- Americans consume a lot of meat.
Factory farming is responsible
for about 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
- One of the biggest challenges that
the human population is facing today
is creating food at a scale
that does more good for the planet
and is affordable, healthy, and delicious for humans.
- Companies like Beyond Meat
and Impossible Foods have transformed people's
perceptions of plant-based alternatives to meat.
- But, my fear is that,
in trying to solve for one problem,
which is protecting animals, they're creating
a new problem, which is this sort of
Frankenstein, unhealthy,
overly processed product.
- AKUA is a sustainable food company
on a mission to replace harmful industrial food
production with regenerative ocean farming,
starting with a healthy seaweed called Kelp.
- Consumers know these big food companies
are not worth trusting and definitely not worth eating,
and so they're looking for healthier options.
We just need to create food that's clean label,
healthy for you and is non-destructive
for the planet too.
And yeah, we're not gonna be killing animals in the process.
Stop making this so complicated.
- I just like, can't stop eating,
I'm addicted at this point.
- Yeah, when like, you know,
you don't really pay yourself money,
it's good to eat your free product.
- Courtney Boyd Myers
is the co-founder and CEO of AKUA.
- I wasn't one of those kids
that dropped out of college to start a company.
I thought people that went to business school
were so boring.
I was a creative writer and poetry major,
and I turned the corner on 30
and suddenly had this realization
of my future granddaughter asking me,
"Grammy, what were you doing
when the world was burning?"
I looked at the context of climate change and I thought,
all right, there's a lot of different solutions out here.
But the one that I was personally
most drawn to was food.
Food is a major culprit for a lot of the devastation
we're seeing to the environment today,
and I knew that there was a way to create a food company
that could potentially reverse climate change.
- Through a friend
who was farming seaweed in Connecticut,
Courtney learned about the economic and environmental
benefits of growing kelp for food.
- Unlike anything that you eat or drink today,
kelp is a zero input crop.
It doesn't require dry land, fresh water,
fertilizer, or feed to grow abundantly.
And it's growing via photosynthesis,
so it's sequestering carbon.
So I thought, 'ding, ding, ding'
this ticks every box
in the type of company I wanna start.
- But her enthusiasm and lack of experience
meant a rough start.
- I was so excited
and any person that walked through the door and said,
"I want to work on this with you,"
I said, "You can be a co-founder!
You can be a co-founder!
You want some equity?
Here's some equity... let's go."
Oh, my God, what a rookie mistake.
Two people have left the company
before we even launched.
And they left with like over 10% equity, which is a lot.
And it's really tough explaining to your investors
when you've made that kind of mistake.
Starting a company is really difficult.
I had no idea.
In fact, if I had known,
I probably wouldn't have run so quickly into it.
Look at the seal!
Oh my gosh, Hi!
Good morning!
In 2018, we launched a Kickstarter.
We raised a small funding round and that allowed us
to launch our first product, Kelp Jerky.
But, if you're going to create a food product,
make sure someone knows how to make it.
Our kelp jerky, no one knew how to make it.
We got kicked out of three co-packers in our first year.
- AKUA was struggling,
and then the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
- We realized that kelp jerky
probably wasn't going to be that
go big or go home type product
that helped scale our mission.
We knew we needed to pivot towards this Kelp Burger,
this symbol of the American food system.
But we had no money at this point.
- Courtney's co-founder, Matt,
had to develop the burger recipe
out of his parent's rural Pennsylvania kitchen.
They were forced to mail thousands of samples
across the country to gather product feedback.
But their customers were willing to pay,
to try their new burger.
- We definitely had tons
of melted Kelp Burgers show up and
or not show up, so it was a mess.
But, those 22,000 Kelp Burgers
brought us in over
a 100,000 dollars in revenue.
We realized we have to make food products
that people know how to make,
because these manufacturers,
they don't like to be innovative.
That's not in their business model.
Our Kelp burger, on the other hand, is much easier to make.
- The Kelp burger will launch to the public
with direct-to-consumer sales,
and placement in select New York restaurants.
- Our sales team has a strategy
called the Sinatra strategy, if you can make it in
New York, you can make it anywhere.
Our early customers are
definitely living on either coast.
And I think we've got a lot of work to do
to educate and familiarize the rest of the country
around why it's so great to eat seaweed.
My hope for the future, would be for every human being
to ask questions about what they're eating.
Where did it come from?
How is it grown?
Was it grown in a way that serves both my health
and the planet's health too?
With AKUA, yes, we're creating food products.
Yes, we're working with farmers,
but we hope more than anything
that our products can start to create
these subtle mind shifts, and that'll translate
into other areas of their life too.
Mind shifts start in the mouth,
and if we can move people's stomachs,
we can move their minds.