The UnNoticed Entrepreneur
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The UnNoticed Entrepreneur
How to introduce a new product into a mature industry; Oobli challenges US$40b sugar industry..
This episode is a must listen for any innovator challenging dominant market players with a product which can't force behaviour change, and which needs to tread carefully between consumer trials and B2B market penetration.
Ali Wing, CEO of Oobli, an innovative start up in California, explains how they are introducing the world’s first sweet protein product, challenging the US$40bn sugar industry.
Oobli is not another artificial sweetener, but a nature-identical, plant-derived sweet protein, created through biotechnology and fermentation.
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Hello, welcome to this episode of the unnoticed entrepreneur with me, jim James. Here I'm providing you with the best and most trusted source of information for you as an entrepreneur Real source examples of how you can get your business noticed. And who could do that better than Ali Wing, who's joining us today, and we're going to talk about sweet proteins and a company called Oobli. Ally Wing, thank you for joining me today.
Ali Wing:Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Jim James:Well, I'm excited because I've learned that 75% of all food has sugar in it and, as we all know, obesity is an issue all over the world. Certainly in Europe and North America we have issues with diabetes, for example, but the production chain and the industry of sugar is huge, and you and I are going to talk about how a company Oobli has launched the world's first sweet protein product and tackling the question of getting across more's chasm of are you going to deal with the consumer or the company's first? So, Ali, we've got lots more to talk about, but that's just a taster, if I can say so, tell us about Oobli and let's dive into how you're crossing the chasm.
Ali Wing:Well, is sort of this little revolution in the making and I'm excited to share it with everybody. We are a sweet protein platform and it's a biotechnology company. I give a ton of credit to my two founders, and particularly our CTO, jason Ryder, for the eight years of work, of sweat equity, into the point where I joined them to help bring this to market. And what are sweet proteins and why are they so important? Well, sweet proteins are the first time we've ever had available in the world, let alone in any way in our food system, a protein pathway to giving us our sweet tooth rather than a carbohydrate pathway. And that's so important for the reasons you set up, jim. The fundamental different sort of difference mechanism of action of proteins versus carbohydrates is that carbohydrates whether it's a sugar sugar alternative, plant-based or not all interact with your blood sugar system and your gut microbiome as they digest, and proteins do not. That's the simplest form. Why is that so important? You did such a good job of setting that up, which is really. We have a massive issue in the world today on two fronts on obesity and diabetes, which is not because it's bad for people to have a sweet tooth. In fact, I have a sweet tooth. We all do. We're designed to. It's really the amount that's in our modern food system and equally, we produce so much of it. You look at any top 10 most harmful crop in the world and it's sugar. And it's not to demonize sugar, because it's actually a really important thing, kind of like fossil fuel. We just need to use it differently, and one of the ways we can do that is quit producing as many in such precious ecosystems as we currently do. Sweet proteins are a pathway for both of those solutions.
Jim James:So Ali with Oobli, with the sweet proteins? So it's a biotech breakthrough, would that be right?
Ali Wing:It is. I like to say this is the perfect marriage of the best of nature and the best of technology, because sweet proteins are inherently plant based. They come from plants and berries that grew along the equator to solve the problem of staying alive with precious resources, and they evolve to produce one little tiny protein that only tricks, only works apes and gorillas and humans. And it makes us, it tells our taste bud you just got sugar, but then it moves through your body as a protein which is fundamentally different than a carb Probably a dirty trick to an apricorilla in the equator 100 years ago, but maybe the perfect solution for humans today. But we've known about them for about 20 or 30 years, but we didn't have a way to produce them. Then enters what we now know in biotechnology or symbio and the advances there in fermentation, and now we actually can take the DNA from that plant or berry of just the protein and we teach our yeast to produce it in a climate friendly and scalable and affordable way. That allows us to then have a nature identical in product. That's exactly what we got from nature but available for everybody. A lot like how we do beer or wine right, beer, wine and cheese. In some ways, fermentation is an old school technology. We've been doing it for years in food and in fact the yeast we use has been used for centuries and really it's the same. It's just that we didn't used to be able to understand the DNA of a plant and put it into that yeast and have it grow. That, I mean, that's what's different and so exciting and I think you know sort of the perfect example of a marriage between nature and technology.
Jim James:Yeah, I guess you on your website are saying that just even a 1% reduction in sugar production will save 650,000 acres of land. So I guess cane and beet are fundamentally unfriendly to the planet and this sugar protein is an amazing way of doing it, of solving that problem. But, ali, you know, when you introduce something new, as you're doing, there are entrenched industries aren't there. Whether you're doing food or medical tech or climate tech, there's a lot of money in sugar already established isn't there. And consumer behavior, of course, is already maybe about, you know, sweeteners, for example, and saccharine and replacements. Tell us how are you at Ubley going about sort of changing and introducing sweet protein, because you're not just introducing a new product? Are you actually potentially transforming supply chains, value chains and consumer behavior?
Ali Wing:I think that's right. You know I'm a disciplined consumer marketer. That's my background. I live, you know, I start and stop with a consumer and I do believe that great change is happening by sort of lighting the fire in consumer change. So you said this and that we said we associate today's sweets with sugar, and what I want us to be able to do is to re-associate sweets with something other than sugar, including sweet proteins. Right, but the pathway to do that is, I believe, the same. I'm not trying to disrupt an industry. I'm actually trying to solve a crisis, and the crisis is obesity and diabetes throughout the world. And while sugar is not the sole culprit, it is a chief culprit and proteins can be a pathway for a massive rehabilitation. The bonuses by fermenting it we can actually then have the effect that it also improves the climate and it does have an effect on how we distribute, sort of getting our sweets in the industry. But that's not really the objective. The objective is to solve a health crisis and to give us palatable, craveable, first choice foods that are better for our body, or, at least we like to say, as good for our bodies as they are for our soul. We all love the soul of our sweetness, but our bodies can't handle the amounts, and so that's really it. We start and stop with the consumer. Here's what I would tell you, jim. We are not starting this revolution. 75% let's just take Americans for a minute. The data suggests 75% are actively trying to reduce sugar. The data would also suggest they're just kind of failing. There's about 50 forms of sugar today. The labels are pretty complicated and they're kind of lost their way, finding they don't really know what to trust, and there's been a lot of marketing that has come out afterwards and said, hmm, this is a problem. Look at all the news on sugar alternatives. Whichever clinical trial you agree or disagree with over the last year and a half, there's a little bit of red flags going up all over to say, hey, just more carbohydrates of this form isn't actually making us healthier. And I always say Take a simple look and say step back and look at the last 25 years. I'll pick on the US, but this is not unique to the US. It's throughout Latin America, it's parts of Europe, it's certainly throughout India. We're seeing it throughout the world as a result of our modern food system. But what we do know is that 25 years ago we were healthier than we are today, so there's been an expansion of sugar alternatives during that time. I'm glad there's lots of innovation. There's clear consumer demand. So where do we step in? It's try to build a better solution for that demand, but we're not creating a demand. The demand exists.
Jim James:Ali, you know one of the functions of sugar is also as a preservative, isn't it? We put sugar in things to keep it, you know, to crystallize it. What role does sweet protein play? I know I don't want to get too technical, but just because you know consumer behavior is that sugar is also, you know, good for preserving things and so on. So the sweet protein play the same, if you like, sort of preservative as well as sweetening role, or does it need to change?
Ali Wing:And that's such a great question, jim, sugar is a super important crop and I'm not advocating it goes away, I'm just advocating it probably shouldn't play every role it's currently playing in our diet because we can do more with sweet proteins and reduce the load of its unique characteristics like bulking and preservative Sweetness. Sweet proteins can deliver sweetness, sugar deliver sweetness, but sweet proteins are protein, they're not a sugar, so they don't do some of those other things. So let me give you an example to ground this. We came out with dark chocolates. If you think about a chocolate bar, 50% of a chocolate bar, the weight, the bulkiness, sugar. So when we took it out to reduce the sweetness of 75% less sugar in our chocolate bars Hopefully you can't tell a different, most consumers can't tell a different we had to put something back in for the bulk or we were going to give you half the size of a chocolate bar, right, which nobody would really like. And we so we put in an acacia fiber. So we're using dietary fibers when we actually have to replace bulking. Now that doesn't mean you couldn't still use sugar in other forms. So again, I really do use the analogy to fossil fuels. I don't. I would be the last person to say it's not critically important to our world. I just think we have to use it better. We have to upgrade its role. Sugar we should upgrade its role. Ironically, sugars actually an input to a fermentation process. That's actually part of production process, so it's an important part. Plays a lot of different industrial roles. What it probably shouldn't be is be the sweetener in every one of our drinks, our yogurts and our candy bars. We can do that better and we can do that better for our bodies.
Jim James:I'll you give them, me an education. And we've only been talking, you know, for eight or nine minutes about the subject and it's fascinating, and one of the issues is to differentiate between something being sugary and something being sweet. Right, and that actually sugar and sweet are not. It's not the only not the same thing. Right that actually you can have other things that are sweet, that are not just sugar. So that seems to be really important. But you've been educating me, for which you know thank you and forgive my ignorance. When you're introducing a new Product and a new technology In your role as CEO of Ubley, how are you addressing the market? Because, as good as it is, if there isn't adoption, it'll fall by the wayside? Tell us how you're solving the alley-wing.
Ali Wing:It's exactly right and I will underscore it's been a lot of years for most people since they had Biology 101. So I can't start explaining small molecules and large molecules and why it's different and, frankly, most consumers don't want to spend the time on that and they shouldn't have to. So getting to simplicity is our single hardest problem but the most important solution, and I would say this is true for anything in food. At the end of the day, we are spoiled modern consumers today and what we usually start and stop with in our choices are what we love and what tastes great. So for me, cravable food is the number one thing that I want to interact with consumers on in an early launch and with a cravable solution in their mouth I get a pathway to potentially educating them on why that's special and different. But because of that, I would say trial marketing and trial sampling is a mission critical part of any part of my marketing mix today.
Jim James:And how are you doing that, Ally? Because it's the old chicken and egg, isn't it? If the product's not in store and it's just online, for example, and it's you know, people are not necessarily looking for sweet, protein based products how do you get the first ones?
Ali Wing:Absolutely. It's a great question. So we are literally selling the first ever sweet protein powered products in the world, right, and they launched in mid-June, so this is brand, brand new. I could even be talking to biotechnologists who are like sweet proteins Do you mean proteins that are sweeter? Like you know, we get the same questions, so we knew that it's novel. So I'll start with what we did this summer. The first thing we did is we yes, we went online. Yes, we are very focused digitally at education, so lots of experts bringing on strategic advisers, providing the content for when somebody's going to experience this has a place to go find out about this information. But how do we get them to go find out? Well, we picked a market and so we, for a bunch of reasons, we chose LA this summer and we sampled more than 15,000 teas in the months of July and August and we showed up where we think our consumer demographic is, which is an early adopter, innovator who's willing to think about their diet in different ways. That is showing up in culturally relevant locations. So we were at movie nights in LA. We stood at the bottom of very popular hikes in LA Laurel Canyon, for instance, on Saturdays when everyone was coming from their morning hike and we handed out cold free teas. So we did a lot of sampling. We've now taken, we're done with sort of our summer campaign. It was a really effective campaign. We got a lot of questions, inquiries first reviews, starting conversations, which is really the goal of Wave 1. Now we're entering fall and we're expanding in other markets. We're now in about 75 retailers in California and we're starting to roll that out, and so we really had to tackle this issue. I think to your question of how do you do sampling digitally, and so we made a decision we actually just launched it early September that we actually are also going to do sampling online, which is a little tricky when you've got drinks because you don't really want to send them out in less than six packs. It's not cheap. So really what we're doing is we are creating. We have several campaigns running where, if you take the time to go listen to Dr Jason Ryder, our chief technology officer and also the head of biotechnology at UC Berkeley, to walk you through why a protein pathway for sweetness is so different than a carbohydrate one, and you invest that time, we send you a free six pack. All you have to do is pay for shipping. So we are very much invested in trial and it's still going everywhere.
Jim James:Lovely and I've got your website open and for those people that are watching the YouTube, you can see there's a store locator. And for those of you that are interested, you can go to oobli. com and you can start to see the store locator and wholesale opportunities as well. When I imported a drink called Wake Drinks to China, which is a Gorana based sports drink, I went to the Marathons and on the Great Wall actually, and gave out drinks. It was one of the hardest sort of trials. I had to go up the Great Wall carrying large quantities of drink. You've been smarter than me, of course, alie, I would expect that of you.
Ali Wing:Well, distributing drinks is not for the faint of the heart. It's a lot of hauling and bulk.
Jim James:Yeah, that's for sure Well worth it. What is the if you like the taste test, because obviously in soft drinks you know you saw Pepsi and Coke do the sort of taste test was Ali how are you helping people then to you know, like experience, the difference? And then what are you doing with the results of that? Because you've got people who then become evangelists, presumably.
Ali Wing:Yeah, for sure.
Jim James:How are you amplifying their experiences?
Ali Wing:Well, huge. So the way we approach our model food system. So we have two products out, right, we have sweet teas, we have chocolates. That's certainly just the tip of the iceberg, because we're also working with large companies on rehabilitation of their products. In all those cases, when we design the product, we're not trying to tell a consumer what to taste. We're asking them what's your favorite drink? That we're going to target and replace and then we reformulate so that it's four out of five consumers can't notice a difference that we made to the product and that's really very important on all our testing. And then we go out and bring it out. So, for example, our teas they have seven grams of sugar in them because they have five grams of fruit and two grams of agave, because we're reducing the equivalent in-demand tea that we wanted to sort of compete against by 75% sweetness. But in order to give them what the taste they're used to. I'm only still working with our first protein. That's regulated. I can reduce it by about 75%. When I have two or three proteins in the market, I can probably get closer to 80 to 90 without them noticing a difference. But I really don't want to ask the consumer to make a change. I want to give them everything. I want them to be as spoiled as they are and give them a better equation for their body. So we start with taste and then, as we bring these products out, it's really about we encourage trial, we're asking for reviews and we let the consumers speak Right. So we want to hear it all good, bad and ugly. I think most consumers today take more seriously products that don't have everybody that says it's perfect because that feels manufactured. Yeah, and preferences in foods are very varied. So we could have the best tea in the world and there's going to be some people that don't like it. I want everybody to see what everybody's saying and let the numbers speak for themselves. So far, that's what we feel really excited about. We put a lot of amplification to other people commenting. We've even taken a step and I'll give this as a marketing tactic. We've gone out kind of a lot of the old Pepsi challenges which we do in our own consumer testing. We go out and do the equivalent in downtowns all the time, but we've put them online with some chefs and we've just let them pick what they're going to taste, challenge against and they've actually been blindfolded and then they'll actually say what they like, what they don't like, and many times that's exactly what we want to hear, and sometimes it's different than we want to hear. But I think that credibility over time is best in class marketing. Today, when you're bringing something disruptive to the market, it's transparency around what it is and consumer tastes are very varied and consumers generally get that today.
Jim James:Well, and it sounds as though, although it's a disruptive technology, you're not making it a disruptive experience to the consumer, which sounds like the adoption. Is there something that you would say? That Azubli hasn't gone quite as planned, or a lesson that you've learned? I never tried to embarrass anybody, but in the spirit of entrepreneurs sharing, it's always useful to find something that may have been done. That was an experiment, for example, that didn't quite yield the results.
Ali Wing:I have my biggest mistake and I own it. This was 100% me in the middle of it. That's the game, right as you move fast enough that you have to be comfortable being imperfect. That's the stomach of an entrepreneur, and you have to have it. I'm a big believer that there is no such thing as a perfect product. There are great products and there are smart practices, but there's a wide variety of consumer preferences. The important thing to do with once you have a good strategy is to get to market and let the actual buying market behavior tell you your true feedback, because you do a lot of research up front. But even one of your earlier guests on your show, the ethnographer, would say you only get a partial amount of the information until you get out of the way and let them experience their product without you managing it. You learn a lot. The mistake we made and it's funny because it's so simple in some ways In our can and our packaging of our first tea launch. We were so excited about bringing out this craveable sweet tea that had 75% less sugar than an equivalent and no sugar, alcohols or anything in it. This is kind of a clean ingredient, reduced sugar. We were so excited about that low sugar discussion. We didn't pay enough attention to how protein was going to show up on the nutrition fact pattern. Here's the deal Sweet proteins are actually 2,000 to 5,000 times sweeter on a weight weight basis than sugar when you take out, let's say, a typical soda has like 18 cubes of sugar in it. We would replace that with water and about 0.03 milligrams of sweet protein. It's proportionately a lot different, so it'll be a small part of your nutrition fact panel. When our lawyers did the NFP calculations that nutrition fact panel where it shows on the back what percent's everything if you're under 1% it just says zero. Our protein actually is about 0.8% within the product, so it said zero. I go out and I launch this great sweet protein-powered product that has this awesome taste and reduced sugar and everyone gets that. But they're turned it over and they're like but it has zero protein. What is it? It's total protein. Total miss by us. We did a quick run and we redesigned the packages. It was perfectly legal. We just didn't know to do it. We could have put less than 1% and put a little asterisk and had an explanation so that people understood. We like to call them now our tiny superheroes. These little proteins do a lot, so it doesn't take very much to do it or you'd oversweeten the product. Now we explain that. That's a great example of fail fast, admit it and adjust, and we did.
Jim James:Well, lali, I think it's also an example of your scientific approach that you learned, but also that consumers do care what's in the product. They do, they don't take it for granted, and that the label readers and I read you know, for my daughters, you know the zero coke, zero coke. I hate all of those, but I can't understand necessarily the difference. They all seem to have sugar in them, and so there's a lot of anxiety amongst consumers. There is, isn't there, especially in parents as well, and and anyone involved in nutrition. So being clear, as you say, for the, for the label readers amongst us, at really really key Only wing CEO of Ublea and you've been an entrepreneur, you've been in and out of many businesses, led them to great success, as I'm sure you're gonna do with Ublea as well. Is there something that you would recommend to my fellow unnoticed entrepreneurs On moving the needle, something that you think really really helps and that everyone should have in their plan?
Ali Wing:Yeah, you know it's hard to be. I've been in five industries so my job is always to kind of partner with the technologies, to unlock technology for better health, like that's kind of been my career. But I've done it in a lot of different applications. So I would say it's always hard at a marketing mix to say across industries or product types because they're so different. So I'll kind of give you a couple themes. I think one is fail fast, don't be afraid to be in market and learn, because actually, despite what a lot of people think, I think consumers are actually pretty forgiving. They're not forgiving if they don't, if they feel bait and switched. If you're transparent about it and you come out and you make Decisions in market and you react accordingly, I think you're generally rewarded in today's market. And I haven't seen very many case studies. I hear horror stories about it when they're not, but I don't actually see that in practice much. So I would say fail fast. My example of my mistake is a good one. I would also say avoid the illusion of perfection. There is no such thing. You know, I always tell my teams the only truth about our plan today on execution is it's wrong. The only truth is we were. We're building the first ever sweet protein powered products in the world, so we don't know much more than what we do know right. So all we can do is build, be smart and agile, and so don't have an illusion of perfection and Expect that you will adjust as you go. Lean into that. And then I would say, third, to do those first two things and have them be effective. It's all about measurement understand and design Systems of measurement. To understand, make sure you know what you learned, because it's not okay to make the same mistake twice. It is okay to make it if you've measured it and learn from it. I would say those are the most important principles.
Jim James:I'll leave it now. I know why the investors you know sought you out and brought you into it with your amazing strategic oversight and the ability to make it all Accessible, which you've done and introduced. You know it's such an exciting new innovation, sweet proteins. So thank you so much for coming on the show, Ali wing. And if you want to find out more about you and Ublee, how can they do that?
Ali Wing:Oh, definitely Everything. Ublee, check us out at Ubleecom. Oh, blicom. We go out of our way to put a lot of content. Even our strategic advisors we have a scientific advisory board are posting a lot of great content because sweet proteins are so brand new to the market, we know you might just want to visit and learn more, and we're posting a lot of third-party links that are there too. So I encourage you to go check out our blog. I Encourage people to sign up for our list, for our be in the know, which is basically we're gonna let you know when else you can find us, which products were in next, because our our products are the first products out there ever Tees and chocolate but we're busy working with a lot of companies and a lot of products. You already love to see if we can rehabilitate their products and give you just the same taste you've already loved, but something that's better for your body. So stay tuned for those announcements. And, of course, personally, feel free, I'm you can find me at LinkedIn and I'm at alley wing, just like it's spelled a li wing.
Jim James:Ali Wing, Ceo of Ublee. Thank you so much for introducing this whole new Concept, really, and whole new technology, and also how you are crossing the chasm, introducing, you know, the new sweet proteins that let's, let's hope are introduced for this generation to start to address the health issue. So, thank you so much.
Ali Wing:Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Jim James:It's been a pleasure. So what a lot to learn from alley wing today and you know, for me, one of the main takeaways is this need to get trials. You know that the product goes in and you try it and get the first anchor clients to try it. It's a recurring theme, as we had Melissa snow of of Nourished as well talking about this, about getting the first tests and getting people to evangelize the products. If you've enjoyed this show, please do share it with a fellow unnoticed entrepreneur, and if you can rate the show on your player, that also really helps. Leave a review Helps me to understand what you like about the show and also what else I can do better, and until we meet again, I just encourage you to keep on communicating. Thanks for listening you.
