of development, which seemed to fit deep bridges
interest, then there's also
there's the the knowledge of the business. And obviously, in the
deep bridge Life Sciences team, there are experts in technology,
who are also experts in investment. And so it's not
necessary to spend a lot of time during your investment pitch to
describe your technology in detail. Because they already
understand that they're trained scientists who now do
investment, and that's very compelling as well. And then I
think the most important thing
is that, that there has to be
there has to be a very strong overlap between your vision for
the business and the investors vision for the business.
Otherwise, you know, that there'll be a clash at some
stage during the development and life and growth of the business.
And so, you know, I felt that, you know, we were lucky to have
Allison Morin who was working with us and the life science
team. She seemed to appreciate and understand what we were
trying to achieve immediately. And so, you know, that
commonality between our view and her view, I think provided a
good foundation for the investment brilliantly but and I
think you know, look from from our perspective, I think we find
the seis is a great kind of testing bed if you like it's, it
allows us to go slightly early with them.
Nice because almost the due diligence we can do with the
seis leads on to he is so when we are supporting company with
EAS follow on cash, it's because we've done due diligence getting
to know you guys working with you. And I think it's a great
model that that works. That means we can go slightly earlier
than maybe other VCs would, because we've got that
confidence we've been known we know you guys and what you're up
to.
Okay, kind of looking forward. What's, what are your hopes
objectives, what your plans are kind of the next 12 months, and
then beyond that, and kind of next two years.
So the next 12 months,
we're very keen to make some very tangible achievements. So
you know, we've got our objective set in order to
develop, identify certain enzymes that will have
degradation activity and certain plastics, that's one of our
target areas. We're also keen to continue some developments for
certain enzymes for the diagnostics and life science
sector. And there are proprietary r&d developments
that we're looking after in house.
On top of that, of course, we're also team keen to complete the
customer development work that we're doing, and ideally, to
pick up one or two other customer projects as well, where
we can prove out our technology. So certainly for the first 12
months, then it's it's achieving those tangible milestones that
demonstrates both the deep bridge and hopefully to other
potential investors, that, you know, we've reached those, like
value inflection points, almost we've, we've done something more
concrete, we've taken the business on, and we've developed
it further, I think in the longer term, then it's all about
creating the right building blocks the right foundation for
the business. So there are quite a number of fairly complex
building blocks behind our technology, starting off with
the computational analysis that I mentioned earlier on,
and then developing a very slick, efficient, high
throughput process that enables us to generate lots of enzymes
to screen them, to pick them. And then to scalability.
Absolutely, then to purify those enzymes, and to scale them up
using fermentation techniques. So you know, over the course of
the three years, then we need to embed and develop and scale all
of those capabilities. So we have a really strong foundation
for the business for the future. And certainly after three years,
we hope that we'll start to see more predictable revenue stream,
and, most importantly, emerging commercial partnerships, because
we need to test our products and to develop our technology,
alongside industry partners who have those real world challenges
that we're trying to meet, rather than working in complete
isolation in our own lives. Absolutely, as you said, kind of
making yourself available and appealing to other co founders
as well. Because, you know, I think
I'm sure Allison's kind of spoken to you that, you know, we
always want co founders to come alongside us. And that's always
a great testament to what you guys are doing. So that'd be
huge. Hopefully, if we tick off some of those objectives, it
will put us in a good position. Absolutely.
So that was in tropics, such you that's where you are, kind of
with these podcasts, we like to kind of bring people to life a
bit to to kind of to our listeners and our viewers and
things. So kind of what what you're interested away from work
away from work, I guess, the first interests will be sport.
Now much more watching it rather than playing it, unfortunately.
But as a kid, I was always a really keen competitive sports,
playing that on the time pressures and running a business
that Yeah.
So when I was a kid, I was a competitive runner. So very
keen, obsessed by that. And then I switched to playing basketball
when I was at university in my 20s. And then,
but then more recently, now that the knees are finished, then
I've actually taken up indoor rowing, okay, which is a, again,
you know, to it's a good, good workout, probably similarly
obsessive to doing distance running. But, you know, good,
good activity, outside of sport, and watching sports as well,
certainly watching Liverpool and going along some of the matches
or gloss over that, as you noted, champion and that's,
that's absolutely, I'd say I'm a bit of a technology enthusiast.
So you know, I like to follow technology, whether it's in
podcasts, whether it's reading books, whether it's watching
documentaries, so I'm a tech enthusiast, and I've also
started doing a bit of voluntary tutoring. Okay, so I trained as
a physicist still keen on
on science and maths, so, too short a little bit of maths for
friends and family. Fantastic. You enjoying that? Yeah, it's
good fun. Good. So I don't know whether the tutor
or not.
But yeah.
So the question I asked all of our guests on the podcast is
about the deepish dinner party. If you could invite three
guests, no friends or family because we don't offend anybody.
But yeah, dead or alive three guests to come along to the wish
dinner party. Who are those guests? Me? Well, fortunately,
under you gave me a bit of advance notice of this. So
to have a good thing. It's almost like desert island.
I mean, I can't I can't say that this is a new kind of factor.
But the first one I've picked up, I trained as a physicist,
even though I haven't done physics for decades, would be
Isaac Newton. Okay. Yeah. But there are a few reasons for
that. Obviously, he was one of the great giants of the physics
and math world and achieved so much not just in laws of motion,
obviously, in our school textbooks everybody would know
about its laws of gravity and the laws of motion, you know,
the apple falling on the tree, inspiring his thoughts.
But he was so much more than that.
He was almost like a 17th century Elon Musk in a way. And
one of his quotes was no great discovery was ever made, without
a bold guess. And that notion of, you know, almost
entrepreneurial ideas, taking a bold step. So having an idea and
believing in it. Yes. Yeah. I really believe in that. I
subscribe to that. And you know, taking a bold guess,
occasionally being a bit of a maverick. And he had those
attributes about him. He became the master of the Royal Mint.
Yes. So he had those financial aspects to his character, a real
polymath interest in all sorts of different areas. He was
interested in theology. He was interested in history
became an MP. Yeah, he did a couple of years. So yeah, one of
one of the heroes. Now I don't know whether it'd be a great
dinner party guests because I believe that reading, you know,
he was quite shy, introverted, but nonetheless, wouldn't a
couple of glasses of wine get him going? You know, I'm sure.
Apple pie. Yeah.
Yeah, so that was that was the first I'm not sure. He's quite
like Elon Musk, I don't think had a Twitter account. So yeah,
that's true. But remarkable parallels in terms of this, you
know, the development of concepts and ideas and, and
even, I mean, Elon Musk, people would say that his his attempts
to travel to Mars, it's almost fantastical and very daring.
Grace, I guess, a bold idea. And Isaac Newton spends a lot of his
time trying to develop alchemy.
So again, quite a fantastical idea, which I don't believe he
ever cracked. And so yeah, he would be my first guest. And
number two second guests are ghosts but goes back to my my
times as a competitive rather than when I was a kid. Yeah. And
one of my idols was Steve Ovett, yep, the runners runner, I'd
say.
Again, perhaps renowned as I've never met him, renowned as
being, you know, a bit of an introvert shy character, but
quite rebellious. Yeah. Which, which I quite like a little bit
of a rebellious streak waving to people down the homestretch as
he was winning is his gold medals. But again, he was a
multi talented guy, not just in running so he, you know, when he
was a teenager, he won the national 400 meters
championships. But he could also run he also finished second
national cross country. So he had this incredible range. He
owned he had this Sussex
record for long jump as a as a kid so you know, did real talent
good why not? Because when I was growing up, it was kind of just
after a vetting co etc. So with Rico and cram and and Yvette was
always kind of he said the the one that wasn't as well known to
kind of, dare I say, a slightly younger generation since that.
Steve cram went onto his media career Lord COE went on to do
his fantastic things. And Steve Evette was kind of was was not
as well known. So to our generation disappeared back into
regular life. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Runners runner. Good. And
number three, last one. Apologies for this Andrew as a
man united supporter, but it will be Juergen Klopp. And, you
know, maybe again, would be a bit of a balance to the some of
the introverted character
types to say anything. Exactly. So, lots of reasons for picking
Jurgen Klopp not just because I'm a Liverpool fan. That means
he seems
I'm because he seems such a, you know, an engaging character.
But I think
I've always felt that there is a big overlap between the
competitiveness of sport and business. Absolutely. And
there's a lot to learn whether it's from Alex Ferguson or
yogin. Clark, or other great leaders in football, there's a
lot to learn, both for sport and for business and life. And
I read once that the most popular leaders are those that
have
humility,
integrity, and competence. Yep. And if you like any of those,
that it doesn't work. Absolutely. And I think yoga
class got all of those. But on top of that, is really
passionate.
And he'd be good fundraiser dinner party, but he's also got
a sense of perspective on life. Yep. That, you know, I wish I
could develop a little more, one of his quotes is that sport is
the most important of the least important things in life.
And so having that sense of perspective, good fun, great
leader, good balance in life. And I think he'd enjoy a beer or
two as well during the meal. So absolutely, I think I think
that'd be an interesting table. Excuse me. I don't think I don't
think Isaac Newton steam event would get a word word in
edgewise. But that's, that's not a problem at all. So that's
great. So thank you very much for your time, Rob. Really great
to catch up with you really great to speak through. And
yeah, good luck with everything and tropics. And it sounds like
exciting times ahead. Thanks a lot. Cheers. Thank you for
joining us. If you'd like us to cover any specific topics and
future podcasts then please email us at Discovery at deep
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