#36: Daniela Allerbon (Aquit) – Patagonia Special 1/3 – Replacing Antibiotics in Aquaculture for the Prevention of Fish Infections.
For the last month or so I've been travelling through Argentina and Chile, exploring what is an incredibly beautiful and important region for the world ocean economy, but one that we don't really hear much about, particularly in Europe and North America. Through the last four weeks or so, I have connected with lots of brilliant, brilliant people, from founders and entrepreneurs to experts and activists. Some of these in-person conversations will be turned into podcast episodes, and this is the first episode of this Patagonia Special series. My first guest is Daniela Allerbon, who is the CEO of Aquit, a startup that developed preventative treatment for infections in farmed fish that replaces antibiotics.
The WHO predicted that by 2050 more people could die from super-resistant bacteria than cancer. Antibiotic overuse, a lot of which happens in animal production, including aquaculture, is one of the main causes of this global problem. Something that reduces the use of antibiotics could have a big positive impact. We recorded the interview at their office in Buenos Aires, but the company operates down here in Patagonia, mostly on the other side of the Andes, in Chile.
Daniela's Bio:
Daniela is an economist specialising in the marketing and development of science-based products, with a focus on sustainable aquaculture and biotechnology. She has 15 years of experience as an entrepreneur, 4 of which were devoted to developing and commercialising feed additives, utilising pre-clinical trials for human health products. She has also worked across the private and public sectors, as well as with NGOs and international organisations.
Prior to founding Aquit in 2022, Daniela led research and development initiatives at Silvateam, where she managed the launch of a new business unit and coordinated international research on the microbiome and COVID-19.
She has received several notable recognitions in the sector, including her participation in the Hatch Blue and Conservation International Ventures "Women in Ocean Food" program, and her completion, coming up first place, of the BIGinBIO program with the Ganesha Lab, focusing on biotechnology management.
Daniela holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Universidad de San Andrés and has completed postgraduate studies in management and policy in culture and communication.
Timestamps:
00:00:00 - Introduction to The Ocean Age and Patagonia Special Series
00:01:04 - Guest Introduction: Daniela Allerbon and Aquit
00:02:23 - Innovation Park and Team Dynamics
00:03:57 - Daniela's Early Career and the 2001 Economic Crisis
00:08:16 - Adapting to Change and Entrepreneurial Spirit
00:13:12 - Public Perception of Aquaculture and Communication Challenges
00:19:10 - Daniela's Career Transition to Aquit
00:31:16 - Aquit's Mission: Farming Fish Without Antibiotics
00:37:31 - Innovation Challenges and Award Recognition
00:41:03 - The Science Behind Aquit's Product
00:46:24 - Expanding Technology to Other Species and AI's Role
00:49:25 - Compelling Reasons for Farmers to Adopt New Solutions
00:54:00 - The Global Issue of Antibiotic Resistance
01:05:03 - Radical Empathy: Advice for Entrepreneurs
01:06:43 - Ocean Entrepreneurs and the Impact-Profitability Challenge
01:10:37 - Being a Latin American Startup with Global Ambitions
01:21:11 - Unconscious Bias in Venture Capital
Useful Links & Resources:
Aquit’s website
Aquit on LinkedIn
Daniela Allerbon on LinkedIn
Daniela mentioned the book "Reinventing Organizations" by Frédéric Laloux
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Fed DeGobbi: Hello and welcome back to The Ocean Age. I'm Fed DeGobbi and I'm coming to you from Patagonia. I'm recording this intro from the Airbnb where I'm staying at the moment in the town of Bariloche in the south of Argentina. And the reason for this is that over the last month or so I've been traveling through Argentina and Chile exploring what is an incredibly beautiful and really important region for the world ocean economy, but one that we don't really hear much about, particularly in Europe and North America. During my time here, I've connected with lots of brilliant, brilliant people from founders and entrepreneurs to experts and activists. Some of these in-person conversations will be turned into podcast episodes. And this is the first episode of this Patagonia special series. My first guest is Daniela Allerbon, who is the CEO of aquit, a startup who developed preventative treatment for infections in farmed fish that replaces antibiotics. There is obviously a lot more to Daniela's bio, which I'll put in the show notes to keep this short, but I want to take a moment to underline why this kind of innovation is important. The WHO predicted that by 2050, more people could die from super-resistant bacteria than cancer. Antibiotics overuse, a lot of which happens in animal production, including aquaculture, is one of the main causes of this global problem. Something that reduces the use of antibiotics could have a big positive impact. We recorded the interview at their office in Buenos Aires, but the company operates down here in Patagonia, mostly on the other side of the Andes, in Chile. Without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Daniela Allerbon. Daniela, thank you so much for having me. What an amazing venue.
Daniela Allerbon: Thank you, Fed, for having me. Yeah, it's a quite interesting place. It's the Innovation Park of Buenos Aires.
Fed DeGobbi: So Innovation Park of Buenos Aires, and this is the Immersivity Center. Exactly. And where you guys are based.
Daniela Allerbon: Yeah, we are based in Chile, the scientific team, and the management team is in Buenos Aires. So we are here at the space, it's Innovation Park, where we have the co-working space, and there's also a laboratory with the co-working. And it's a wonderful place in which we have a very interesting community of startups. from all around Buenos Aires. We went through a biotech accelerator in Argentina that's called RIDEX. RIDEX, it's an accelerator and like a tinder for scientific products and entrepreneurs. I met there with my scientific team that's from Chile, and after we got selected, they got selected as scientists, and I got selected as an entrepreneur. And each year, 20 entrepreneurs and 20 scientists come together to a program called IGNITE. So there we matched. And well, that's part of the explanation why we are from different countries. And most of the, not most, but a big number from the start of GreatX are here in this innovation park, the ones that are from Argentina.
Fed DeGobbi: Did you find that being in this environment is motivating and it changes your approach in any way?
Daniela Allerbon: Yeah, and that's very important. When I started working here, I was almost the only person from the management team. And it's hard to work alone at home. But because my scientific team was in Chile, so it's very important to share this very, very difficult journey we are in with other people. Yeah, it's energizing.
Fed DeGobbi: Energizing, yeah. You can compare notes and share good moments, bad moments. And all that. All right. I'm going to go back to 2001 because you graduated in economics in 2001 here in Buenos Aires. And that year, Argentina had one of the worst economic crises in its history. Yes. What was it like?
Daniela Allerbon: Wow. It was a moment in which Really, it felt like Argentina was no longer going to exist. Almost like that, you know, like, oh, it's very, you know, the moment in which you start, you finish your career, then like the minute you think that you were like the rest of your life is starting, you know, and at the same time, you see like no future, you know, it was like a dystopic, you know, like black mirror moments, you know. And most of my colleagues from university wanted to do a master's abroad. And I wanted to start working, but I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to do research in economics. I was not attracted to working at a corporation. So I really was wondering what to do. And at that specific moment, I It was very hard to figure out, so I had like an artistic side of myself. I had been painting, writing, and I organized with a group of people, a group of artists, a group to bring performances into Buenos Aires, into places of Argentina, art performances. So I brought the performance of an American photographer called Spencer Tunick. He brought these photos, used like 500, 1000 or more people naked. So I organized that in Buenos Aires. It's a lot of people to organize. You can imagine the first time I did fundraising in my life I did for that product. You can imagine 2001 and I'm calling the airlines and saying I'm going to bring an artist to Argentina. Where are they? I need your ticket please. It was hard but it was very fun, interesting and I learned a lot. We had 80 media from all over the world, it was amazing. And a very big event like in Obelisco, you know, you've already been there, like the Obelisco Buenos Aires. So it was at the Obelix there and it was amazing. And that moment I learned that I wanted to do, to work with cultural management.
Fed DeGobbi: Okay. And did you consider to leave Argentina before that point?
Daniela Allerbon: Yeah, I was considering… I even had a plane ticket bought to London.
Fed DeGobbi: To London? You didn't take it?
Daniela Allerbon: I didn't take it. Well, in the meantime, I fell in love with my current husband. Current husband, I'd say it was a good decision. And yeah, and like I… I changed everything. I said, OK, I want to do what I want, what makes me happy. And I decided to stay and to find out a way in a different thing, very different from the one that I had started in an atmosphere that was very complicated.
Fed DeGobbi: So even in 2001, that sounds like a very entrepreneurial approach in terms of being flexible and innovating, finding a way.
Daniela Allerbon: Yeah, and like very trying to adapt to the conditions, to the situation, yeah. Well, in Argentina, it's something that we are kind of all entrepreneurs, in a way, in a sense, because we experience crisis and we experience kind of this cyclic crisis and you have to adapt and you have to be highly flexible to survive, you know. Even in terms of having a privileged education as the one I had, you have to adapt all the time because things change. And at that time, in 2001, I couldn't find a job. It was really, really hard at that time. When you feel okay, people will be waiting in line for me. It didn't happen. So yeah, but well, I choose that. But I'm very happy, recently I read something that has to do with you can never know what would have happened because you can't compare that alternative life, you know, to the one that you had. So just choose something, stick to that and make the best of it. That was my philosophy, you know, like, it's impossible to compare.
Fed DeGobbi: Yeah, and it doesn't do any good to you.
Daniela Allerbon: No, and there's all the things that would have happened if I would have pursued that line. You can't guess all the things that would add to that.
Fed DeGobbi: There's so many variables, so many unexpected things.
Daniela Allerbon: So no, I'm very happy with that. But yeah, I'm used to changing things. And from that, what I learned is that, and even in terms of the things that we do, you can change as many times as you want, as long as you are really convinced or you really want to do what you are pursuing. like this more rigid idea that we have or used to have. I know that now it changed, but of one career I have to pursue and like to start, I don't know, in kindergarten, thinking about it and, you know, putting hours to that. It's like, it's, it's, it doesn't work like that. Yeah.
Fed DeGobbi: Do you think it's just a case of it doesn't work like that anymore?
Daniela Allerbon: I think it doesn't work like that for most of the, because of the world economy, basically, it's very hard to find. Even in Japan, I think nowadays they're kind of, you know, places like you are used to start a work there or a position and get till you are, I don't know, 70 years old in the same job there. kind of rethinking that system that the world economy like needs people, like it's things are going so fast and work is evolving so fast that you need to redesign your career every. I don't know, five to ten years at least. So if you are too attached to something, you will need to rethink that and to give another direction or at least to do something about it. I think that I'm quite happy that I found that because I'm Gen X, Generation X, and it's more this idea you have to do something for the rest of you. You have to choose well. When you're 18 years old, you have to choose the path and the career and what you're going to study and stick to that for the rest of your life. So yeah.
Fed DeGobbi: You think being from Argentina gave you an advantage in that sense because there's the element of unpredictability and constant change that you have to find your feet again?
Daniela Allerbon: Yeah, because you live, you come to, you make friends with risk at some point. Like, okay, it's like that. You can do anything about it. You just have to accept, like, you have to embrace risk. If you don't embrace risk, you suffer loss in a country like ours, you know? Like, okay, it's like that. And sometimes like, and it's not like this, you know, it's like, it's not like always up and steady and oh, it's unpredictable. And well, most people learn that from COVID, I think. Like, we had like a world trauma, you know, with COVID. And what you wanted to do, you had to do, you had to do so many things and COVID stopped everything. So you can imagine if that would happen in a place like every, at least every four years. If you interview people in Argentina, like, you know, each one year, like they will always tell you almost every year, yeah, we're in the middle of a crisis. Like, we live in crisis. You can live, it's like your way of life, you know, when you say it all the time.
Fed DeGobbi: Speaking of change and unpredictability, I was looking at the career you've built before aquit. So you built a remarkable career spacing from product development, marketing, communication and media. Do you find that developing and marketing a product in the blue economy is in any way different from doing so in other sectors?
Daniela Allerbon: In some way, the things that you need to do are pretty similar because basically you have to understand the customer, who the customer is, the clients. You need to understand how are you going to develop the product, how are you going to produce it, regulations in each country. It's not that different. Blue economy I found has something very interesting with the case of aquaculture. As you produce mostly in public spaces, that is the sea, you have to really take into account the social license in order to do that.
Fed DeGobbi: So it's not just you and your idea, you have to confront and negotiate with the public space.
Daniela Allerbon: And you have to take that into account. It's not there, it's just a plus to take into account the community. You have to think about all the things that are going on and it's an industry, like aquaculture in this case, it's very scrutinized. it's much more younger than other animal farming industries. So there's a lot of like the public opinion is very, very hard on it. And the regulations are very hard on it. So you have to be very careful in aquaculture. What are you doing? How are you doing it? It needs to be sustainable. It's kind of mandatory. It's not that in other industries you can't, but you have sometimes a bit more space to do that or to have some practices that are maybe not the best ones in aquaculture. I think it's very difficult to do that without consequences.
Fed DeGobbi: Do you feel there's maybe a public perception that is negative toward aquaculture and you have to sort of fight that back, improve yourself with more scrutiny than you would in other sectors?
Daniela Allerbon: Yeah, I believe that most of the basically aquaculture producers feel so attacked or so attacked or like with public opinion that they decided as a strategy, most of them, to stay silent as a strategy, you know, like where I'm not going to talk, you know, about what we're doing because every time we try to promote this, we get attacked. So I think that that strategy doesn't help the industry as a whole, because you need also people to speak up and say, we are doing, and like, come here and see what I'm doing, you know, like, be as transparent as you can, and invite people to come and to talk about it openly. But of course, I understand you're afraid of, you know, being kicked again. But there are some initiatives like what's Fed by Blue NGO that has released this, what's the name, Hope in the Water, I think that's the series.
Fed DeGobbi: Okay, we'll put it in the show notes so people can check it out.
Daniela Allerbon: I think it's the name and for example stories from aquaculture farmers from all over the world that it's like the side B or from conspiracy and all those kind of documentaries and paint a negative picture. Yeah. I like the kind of you can do anything here and it's very dangerous. And there's kind of a conspiracy, you know, all around the world. And yeah. And I think that this industry needs more than more of that, because we like the need for food is growing. Consumption is growing. The need for seafood is growing. And since 2024, more than 50% of the seafood comes from aquaculture. So it was the first time in history that aquaculture was larger than wild fish. So the future is basically industry. So what you need is to be smarter and do aquaculture in the best way, the most sustainable way and the most efficient way you can. Because where is that food going to come, that fish going to come? It's very high value protein, very healthy protein. And it's one of the proteins with the least carbon footprint in the world. So it doesn't mean that you still have to find alternatives to produce things that are also sustainable. And of course, you have cultivated meat. It's very interesting. But until we have that in a cost-efficient way, we will still rely on agriculture.
Fed DeGobbi: I'm going a bit on a tangent now, but do you believe that aquaculture can be done in a truly sustainable way?
Daniela Allerbon: Yeah, definitely. I've been to some facilities that are amazing, that really take care of the fish. They want the fish not to be stressed, so they release some kind of liquid to de-stress the fish when it's going to being changed from a tank to another tank. They really take care. There's very strict protocols to manage fish and there are very humane ways to kill them. That's the stunning methods. And yeah, there's a lot of things that you can do, do that in a humane way.
Fed DeGobbi: Yeah, so it's perhaps a communication issue, the fact that all of this doesn't seem to have gone out into the public, into the world, because I'll give you a stupid example, but I was at this event last night here in Buenos Aires and I was talking to this lovely chap, Jose, and he was basically asking me about the trip and asking me about what I'm doing and I was telling him about aquaculture and how it's an exciting place to be. And rightly so, he was a bit confused, he was like, wait, Isn't aquaculture bad? And so I tried to explain what I've seen through my podcast. And he said, oh, I'm surprised because I have never seen any signal of aquaculture being done sustainably. And that made me think, especially now what you said, that perhaps there is a wall, there is a gap in communication and informing the public.
Daniela Allerbon: Yeah, definitely. And I think that it's very understandable why if you are an aquaculture farmer and you have been criticized this much, you find it hard to expose yourself and to tell, like you try to hide, you know, like, okay, not make waves, let's say. in a little way, but at the same time it's needed from the industry. I think someone should sound well. The things that I told you about Fed by Blue, you know, and Hope in the Water, like those things that really showcase how things are being done and that sort of things. And at the same time, if you have sushi, You have salmon, for example, and you have sushi. And at the same time you criticize aquaculture, where do you think that salmon is coming from? You have to be at least consistent.
Fed DeGobbi: Yeah.
Daniela Allerbon: Because if you decide not to have any fish at all.
Fed DeGobbi: Or any meat.
Daniela Allerbon: Yeah, and in the case of antibiotics, the thing that we work with, antibiotics is very intensively used in animal farming, but not only in aquaculture. It used to be, in fact, poultry is huge. And the idea of using preventive antibiotics that's sterile, you know, to avoid the chicken getting sick.
Fed DeGobbi: So these are not animals that are sick and need antibiotics, they are just animals that are getting a chronic dose of antibiotics for preventative and for improvement in production?
Daniela Allerbon: Exactly, it's called sub-therapeutic amount. It's not the amount that needs to kill an infection, but it's like a very low dose of antibiotics all the time. That used to be, and still in some parts, a very common practice in the poultry industry. And chicken is the thing that we most eat, so if you say that you shouldn't eat meat at all, And that wouldn't happen in Argentina. I can guarantee you that. We're not going… That's the point, that's the point. We all eat meat. It's a religion. Yeah, it's a religion. The most similar thing to a religion is that if you eat meat, you have to at least think a little bit more about your own consistency, your own values. But at the same time, Argentina is the first place in the world that banned salmon aquaculture.
Fed DeGobbi: Completely, so there is no salmon aquaculture in Argentina.
Daniela Allerbon: In Tierra del Fuego, that's the southeast province of Argentina. It was banned, I think, like four, five years ago, I don't know, like several years ago. And now they are talking again, you know, how to do that, of course, sustainably and start again. But the thing is that when you And it's interesting because I've been to Punta Arenas in Chile, that's in the Estrecho de Madagascar, it's just kind of the other side. From Chile you see the place in Argentina that's banned. And you see in Chile how they are producing very sustainably because you have there very low temperatures. So you don't need to use, it's not as hard to avoid using antibiotics in that place.
Fed DeGobbi: Because it's so south and so cold.
Daniela Allerbon: The temperature is so low compared to the other centers that infections occur less frequently. So you don't need to use antibiotics there as much as in other sites. I know that some sites even got organic certification in salmon nearby. So you see that there's a place just right to the right of that place. the neighbors, we are like other neighbors, we banned salmon farming. And at the other side you have organic certified salmon. So there's a way to do that in a sustainable way. Of course taking care, using the site the correct amount of time and then leaving it to rest to rebuild the seabed and to have like the, I don't know what, there's lots of parameters, like do you have to take into account that you, it's not necessarily that you are going to, you know, to farm salmon and to destroy, even there's other projects that work with seaweed to, with the communities, you know, to rebuild the seabed, So it can be done sustainably and I think it's an opportunity because when you have an industry as new as aquaculture in a sense, like in industrial sense, you can use all the technology that has been developed and all the knowledge that has been developed to do it properly.
Fed DeGobbi: So we're going to get to Aqua and the technology very soon. Before that, I wanted to explain what looks like a gap, because for somebody that doesn't know your story, they look at your CV and they see that somewhere around 2021, you went from the solid, somewhat traditional, career, and then you switched to becoming the CEO of this very innovative ocean biotech startup. And I know that that's not the full story, right? What are we missing here? What happened?
Daniela Allerbon: Working, I was since 2006, I had been working in public policy. And I was the director of the National Reading Program of Argentina. I directed a program that gave 20, a library of 20 books to each family that received a social housing, a house from the social housing programs. So that was life-changing for me. And it was great to have, like, to work with public policy and to see all this lives change, really. It was, they were the first books that entered the houses. So it was a very big responsibility to edit this site and publish it. So all these years it was an amazing experience, but also it's hard to work in politics after 10 years. I think I was done. It was an interesting cycle. in my life, but then I worked well as deputy of the, it's in English, it's the community media direction. And I was part of it. Okay, I'm done. And I decided I wanted to do something new. Definitely new. I had this opportunity to work at an Italian company that's one of the largest that works with vegetable extracts in the world and it has also a subsidiary in Argentina. And I kind of had the opportunity to work in several products, you know, like working very next to the to the presence of the company. And I was like, you know, it was an opportunity. There's opportunities that I'm a very curious person. So I gathered opportunity from my network. And it was something that opened me, you know, my way into working with biotechnology, because I worked with biologists One of the products this company has is a prebiotic that improves the microbiome, the intestinal microbiome in animals. That's when I learned about poultry and the poultry industry and antibiotic resistance. And what I did is translate that into for humans, you know, like all those what you would say preclinical trials, you know, trials with animals, the humans. And I directed a COVID trial with 143 patients working with biologists from Argentina, from Italy and from the United States. I learned about microbiome antibiotic resistance and the importance of working with, basically using science to build a product and to develop a program was amazing.
Fed DeGobbi: And that was new to you?
Daniela Allerbon: Very, yeah. Completely new. I've never done that. In the past, I had other projects. I had a publishing house. I had even a luxury design product with a designer who was my partner and friend. But I never had anything to do with biology. And I was really surprised by the impact we had then. There were people that had chronic problems for 10 years and went through this trial and got cured. And everybody wanted to talk to me. They called me doctor and said, please don't call me doctor, I'm going to go to jail. But I ended up deciding on the amount of bills they got because I ended up having a say in the and the clinical protocols and the patents, and which was the composition of the product, because we had to balance what was good for the treatment, but also what made sense in regulatory terms in Argentina and in Italy as well. So for this product, so, well, I learned a lot from that and I said, yeah, I want to do this, you know, I want to do this and I want to have an impact and I want to make something, let's say, from like very innovative to have an impact. And that's where I came across GreedX.
Fed DeGobbi: Right. Back to where we started.
Daniela Allerbon: And met my partners and built aquits.
Fed DeGobbi: Right. And that's how you got here, basically.
Daniela Allerbon: Exactly.
Fed DeGobbi: If we look at what your company is trying to achieve, is essentially, correct me if I'm wrong, a world where it is possible to farm fish without using antibiotics, which are, as we said, largely used today. To any outsiders, this might sound like a moonshot. What made you believe in this venture to the point of investing your time, your career, to the point that you did?
Daniela Allerbon: Well, first of all, I think that my team, my partners are amazing, are very, very solid scientists and they know what you're doing. And they proved to me that they found something that's really kind of groundbreaking. And I've seen all that. Well, we validated it. They showed me all the validations. I understood them. So this is something that's a very different approach to the one that are being used. And at the same time, I really believe that together we can, you know, even though it's hard, it's not an easy path. We can convince farmers to adopt this product. one by one, and I see these that combined with public opinion and the pressure to be more sustainable, I think that we can get there, you know, like with a very cost-efficient product. And I think that pressure and that need to be sustainable at the same time, I think we can get there.
Fed DeGobbi: And with a product like yours and the technology that's behind it, presumably it requires a big effort in terms of research and development, meaning time and money. What have been the key moves that you've done in getting other people to believe in the project and invest?
Daniela Allerbon: So I believe that, well, we had been working with laboratories and companies that believe in what we are doing. Now we are working on the second largest salmon company in Chile that's called Multi-X. and what for a pilot for next year. So I think that they understand what we're doing and they really want to work with us. So we kind of onboarded very strategic partners that are able to pilot what we're doing and to adopt it at large scale. So I think that that's something important for the people that is investing in us. And also what they say is that they, investors at early stage, they say that they invest in a team. So you have to, you must have solid science, like something that you know that you prove that it's going to, it has very, very high chance of working very well, can be scalable. and at the same time you have to you must prove to have a very strong team that I believe that the word for that is that has grit you know that combination of passion and persistence. And I think that when you dig into my partners and me, I think that you find some evidence of that, like very stubborn in the good sense, you know, like we go where we go because we believe in what you're doing.
Fed DeGobbi: And you can back it up with the science and the facts.
Daniela Allerbon: Exactly.
Fed DeGobbi: Right. I've got to ask you this. I've heard a funny story about you. It sounds like it was a pivotal moment and you attempted to be in two places at once.
Daniela Allerbon: I was at the, it was the October 2nd, 2023, when I had to… You definitely remember? Yeah. I had to pitch in St. John, Canada, the Responsible Seafood Innovation Award, because we were finalists there and I had to pitch in front of the audience, like it was Even Gerald Cook, one of the founders of salmon aquaculture, a very, very important audience there. And at the same time, I had the demo day of a program, a biotech accelerator I was doing in Chile. But it was the same time zone, at the same time.
Fed DeGobbi: Exactly the same time.
Daniela Allerbon: Exactly the same time, because Saint John Canada and Chile had the same time zone. All right.
Fed DeGobbi: Of course.
Daniela Allerbon: So they were very far apart but at the same time the time zones were the same. So there I had to record my pitch for the Chilean Accelerator and well I was live so when I was there in Canada I Liv, the people voted Liv, so I had at that moment like we won there and I was like so happy there, excited because we won the responsible seafood innovation award.
Fed DeGobbi: Okay, so the audience got to vote live as you were after your pitch.
Daniela Allerbon: Exactly, I had to show a video, I had to do a pitch, go a video and well I had two other competitors and they had to vote, yeah. So they voted and I won there and at the same time I was like, okay, I was kind of disconnected, you know, from that. Okay, I'm done for the day. And I checked with my partners and I said, okay, tell me what happened in Chile. And they told me we won. They sent me like, you know, the video in which they said like, the winners are, and Akbar was first place. So I think something must have happened that day for us because it was too much at the same time.
Fed DeGobbi: That's incredible. Do you feel that aquaculture is a difficult space to innovate?
Daniela Allerbon: Aquaculture, I think that any farming industry is difficult in the sense that you have some practices that are very kind of ingrained and kind of there is a way to do things. And it's not easy to change, to find people with a mindset, you know, open to innovation. in general, you know, like in animal farming in general, in any industry, like you see that.
Fed DeGobbi: Not a conservative approach.
Daniela Allerbon: Yeah, but I believe that compared to other more kind of technological industries and more used to innovation and are seeking for innovation or need innovation all the time, you know, their industry is more established, they know how to do things. But I believe that In the case of aquaculture, I would say compared to other animal farming industries, I see that there is an interest in innovation. And also in the case of the salmon industry, there is a size of the companies that allow them to have a research team and an innovation team. And I think it also has something to do with that Norway, that's a very kind of technophilic country, let's say, and very developed in that sense, has developed lots of technology for aquaculture.
Fed DeGobbi: down here in Argentina and Chile you get a big influence from what Norway is doing.
Daniela Allerbon: I know that definitely in Chile, Argentinian aquaculture is very nascent, let's say, in the way, more in that size, you know. You have trout, there's a couple of big projects of trout projects that are… The trout is not banned. No, no, no, no, trout is not… Only salmon. Only salmon and fishnets, like in the open sea. But trout, no, trout, you have a trout industry, a very important trout industry that is growing and you have very important fisheries in Chubut, like in Patagonia. Even when I was in Norway and I saw a dish that said Argentinian wild shrimp and I was like, oh my God, I'm in Norway and they're publicizing, you know, Argentina. We had a very, very, very good quality of fish here, but aquaculture is still nascent. So if you ask about aquaculture in Argentina, most people wouldn't know, but in Chile, as it's the second largest economic activity after copper minery, they will know. they will know about agriculture, yeah. But in Argentina, it's like, what are you talking about? Yeah, it's not as… It's not something that people know, and if they know something, they know something negative. Yeah, as we were saying earlier. They don't know anything, but they know that. There are two things, the pigments and the antibiotics. Astaxanthin, that's the pigment that is used for salmon. They use a synthetic pigment, not natural astaxanthin. And you know about antibiotics.
Fed DeGobbi: Yeah. Speaking of, that's a really nice segue into the science behind your product. If you could explain it.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, of course.
Fed DeGobbi: Bear in mind, you know, the audience, they tend to be ocean entrepreneurs and innovators. So feel free to go as detailed as you like. The audience are smart people that are keen to learn all of the ins and outs.
Daniela Allerbon: Okay, that's great to know. So we saw, my partner saw, that the industry was facing this antibiotic challenge and that they had been using the same weapons for that challenge, that were basically vegetable extracts. And those vegetable extracts have some efficacy, but they do their things that are not originally from the salmon. The salmon is not used to eat. So when you eat something that promotes a goose immunity, you get inflammation first. You get inflammation and that's the first thing that your organism does. And then it regulates and then it starts getting, you know, regulating immunosynthesis. So what they saw is like, well, they're using these weapons that are not delivering the ideal effect. So they said, okay, why don't we imitate nature? Why don't we use something that already exists in the fish
Fed DeGobbi: Can I just stop you there? Why is inflammation important? For somebody that isn't familiar, they'll think, well, okay, so what?
Daniela Allerbon: The immune system has different mechanisms to work. You have inflammatory processes and anti-inflammatory processes. They're both important. And the inflammation is the first one that gets triggered. Say, when you cut your finger and you get an infection and first it's all red, it's like kind of the most basic way of your organism to protect you. It protects you in a very kind of, you know, get out of here, you know, like getting, you know, soil and red. So it's a very important tool, but it's like a primitive tool. It's like, you know, like the first part of the mechanism, the more general. And then you get another anti-inflammatory and more specific ways to fight that infection. And those other more sophisticated ways are the smarter ways, because like, okay, we identified what it is. We'll send a messenger to kill that specific thing, you know, or something that, you know, to mitigate that problem. But first of all, it's like, you know, like close everything, you know? And what we've done is find a way, the protein from the fish that activates that smarter way to fight infections. Not just the hammer, you know, but kind of, you know, the very specific things that make that infection improve very fast.
Fed DeGobbi: And this is something that the fish, the salmon specifically in this case, would produce themselves normally.
Daniela Allerbon: Yeah, they would produce themselves in a lower quantity. So they have a lower quantity. So what we do is that same protein that they have to fight against this infection, we give it a little bit more of that. So they get grind, they are prepared to face infection.
Fed DeGobbi: Can the same technology be applied to other forms of aquaculture or even animal farming?
Daniela Allerbon: Definitely, yeah. What we created is an AI and bioinformatics platform to replicate this technology with other species. So the idea is like we are working with animal farming, but we are starting with salmon in this case and aquaculture, then going to tilapia and to shrimp. We already developed an MVP for shrimp. So in the next week, I'm going to Vietnam and Singapore with a program, with an accelerator program called PREST from HatchBlue Fund. That's one of our investors. And there we are going to meet with the shrimp industry in Vietnam and Singapore.
Fed DeGobbi: Fantastic. I know you probably can't go into much detail, but just out of curiosity, is it still triggering the same protein or is it a different protein?
Daniela Allerbon: Shrimp has, let's say, almost no immune system, like a very primitive immune system. So we have to identify very different proteins that does different things compared to fish that are very much similar to other animals in terms of their immunity system.
Fed DeGobbi: Yeah, so every time you switch species, you have to find the different key to open.
Daniela Allerbon: Exactly, that's a very good analogy, a different key. So the biotechnology, the bioinformatics and AI platform, it's a trained platform in which we train it with information from different species, but in some way it's agnostic. Because you could even develop products for humans once you get that platform trained. Because it doesn't care what you put into it, as long as it is well trained to understand what it works.
Fed DeGobbi: Yeah, as you were talking, I was thinking, would something like this have been possible without AI?
Daniela Allerbon: No, no, no, no. By informatics, it's important that what AI gives, it's a different speed.
Fed DeGobbi: Okay. So how long would something like this take without AI? We're talking like a decade.
Daniela Allerbon: Like 10 years, yeah.
Fed DeGobbi: Wow, that sounds unbelievable.
Daniela Allerbon: Like, yeah, basically it's the speed which we do things because you can do, but you have to, what you do is like test. You test, you have like, I don't know, let's say 100 or 200, you know, like the typical molecular, like development of molecules in medicine, you have lots of molecules and you have to test them all. But you couldn't avoid all that testing part. And so we had to invest millions and millions of dollars and then obtain, after 10 years, one molecule that works. But now, because of bioinformatics and because of AI, that process is speed. Because you try in silico, that's with the computer.
Fed DeGobbi: It's like a simulation.
Daniela Allerbon: That's a simulation. So you simulate that and you know that you can shorten that search, I don't know, from 100 to 4. So then you do the trials for those four, and you select one candidate.
Fed DeGobbi: And it's not just time and speed, but it'll be cost as well.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, definitely. Because that time, in fact, time translates into costs in that case, yeah.
Fed DeGobbi: Okay, we're going to switch gears. I think we covered everything in terms of the science. Your mission is one that people immediately find compelling. You know, if you, especially if you care about the ocean or people that are interested in environmental and climate solutions, and even I suppose the general public, if you explain that overuse of antibiotics kill people, a solution that means we don't have to use antibiotics, sounds great. However, those are not the people that you are selling to, right? So my question is, what makes your solution compelling to salmon farmers and by extension, fish farmers or animal farmers?
Daniela Allerbon: I think that we get to avoid antibiotics, but in a cost-effective way. We are not making them spend more money. So I think that that's part of the trick. At least some of them might be interested in doing something innovative, trying something different. But in the end, we don't deliver that in a way that integrates smoothly with their objectives that are basically producing on the lowest possible cost, we're not going to be successful. We know that. So what we are doing is doing it in the most efficient way possible.
Fed DeGobbi: you're providing the same outcome or a similar outcome, no additional cost.
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
Fed DeGobbi: But they don't have to, like there's nothing pushing a salmon farmer to adopt something like this, meaning using antibiotics is perfectly legal.
Daniela Allerbon: It's legal in some countries. In the case of Chile, for example, it's legal. But they have to inform it. They have to inform how much antibiotics they have used. So in that report, they got what's called the Antibiotic Consumption Index. It's how much antibiotics they used per, I think it's per kilo, per ton of fish. And they want to reduce that.
Fed DeGobbi: Why?
Daniela Allerbon: Because there is a reputational risk. And most of the salmon farmers are part of this antibiotic reduction program. They participate. So they're eagerly trying to reduce that because of the reputation and because of that unlocks other markets that are closed. for them or they don't get to differentiate the product, you know, because once they use antibiotics. So they have that pressure and they know that after there's kind of a threshold, let's say roughly when fish are more than, let's say, two kilos or three kilos, the amount of antibiotics that you need to use will make that index rocket. It will get very, very large. So they want to prevent that. So our product works as a way of preventing that because there is something called the withdrawal period. They're like at least one to two months before harvesting the fish. You can't use antibiotics because if not, there is going to be a residue.
Fed DeGobbi: And that's dictated by regulations?
Daniela Allerbon: That's dictated by regulations and depending on the country there's regulations or at least there's going to be some analysis for that and that will prevent the fish to get into certain markets. For example, you have an antibiotic called oxytetracycline and that has like for several months, more than one month, like let's say three months or more, you find residues of that antibiotics. So they try to avoid it. It's very effective, because antibiotics are effective, that they have residues and almost 80% of them go into the water, you know, because like the fish, like the feed goes into the water. So what you do is you give our product in this moment before harvest, and it protects the fish. So you are not at risk of having these infections and having to use antibiotics or harvesting the fish early. That means they are not able to gain the weight you need them to gain. So you are losing millions of dollars because of that. So I don't know if I answered the question.
Fed DeGobbi: Just for clarity, so your product goes in the feed as well as antibiotics?
Daniela Allerbon: Yes.
Fed DeGobbi: So in the same way?
Daniela Allerbon: Our product is a feed additive.
Fed DeGobbi: Antibiotics are also a feed?
Daniela Allerbon: They go in the feed. That's why when you get something into the feed you have to be very careful on the impact it has on the environment. Because the main reason why we shouldn't use antibiotics in animal farming has to do with antibiotic resistance.
Fed DeGobbi: Why is that a problem?
Daniela Allerbon: because currently 2 million people die for antibiotic resistance each year. And it's predicted that in 2030, in only five years, it will kill more people than cancer. So antibiotic resistance is something, you know, like almost as climate change, those things that are happening slowly and silently, but not climate change, not as silently as it used to. And you don't realize, but it's having a terrible impact. And there are people, for example, that have infections that need at least one year or two years to be cured, like pneumonia or something, like that kind of diseases.
Fed DeGobbi: Because the antibiotics are not working?
Daniela Allerbon: Because what you do is you use antibiotics and you overuse it. And what you do is drain bacteria, because the bacteria that survive to those antibiotics are the super-bugs, the super-resistant bacteria. And what we are now doing is populating the world with super-bugs, they're called. and those bugs are very dangerous and they are the ones that are, you know, sometimes even it's particularly worrisome for children, you know, because you have less mature immune systems, you know, you can see that in hospitals as well, you know, like chronic infections and you have bacteria that's very hard to kill and most of the physicians are at least the most let's say the most informed ones are at least six months behind the innovation in terms of research. So you can go perfectly today to a doctor and get prescribed an antibiotic and it wouldn't work. And you get back and they don't. So you have to try to pray that they get the right one before something very bad happens. When I'm telling this, you know, I'm finding all over the world people that are approaching me and telling me their own experiences with this. It's not something that's kind of, you know, headlines.
Fed DeGobbi: Yeah, no, it's not really. It's very silent. Going back to your customers, how did you go about deepening your understanding of the problem that you're solving for fish farmers?
Daniela Allerbon: What I did is went to the facilities and talked to the farmers, basically, and talked to them, to the production manager, to the health manager, you know, to each one of the people involved in the production and try to understand which are the challenges they are facing. And basically what they want to do is they want to work in the best way possible and to be as efficient as they can. And sometimes they want to try things, but they have to be aware of the cost of the things, because if not, the cost efficiency would be a problem. So they're always trying to balance and juggle all these things at the same time. What I see is all these worries that are interconnected. So it's a very complex system in which you have to intervene with something that works for everyone. That's what I learned. And I see that they are eager to work with new things, as long as you are not disrupting that way of working.
Fed DeGobbi: Have you found that there's anything that keeps them up at night? I know that you are very eager to make your customer's life simpler and calmer.
Daniela Allerbon: Yeah, well, of course, an infection. In the case of Chile, it gives them nine SRS infections. Is there going to be an infection? Is there going to be any health issue that will, you know, infect fish and will make, for example, one whole facility? We're talking about one million fish. In one facility, one farm.
Fed DeGobbi: So the cost of an infection taking over?
Daniela Allerbon: Yeah, you can imagine, if they are one killer, they could be at farm gate cost, let's say four million dollars. When they're one killer, they could be four killers.
Fed DeGobbi: And you can't control that.
Daniela Allerbon: Yeah, you can talk about 20 million dollars, you know, that are there at the sea. And you can like, yeah, of course, I think and they and they get and that impacts in the profitability of the whole, you know, the company, but also the performance, because they if they got all those, you know, fish infected, that's a it's a huge problem. They will be they will have to harvest them faster. get them a lower weight. So yeah, it's a big problem for them.
Fed DeGobbi: Well, you think it's important to really look at the stress and the pain of your customer?
Daniela Allerbon: Because they are the ones who will decide if we are successful basically. If we don't understand what they need and if we don't deliver what they need at the cost that they need, okay, we won't be able to… It's not going to happen. They're not going to adopt. So when you work with something, when you innovate in something, it's very common that you say, okay, I have the best product, the most innovative, like the coolest product in the world. And in the end you find that people are looking for your product, some of them maybe, because it's innovative and cool, let's say the technophilic ones.
Fed DeGobbi: At the beginning, the early adopters.
Daniela Allerbon: Exactly, the early adopters will think, okay, yeah, we'll try it out. Yeah, let's try that, it's interesting, sounds cool. But if you don't deliver results in a way that's cost-effective for them, you won't get that thing to grow. You're not going to get an option. So if you don't understand it fast, And you fall in love with your solution. You have a problem because you will be living in a dream. And you say, you have to adopt my product because it's so cool. We have the best science ever. You have to make it work. Basically. So yeah, you have to think very deep into which are the problems they have and how can you solve them. But of course, for a startup at early stage, you are still working on the solution and how to develop. So it's also an equilibrium and thinking of the customer, but at the same time developing the product.
Fed DeGobbi: Yes. And it's very easy to get stuck looking only at the solution and developing the solution. And then you get out of the bubble and you realize nobody cares.
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
Fed DeGobbi: You think that selling and customer development are underestimated skills in ocean and impact entrepreneurship?
Daniela Allerbon: Part of the answer to your question has to do with what redexed the biotech accelerator thus. They know that they have what they call entrepreneurs and most like scientific entrepreneurs are like people that have a solution in search of a problem.
Fed DeGobbi: Right.
Daniela Allerbon: So they are the people that say, I have the best solution, I know what to do, what to make, but I don't know what is it for, but it's super cool, I have this thing. And they're looking for something out where to apply that. And the application is a kind of secondary from the discovery itself, even though when you get inside of the academic world, they think of themselves as very concrete people because they're applying their science to something. There's thousands of steps more to get really close to the problem. It's a very general thing, a general application. So yeah, I believe that that thing happens in biotech, definitely. And like many entrepreneurs, their solution is tech-based and they have a lot of focus on the solution in itself. But in the end, quite quickly you understand in this process that if you are not able to demonstrate market fit, and someone that's really willing to buy your product, you are going to die. You have to find someone that's willing at least to try your product. Let's say to sell it is the second part, but at least to try. But I think that's kind of a wall that most of the projects hit at some time. You can be kind of very early stage and working on the development but at some point you have to go out of the world and try to convince someone that you are delivering something that's useful for them.
Fed DeGobbi: Do you feel that there's any misconceptions around that, around sales and marketing?
Daniela Allerbon: I think that it depends where because in the let's say in the scientific realm yeah definitely it's like selling your soul you know like the idea of like the real science or the pure science like you're within academy. And when you will never do that, we'll never like I'm going to sell my soul there, you know, and it's it's interesting because I I'm also I'm still I have like one foot on the culture management world and I'm a professor at a master and I didn't when I teach economics of culture.
Fed DeGobbi: Oh, wow. I didn't realize I was talking to a professor.
Daniela Allerbon: And then, and then I give like two courses, one it's called economics of culture, and once it's like a project management. And I kind of teach my class how to pitch. And we have then a demo day, but they are come from culture projects. And in the first class, they kind of are very, very uncomfortable, you know, like with this idea of we are working with art, we're working with culture. And like, why are you talking about money? So there's a very, very high tension between money and art and culture and the idea of like the artist that sold him or herself, you know, when they start selling. So it's very similar to the things that I find in the science world.
Fed DeGobbi: Do you think there's anything that could be done to close this gap? Do you have any advice for ocean entrepreneurs?
Daniela Allerbon: Just to try to understand, try to think of the problem. What is the problem that you are solving? And try to meet someone that is going to use your product and will need your product. And try to understand and have like exercise. radical empathy. Put in the feet of the person that will need your product and think why they will be willing to use it and what are the problems and the kind of questions that you ask me that are not simple because Maybe you had that idea, but that idea had to do with the things that you know and the things that you are used to, but you were never in that place and maybe you don't even care. So you have to care about their problems and make their problems their own.
Fed DeGobbi: I like that. This could be a dead end. I'll ask you anyway, very quickly. Do you think that ocean entrepreneurs are less likely to seek help when it comes to sales and marketing, say to an agency or hiring dedicated people in-house than other sectors? Do you think there's like a reluctance in seeking help and getting those resources?
Daniela Allerbon: What I see is that ocean entrepreneurs, let's say more than aquaculture and ocean, are very passion-driven and has a very strong sense of purpose. I've found that more than compared to the digital you know, let's say I share some space and now community with entrepreneurs that come from more the digital space, let's say, well, blockchain or whatever, you know, like apps and crypto. And what I see is that they really, they are very focused on fixing a work problem that has to do with impact. And sometimes they forget or they forget, they don't know how to align that impact with money, let's say, to making that profitable, to make that happen. Because sometimes I think the hardest thing when your objective has to do with impact is to align it with profitability and to make it possible. And I think that's a problem with all like nature-based solutions and like lots of solutions that are looking for impact. They don't know how to make it work financially, you know. And okay, I want this, but yeah, how also, because, well, it's a very deep problem that has to do with capitalism and it has to do with When you have public goods such as, well, the sea is a public good, the air is a public good. So you have that governance problem in which you have an impact, you have negative externalities, but nobody's paying for that. So when you have that problem, you want to do good for that, but nobody's paying because nobody owns that. Nobody's paying for the good things that you are doing. So you had, and I think the carbon markets, you know, are a way to try to capture that. And there are lots of financial instruments that are trying to, that are being built, you know, to bridge that gap.
Fed DeGobbi: To get somebody to pay somewhere.
Daniela Allerbon: to get somebody to pay for that positive impact that you are making with your product. But I think that's the thing that prevents them to think in terms of money because they are obsessed with this purposeful impact.
Fed DeGobbi: What do you think is the antidote for that?
Daniela Allerbon: The antidote for that, I think, running out of money. We hope that it happens before, but I think that will be exposing them, you know, to the reality of the thing that if you want to show them, I don't know, if I were to do a workshop, I would show like all those amazing projects that didn't work because they didn't have the you know, they could make money, you know, say, okay, you want to be successful, you want to have impact, you have to find a way to finance that. If not, it would be just a nice dream.
Fed DeGobbi: Yeah. Do you think that goes back to what you were saying earlier of finding a customer, finding what they are really scared about, stressed about and help them, help somebody?
Daniela Allerbon: Definitely and I think that in this ocean space you have to be much more creative because sometimes you have to create a business model that's completely different from the typical business model in which you sell a product to someone and you get paid for that. You have to think like you have lots of stakeholders there that you have to think about. And maybe the stakeholder that it's going to pay for that impact is not the same that you are working with. It's a third party that's selling, I don't know, carbon, you know.
Fed DeGobbi: Yeah, it's way more complex and there's a lot more variables.
Daniela Allerbon: Yeah, you have to think. It's more complex how to get money from that.
Fed DeGobbi: I think we could talk about this for hours and hours. I wanted to ask you something about Latin America, because Aquit is based in Latin America, Chile and Argentina, but you're clearly building with a global vision, right? You are, as I understand it, already expanding in the U.S., looking to expand in the U.S. You presented at a U.N. conference, you're networking at international events. What does it mean to you to be a Latin American startup in the ocean biotech space?
Daniela Allerbon: Well, being an American startup means, first of all, being at a ecosystem that is growing, has grown like four times in the last 20 years in terms of the amount of investments. That's great in the sense that you feel that you are something in an industry that's booming in a sense, you know, it's growing. At the same time, Latin America, it's seen still as a very, let's say, primitive ecosystem in terms of venture capital. When you have to sell your project, I'm talking about the company, to US investors or European investors, where most of the money is, basically, of venture capital. So it's a challenge. It's a challenge, basically, because you have to convince, you have one layer more. It's not only- An extra barrier. Yeah, an extra barrier. It's not only the project, it's a project that's far from the investors. they are not going to be able to see what you're doing and walk into your lab and watch what you're doing. And there is a cultural barrier as well, because Latin America is very different in several ways to the US. In some way, in the case, particular case of Argentina, we have some kind of tie or connection with Europe, because most of us are European descendants. So there is at least a part of Mediterranean, you know, Europe there. Let's say Italy and Spain is ingrained some way in our culture, but we are Argentinian. It's a different animal, let's say. And yeah, so yeah, it's a challenge. But at the same time, I think we are better prepared in terms of resilience. When I started the conversation, I told you about, you know, like the cyclical crisis. We know that things are not linear and we know that there are going to be setbacks. Once something goes wrong, we just, you know, change it or do something to fix it and go on. And that's something that I think that's a subset of what is quite unique compared to other parts of the world. And I think we are really much more resilient compared to the US and European entrepreneurs that way.
Fed DeGobbi: Do you think, to a certain extent, if you can survive here, if you can make it here, then you can make it anywhere?
Daniela Allerbon: Like New York, like the song. You can make it anywhere. If you can make it in Argentina, in Chile, in Latin America, you can make it anywhere. And of course you have to learn about, and it's something that I really enjoy that part of my work, you know, getting to know people from all over the world, getting to know the tiny differences in terms of, you know, the type of culture. A Latin American, it's called a high context culture. There are lots of things that are inferred. And it's not polite to say no. In some countries like Mexico, it's very impolite to say no. So you have to, for example, get from the context that they are saying no to you.
Fed DeGobbi: Sounds very British.
Daniela Allerbon: A little bit, but there's something polite about Britain, but at the same time, like the UK and the northern of Europe and the US, it's a very kind of low context culture. They kind of say things. They, okay, are we clear? Okay, A, B and C and D. So sometimes it could be harsh, you know, but in terms of talking to Latin America, you know, then difference of culture. So you have to understand those nuances when you're talking to a customer, to an investor, all that. And it's, I love that part, but sometimes it's very challenging. Even within Latin America, you have those differences.
Fed DeGobbi: As in like internal differences.
Daniela Allerbon: Yeah, you have differences with Mexico, for example, and I told you that it's more much more a traditional country in some way. And at some point that I could feel more sometimes more connection with the Mexican and Japanese, you know, in terms of, you know, that kind of wonder things are have to be said or can't be said. And then, I don't know, people from Uruguay or Brazil. I know that I'm much more, you know, and well, this flexibility that we have, yeah, but the culture is something that you have to take into account when making business as well.
Fed DeGobbi: Absolutely. I don't know if you have an answer for this, I'll ask you. What is your strategy at the moment for scaling into the US market?
Daniela Allerbon: Yeah, basically we're not scaling yet at the U.S. markets. What we are doing now is working with pilots in Chile. The next step will be we have some pilots in Norway that are hopefully being done. next year. And the idea is to then go to Scotland, work with the shrimp industry in Ecuador, in Asia. The US is relevant for us, but it's not the largest market yet. It's a very important place to be in terms of the venture capital ecosystems. not itself in terms of a market, in terms of deployment, because compared to other countries, the market is not as big.
Fed DeGobbi: Right. Yeah.
Daniela Allerbon: And I don't know if I shared that. I'd love to share something about the work with gender that I've been doing.
Fed DeGobbi: That was going to be my next question.
Daniela Allerbon: Okay.
Fed DeGobbi: Go for it.
Daniela Allerbon: I share with you that when I worked at the Ministry of Culture in Argentina in 2007, I edited and published the first guidebook for women in Argentina. And that book was very impactful since many women from all over the country got to read about gender and the rights And they divorced from their husbands, identifying gender violence, basically, that they were having. problems in that physical violence, let's say. And since that moment, that changed my life in terms of knowing that just, you know, writing something in a book, editing and giving it to someone that was not expecting that, because they were not demanding those books. of that made a significant impact. So I decided that I kind of fell in love with this idea of there's something, there's an inequality here, there's something that's going on and you can do a lot just, you know, working on the awareness of that. and I was part of the National Council for Women in Argentina, the board, and then I always tried to do some kind of side project regarding this. In 2024, when I entered the Women in Ocean Food Program… Yeah, which is how we connected. I understood that in this space there's also an opportunity to work with gender and that Hatch had made it possible and connected me with lots of very, very interesting women and very powerful women. And there I decided that I wanted to do something and I wanted to understand what And in that journey I saw that there were several projects like Women in Ocean Food and with Hatch and Conservation International Ventures and like Tool 500 that works in Norway with this curated list of women in the blue economy but they get newer than And there are lots of, not say lots, but several initiatives that had to do with supporting women, bringing more women, you know, to the ecosystem, to the economy. But what I saw as well is that there was, I saw some bias throughout the investments, let's say, pipeline, you know, like, and for example, networking is very hard when you're a woman in very male-dominated ecosystems. Because I encountered this situation in which I went into an event in which there were 200 men and five women. And I was like, okay, like it happened to me in Miami. Okay, how can I network here? It's very hard.
Fed DeGobbi: Do you feel that it's industry specific or quite?
Daniela Allerbon: It's even worse in the digital ecosystem, because you have like 99% men and 1% women. Let's say in the blue economy, it's a little bit less terrible, because you have a little bit more women. And that, well, in the blue economy, that is the space that I'm in now. I saw that as well. And I saw that sometimes, you know, even like, you know, someone from goes, you know, having lunch or with other guys, you know, that dynamic that, that happens and you are outside of it, you become excluded. And it's not about being a good person or a bad person, you know, it's kind of a systemic dynamic. And then when you evaluate early stage products, you evaluate, and as investors say, they evaluate the team. They evaluate the, you know, if they believe in the team, it's a solid thing. How are they built as a team? It's very difficult to have, let's say, a blind audition when you don't care if they're women or men. So in that case, what happens is that you have what's called identification bias. Like you want to invest in people that are like you, who think like you, ideally from your own culture, ideally from your own gender. So in that case, when you do that, you systematically Without being a main person, I'd say, you are excluding. It's very hardwired. And there's a very interesting experiment that has been done with a philharmonic orchestra that wanted to have more women and they didn't know how to get the women in. So they did these auditions and they were blind. And the women played and the men played behind, you know, it couldn't be seen. And they saw that it didn't change the outcome and they were wondering why. And they figured out that the steps of the hills were being heard. So they put some carpets and they erased the difference. So that level of some consciousness is that. So everybody wants to be kind of a good person, you know, or say a thing that's okay. No, no, I'm not biased. It's impossible that you're not biased because you have to put a carpet here, you know, even like the best ones, you know, that's the ones that are really willing to, to get more women there. And then these people weren't to get more women, but they were influenced by that heels that they were listening to, but they didn't remember hearing the heels. So almost like a subconscious… It's a bias. It's not like open discrimination that I've heard of because I had a colleague which I mentored with and he was from a very big company in Argentina and he told me, yeah, when we got the CVs from women, we put them apart. because they told me yeah but not they were because they didn't thought of them as that people like but because we're all men we're more comfortable together you know like and they will be star but it would be better you know just to keep them outside because it's easier you know and that kind of things like it sounds quite naive in a way but that kind of things are the things that stop women from Well, from working and from, you know, having more opportunities and to, you know, to getting just we are born with the same exact brain. But the thing is that there's systemic bias, you know, I'm not talking about discrimination. I'm talking about this thing that we can't control. And what I thought is, OK, how can we come with something that attacks this systemic bias? some kind of a tool for that. And what we created with other partners from the United States and the UK is an organization that's kind of still nascent that's called Themis Fractal. It's like kind of a fractal of justice, that's the idea. And what we are working on is a survey with the Smithsonian Institute to identify those bias with VCs and then to build tools to limit those bias, to approach as much as we come to that blind audition with the carpets.
Fed DeGobbi: Okay. So you're figuring out all the different carpets.
Daniela Allerbon: Exactly. How we can put carpet everything, you know, everywhere.
Fed DeGobbi: That's fascinating. You can take this wherever you want. It could be around gender, but it could be more generic. What's one piece of advice that you wish someone had given you in the past?
Daniela Allerbon: That it always takes more time than you think.
Fed DeGobbi: I like that. Professor Adelbaum.
Daniela Allerbon: Thank you so much.
Fed DeGobbi: Before we wrap this up, is there something that you feel is particularly important to you that we haven't talked about?
Daniela Allerbon: My childhood was like therapy. I mean, we've got time. No, no, no.
Fed DeGobbi: As a communication expert, you know better than anyone how important it is to do good communication around the topics that we talked about. Inform people, engage people. Is there any resource like a website, a book, organization that you'd like to recommend people, point people to? Any book, any website, any particular resource?
Daniela Allerbon: There's a book called Reinventing Organizations from Frédéric Lalloum, a French anthropologist that used to work for McKinsey. He wrote this book about kind of how organizations are historically evolving and there's some type of organizations that he thinks that he tells that's kind of the more evolution one that's called the teal organizations and those organizations are very horizontal and they work like fractals you know in terms of the like small groups of people and this idea that you bring your whole self to the organization like holistic you know mindset and at the same time like you don't put a mask to go to to work you know why it's your your own self and you're responsible for all the outcomes and and you manage things in a manage all the variables, you know, within those groups that are quite flexible. And I love the kind of the mindset behind that. And I try as much as we can to build the organizations as I build and having that framework into account.
Fed DeGobbi: Nice, we'll put that in the show notes for sure. That sounds really interesting. Thanks so much for having me in this lovely venue. I had a really good time talking to you.
Daniela Allerbon: Thank you, really.
Fed DeGobbi: And all the best for your trip to Singapore next week.