Biotech Meat Company Fails With White Male Founder Wasting $32 Million on Unfinished Facility and Rebrand of Nothing
It was going to happen eventually. Even with what seems like endless piles of cash floating around, a “cell-cultured meat” company finally ran out of money: “New Age Eats” is officially dead.
In a LinkedIn post that I can no longer access (more on that later) “founder” and CEO Brian Spears lamented his “painful decision” to shut the company doors. In fact, it’s not a decision when cash runs out, it’s simple math, but whatever.
Now let’s review several signs that Spears didn’t exactly know what he was doing and yet somehow raised $32 million from very dumb and gullible investors.
No playbook? Spears says “there’s no playbook for what we’re doing”. Really, then how did you convince anyone to give you a dollar, let alone 32 million of them? I mean, there is usually a playbook for businesses that raise that kind of capital!
Hybrid hype. Allegedly New Age was ahead of others by going with a “hybrid” model, combining plant-based ingredients with cell-based but even that couldn’t save them. And for the record, every cell based meat company is using a hybrid model because the technology does not exist for cell-based alone. So yawn there.
Got priorities? In a sure sign of misplaced spending, just last June, the company spent money rebranding by removing one letter from their name, which was previously New Age Meats. But how do you rebrand without a product? Their press release “explains” how the company went all in with high level Big Food marketing executive, Chief Marketing Officer, Kati Karottki, who joined the company with “15 years of experience including time at Kraft Heinz and Ocean Spray”. In other words, a company with no viable product decides its highest priority is a rebrand (again one letter change!) and an expensive executive salary. Mkay.
So close! Who can forget that failed plant they almost finished! This head-scratching news story from January said New Age was abandoning its pilot plant facility at “90 percent complete and 80 percent paid for”. (Likely a contract dispute ensued.) Call me crazy but maaaybe better to spend cash on the science behind the product and not the plant that you can’t afford to finish and have nothing to make once it’s done anyway? Can you say showcase facility to attract more investor cash? Nice try!
Apparently Spears was trying to find a buyer ever since that minor debacle, but surprise! No one wants an unfinished plant, a broken contract, (and who knows what other liabilities) and zero IP. Must be inflation!
Excuses, excuses. Back to that LinkedIn post, Spears blamed “a regulated industry”, which is funny for a company that had no product to regulate. Spears’ entire LI post reads like a pathetic poor me white man’s tale. And yet the cult of biotech meat flooded the comments with sympathy notes. Blech.
Blame plant-based. And of course, why not blame companies with actual products in the market, namely Beyond Meat and Oatly, for “softening”. When you’re not actually selling anything, it’s easy to criticize others. How is this even relevant?
How I got blocked for asking about the employees
When I read the post, I was appalled that this man with no apparent skills raised $32 million and threw it all away on a big nothing burger; then I wondered about the workers. But because Spears mentioned “mental health” challenges I decided to tread carefully. I gently inquired if Spears had saved enough of the $32 million to ensure that his employees (who he only mentioned once in his LONG post, and did not thank one by name) could be ensured a soft landing. You know, like several months severance and benefits so they would not have to stress too much in finding their next job after such an awful ending? Not only did I get ignored, by the next day, Spears had blocked me. There goes Michele caring about people again, block her!
Meanwhile, as is often the case, an ex-employee from the company slid into my DMs to thank me for my question, informing me that in fact, employees who had been let go months earlier (in favor of that expensive rebrand) were not treated well, quite the contrary in fact. This employee had more to say, but I don’t want to reveal too much as they came to me in confidence. Of course, like so many others, this person is afraid to speak out publicly. That is the atmosphere of the entire industry: one of fear. Not exactly compassion.
Meanwhile, so-called leaders including Bruce Friedrich from the Good Food Institute and Isha Datar from New Harvest (NGOs touting the cell-based sector) were among those praising Spears in the comments to his post. Datar even called the post “leadership”. For what? Failure and employee abuse? Sure. Friedrich oddly offered Spears his guest bedroom. Talk about being tone deaf to the situation.
The whole thing makes me sick. A white man raising money to throw it away in the name of saving the world and in his failure, somehow becomes a hero. While truly talented women founders and visionaries such as Miyoko Schinner get everything they worked for stolen from them and are left with nothing. Not to mention all the women and other marginalized people struggling to raise capital at all.
If you want to know who the New Age investors were, check out Crunchbase here. I don’t feel sorry for any of them, but I am annoyed they let him get away with not taking care of his people so shame on them for that.
Who wants to take bets on where Mr. Spears winds up next? I am going with starting an investment fund.
Stay tuned for many more failures of this fake industry. As I have written about numerous times before, cell-based meat is the next Theranos, with much larger companies than New Age likely to fall. And more employees getting hurt.