When you think about the future of farming, you might not picture micro particles. But for Matias Figliozzi, CEO and co-founder of UNIBAIO, these tiny innovations hold big potential for agriculture around the world.
Matias recently sat down with Maureen Ballatori on the Spilled Salt podcast to share how he made the leap from working in government to leading an award-winning agri-tech startup. The conversation offered insight not just into UNIBAIO’s growth, but also what it takes to align people, ideas, and impact in the agri-tech space.
A Path from Policy to Startups
Matias started his career in Argentina’s government as an economist. He was driven by a desire to solve the country’s ongoing economic problems. Working on policies to help small businesses and startups sparked his curiosity about innovation. A trip to Silicon Valley showed him what was possible when entrepreneurs worked at the cutting edge.
“I realized that maybe it was even better than trying to fix our reality from the government side,” Matias told Maureen. “Innovation always creates economic development.”
Learning to Lead a Startup the Hard Way
Matias’ first startup was a family-run business selling fresh produce directly from farmers to consumers. It was ahead of its time, using social media to cut down on food waste and bring fresher fruits and vegetables to people’s homes. But working with family came with its challenges. They had different goals. While Matias wanted to scale globally, his partners wanted to stay local.
Finding the Right Team to Launch
After leaving his first startup, Matias spent five years staying close to the startup scene. He interviewed other entrepreneurs and kept learning. Then he met two scientists from his hometown who were developing a new material to make agrochemicals work better. They needed someone with business expertise. Matias needed a project that matched his passion for big, global impact.
At first, his new co-founders weren’t sure about scaling the startup. They were used to working in research, not business. It took months of conversations for the team to align their vision. Matias shared that it took two years to fully understand what they were building, but we all wanted to see real impact from this technology.
Scaling Innovation in AgriTech
UNIBAIO’s core technology uses micro particles to deliver fertilizers, herbicides, and other crop protection products more efficiently. The result? Farmers can use up to 80% less active ingredients. That means lower costs, less environmental impact, and better crops.
To grow the company, Matias focused on building international connections. UNIBAIO joined accelerators in Chile, South Korea, and the US. They won funding from the Alchemist Accelerator and, most recently, the $1 million top prize at the Grow-NY competition in upstate New York.
A Dual Approach to Creating Economic Impact
Maureen’s questions highlighted the tricky balance of UNIBAIO’s business model. The company works with large chemical companies to license its technology. But they’re also launching a direct-to-farmer product called Turbocharge. This powder additive helps farmers boost the performance of existing pesticides and fungicides.
The dual approach means UNIBAIO isn’t just relying on big industry partners to scale. They’re building trust with local farmers through real-world trials in places like Argentina, New York, and North Carolina. This helps them gather data, improve their tech, and prove value to bigger players.
Lessons in Launching for AgriTech Founders
Matias’ journey shows how a clear mission and an aligned team can help startups thrive, even in an industry as complex as agriculture. His story also reminds founders to think big but stay connected to real-world needs.
The discussion highlighted the importance of understanding what you’re building and who you’re building it for. Both Maureen and Matias acknowledged there’s no wrong answer as long as your strategy matches your intention. It’s a reminder that changing the world often starts with asking the right questions and finding the right people to build it with you.
Transcript
This transcript has been edited from its original form to support readability.
Maureen Ballatori: I’m Maureen Ballatori and this is Spilled Salt, a podcast on the thrills and spills from the food, beverage, and agriculture industries.
Today’s guest is Matias Figliozzi. He’s the co-founder and CEO of UNIBAIO. For my local listeners, you may know Matias and UNIBAIO as the $1 million top prize winner of the Grow-NY Ag Tech and Food Tech competition that is based in and growing in upstate New York.
UNIBAIO is a biotechnology company based in Argentina that develops innovative micro particles to improve the performance of sustainability of agrochemicals. UNIBAIO’s delivery system is versatile and compatible with both biological and synthetic molecules, covering fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides. The result is a remarkable reduction of 80% in the need for active ingredients in their formulations.
But this is more than just UNIBAIO’s story. As always, it is the founder’s story. So this is Matias’s story. It is the story of how Matias’s passion for biotechnology and sustainability and government – and economic development for that matter – catapulted an idea on a global scale. Enjoy the conversation.
Maureen: Good morning, Matias, how are you?
Matias Figliozzi: Good morning, Maureen. Nice to see you.
Maureen: Nice to see you too. Thanks for joining me for this. I’m so excited to tell your story today.
Matias: Yes, me too. It’s my pleasure. It’s always a pleasure to share our story and hopefully inspire someone else.
Maureen: Yes, I’m sure we will. Thank you for taking the time. So I always like to start with your personal background. So we’re going to talk about UNIBAIO as a company, but I want to talk about you as well and kind of understand your trajectory. So did you start your career in government?
Matias: Yes, I did. I am an economist. My formation is in economics and macroeconomics; so managing countries and developing a country. So my first job was trying to work for the government and try to tailor policies to shape the future of Argentina.
I’m originally from Argentina and probably you don’t know, but Argentina is always in an economic crisis. So that’s triggered my interest in understanding why. Why do we have all these problems all the time? And trying to solve it. So I started in government, yes. But working for the government, I started to learn about the startup world and the other options that we can also shape the future and the present from the private sector and from innovation. So I fell in love with this journey and I’m following it now.
Maureen: So before you continue into that trajectory of the startup world, what about the startup world was intriguing to you when you were working in government? Like what was the first time you noticed, that’s really interesting and something that I might want to do instead of the government route.
Matias: Yes, so when I finished my degree, I got an internship and then got an offer position in government. And I was working in an office that was promoting the development of small companies and startups, but mainly with a global mindset.
So they were all focused on foreign trade, international development. And normally when you are thinking in the global market, you are thinking in the most innovative type of companies. So no, not the small coffee shop that you can find in the corner, but just something else that can export a service of our product.
So during that time, I was on the government side, so I was helping others to develop their business. And one of the policies that the government, that we designed in the government was why don’t we organize a trade show and a mission, commercial mission to the U.S. to show our entrepreneurs Silicon Valley.
And do networking, connect with investors and all other innovators so they can develop their ideas faster and bigger and be more ambitious. So going to the edge of innovation.
So that was an amazing experience for me because I didn’t know about it, I was young, I didn’t know about all this ecosystem and what was happening. I’m trying to understand how to help other startups and how to connect them to us. And Silicon Valley started to plant a seed on me, that maybe I can do that. Maybe that is even better than trying to fix our reality in Argentina from the government side. Or maybe we can help to shift it from the private sector, from creating a startup that can innovate.
And innovation always creates economic development. So the goal is the same, but if it’s a different tool or a different role.
Maureen: Yes, I love that you just said that. I have always had an interest in economic development. I can’t say that I have a passion for government in particular, right? Like I think that’s a ball of wax I’m not going to open, but I love economic development for the exact reason that you just mentioned where private companies can make an immense difference in the way communities function and the jobs that people have opportunities to have and that sort of thing.
And so what was the first experience that you had where you noticed that you were making that difference? Because you said you left the government and you went into the startup world, right?
Matias: Yes. So two comments. First, something I know that you were mentioning, but I didn’t like working in government because sooner or later I realized that I needed to get involved in politics. So there’s a lot of the government work that is related to politics and much of the decision making is tailored by political decisions.
So it’s not necessarily what is the best for, like theoretically the best for communities. So it’s more about what is possible in terms of negotiation with other parties and whoever has the power. So that creates limits. But when you think about the private sector and innovation, the only limit is you. Or at least you don’t need to ask necessarily permission from anyone to try to shift and modify things.
Because of my background in economics, I know or I knew that everything that I do with my company also reflects in my community because if I have a successful company, I have more employees, more employees with better salaries because if we are an innovation company, we have higher productivity so we can pay or afford paying higher salaries. Higher salaries means more consumption locally. So that also relates to economic development.
This is something you don’t learn from when you are doing a startup. It’s something that I had in my background. That adds an additional layer of relevance for me personally on why to do startups. It’s not only what we’re doing at Univio, but also theoretically, it is always good because we’re also helping to develop an economy.
Maureen: Yes. And I would say it gives you a different layer of relevance, but it also gives you a different layer of passion and understanding because your interest is in communities, right? From the macroeconomic standpoint. And so you’re just kind of going about it a little bit of a different way.
So tell us about what happened when, what was your first leap when you left government and went into a startup? What was the first one?
Matias: Yes, so I quit my government work to do an attempt, the first attempt of the startup with my sister and brother-in-law. Working with family is difficult, but we were aiming to… It was 2011, so it was the beginning of social networking. At that time, Facebook wasn’t even selling advertising, so that was in the very beginning.
And we were doing direct to farmer, from farmers direct to your home, selling greens, vegetables and fruits, avoiding all the chains in the value chain, the commercialization chain. And that way we can avoid the cost that implies all these steps, but also sell “fresh”er. Because when you sell fruits and vegetables in a supermarket, the biggest cost is the waste.
Around 40% of what the supermarkets buy is wasted because it [goes bad] before anyone buys it. So it’s the biggest cost. So when we realize with our very economic mindset that the biggest cost was the waste, the best way to solve the waste was first selling directly to consumers and then buying to the farmers. We twisted it. We put it in the other way, the normal selling.
And we created a webpage that was only advertised through social networks. We were using Facebook at that time and we were promoting and making like a social network advertising, making people advertise what we do. And it was really successful at the time.
We were publishing all types of media. We were selling really cheap and fresh fruits only by shifting the idea on how to buy and sell fruits and vegetables. My goal was building startups that were scaling up this idea.
Scaling this from Buenos Aires, I was living in Buenos Aires at the time, to Latin America and then globally if possible because I realized that at the time no one was doing something like this.
Now it’s more common, but at the time it was something cool. But it didn’t work for me. They keep going. The business is still in business. Yes, but I stepped aside so it didn’t work for me. The relationship didn’t work.
Maureen: And is that because it wasn’t, the relationship didn’t work in what way? Like was it, it was not going to reach the scalability that you were looking for where you really had this global focus?
Matias: Kind of. That was part of the deal because I was doing this because I wanted to do what I learned working for the government. I wanted to create a global startup, go to Silicon Valley, grow as big as possible and change the world. But my co-founders, my sister and brother-in-law, were more focused on building a traditional family-owned business that supports the family, the income of the family.
And that’s it. And so it’s a different ambition. So it’s a different amount of effort you want to give to your company. So one time we were discussing a lot because of this, because we have different visions. So I decided to step aside to not, to preserve the relationship with my family rather than, and also I knew that I was going to be able to do something else than that company.
But it was a great experience because I also needed to find partners and co-founders that were fully aligned on values and expectations, goals. And I took that as a really good insight for my next attempt, which was UNIBAIO.
Maureen: So I talk with clients, especially like very, very early stage startups about this a lot. The idea of knowing what you’re building. And so from the start, right, when you’re going in, especially ag tech, CPG, food tech, because just as you said, the resources, the intention that go into the decisions that you make all need to root back to what we’re building.
And so if you want to be the best regional business in your region and you want to be known across your state or the Northeast or whatever it is, your region, then your intentions and your priorities and your strategies can align with that. But if it’s national scale, then the game has changed.
And there’s no wrong answer. It’s not to say that global is bad and local is good or vice versa. It comes down to intention. What are we building? What is this for? Who is it for?
And so good on you to see what value you could still get out of that and respectfully leave it to them to build what was working at the time still and go on to your next big thing and intentionally make it the next big thing.
I also love the idea of you mentioned that you needed to find partners that were aligned. And so how did you then do that? Because you mentioned UNIBAIO was next. And so how, how did that come about?
Matias: Yes. So the naive answer will be “lucky”. I was lucky. Destiny brought my co-founders. But I always say that it is not only luck. You can do things to promote, to foster, be lucky. And one thing that I was doing in the meantime to be close to the startup world.
Maureen: Okay, we’re back. Little change of scenery for some connectivity issues, but we’re back. So, Matias, tell us about how you came across your partners for UNIBAIO. I’m sure it wasn’t just luck, but talk about that a little bit more.
Matias: Yes, so one thing I was doing when I was not doing a startup was trying to get closer to the startup ecosystem and entrepreneurs.
Maureen: And so before you continue there, Matias, how much of a gap was there? Because you left the business with your sister and brother-in-law. How long was there a gap before you found Univio?
Matias: It was a long gap because it was, let me check, five years. Yes. It was some time. Yes. In the meantime, I was working for an NGO that was supporting artisan in the Andes to economically develop. I was working for a fashion industry company, selling fashion goods in France and the U.S. I was working for a biotech company then. I had to take a step back to the government in between to double check if I was right, good or not. It was a correct decision or not.
I don’t like politics, so I didn’t like coming back. And then during that last period, I was doing, just in my free time as a hobby, interviews with entrepreneurs for a YouTube channel I had.
So I was interviewing every week one entrepreneur in a kind of pitch session interview. So it was very short, like five minutes, three minutes each, five minutes, the total program, three minutes each pitch.
I was also helping them to train how to do it, how to speak concisely. And it was fun for me because it was like training for pitching, but also getting to know a lot of innovation.
So in late 2019, before the pandemic, I decided I wanted to create a start up again. So I quit my last job. I needed to find an excuse to go to Silicon Valley. I was supposed to be the most innovative place. So I enrolled in a coding school in San Francisco to learn coding.
There was no reason specifically, I just wanted to have an excuse to be there and connect with more entrepreneurs and people, like-minded people. So I went to the U.S. I started coding. It wasn’t really my thing, but I was excited to be there.
I came back to Argentina after a few months, decided to sell all my furniture, get rid of all my things and move to the U.S. and the pandemic started.
So I got stuck in Argentina without any plans and was waiting to see what was going to happen. But I kept doing the interviews online, like this interview to entrepreneurs.
Two of the entrepreneurs I was interviewing every week were Pera, one of my co-founders now, and Claudia. Two amazing woman scientists that were studying this technology that we use at UNIBAIO. And they were telling me that they were aiming to create a company around this tech. But they realized after several years of attempts that they didn’t know, they didn’t have the expertise to do it. They were failing on doing this startup attempt or company attempt, not necessarily a startup.
So because I knew one of them from before, and we were all from the same city in Argentina, I proposed myself as co-founder. If you’re looking for someone in business, maybe we should talk because I’m looking for a project. I never thought about biotech. I was thinking more about software, AI or new techs, more like traditional types of tech.
But this sounds amazing. You’re working on something that is really disruptive, that can potentially change the world. This is something I want to do. And it’s also interesting that it’s locally developed.
So it was also important for my original goals, like impacting my community. So it was aligning a lot in terms of value and goals. But because I’ve learned from my previous experience that we need to be sure that we’re aligned on goals and everything.
The first discussions [took place over] several meetings, online meetings, several meetings. We were trying to discover if we were alive without any good answer, just trying to figure out what do they want? Do they want to build a small company? Are they excited or afraid of building something globally? Do they want to do that? Or do they want to work full time in a startup or they don’t want to keep being scientists? Keep working for a university and doing this as a part of a job? What do they want?
Because learning what they want was going to give me the insight if we were good partners or not for what I was aiming to build. But I was 100 % sure that I wanted to build.
Maureen: Yes. And so, obviously you are aligned now, but at that time, were they, was that their intention or was it, well, we don’t really know, right?
We work with scientists a lot at the agency, because we have a focus on agriculture. And so I can imagine the conversations that you were having. Scientists are, this is incredible technology and it’s great for everyone and we just want everyone to use it.
And the business mind is different. You have to bring a whole different perspective and, you know, to the conversation. And so what was their response there? Was it, as I said, that they just kind of wanted everybody to use it. It was great technology or did they not know?
Matias: They didn’t know and indeed it took, I think, two years to fully understand what we were building. So at the beginning, they weren’t sure at all to do a startup. So they were learning what a startup was, what a startup means and what’s the difference with a regular company. I don’t think I need to clarify the difference here.
One of the first investors they met before meeting me, told them they didn’t invest because they said, I don’t feel that you are convinced of following this journey. It seems that you are answering all the correct answers because you learned how to answer because you are prepared to file a document to ask for a grant.
They were learning how to answer to ask money for a VC or an angel investor, but they didn’t really understand what they were committing to. So the investor was clever enough and he realized and said, you are super interesting. You have an amazing team, a super cool tech, but I don’t really feel that you are committed to this journey and it’s going to be tough. So if you are not 100% convinced, maybe it’s not your journey and maybe I’m not the investor.
It was very good feedback because that was true. I was talking with my now co-founders and they were, yes, he was right. I’m not really, I’m not really get what, what is this Silicon Valley mindset. It feels like bullshit.
So it was difficult to understand the business type of mindset when you’re thinking in this way. It’s like you’re putting upside down everything. You’ll first get the investment and then you build the business and not the other way. That’s difficult to understand if you never heard about it.
So we were discussing this. I started explaining all this. It took us almost the entire 2020 to discuss all about this, to make sure that they understood what we were trying to build, or at least what I was trying to build.
And then they started to get more excited. This makes sense. And they said, well, if you are aiming to lead this, because it’s going to be a significant effort, If you’re aiming to travel around the world to follow this, whatever needs to grow the company, we follow you, but you need to lead because we don’t understand. We trust in you, but it’s something that sounds even better than building in terms of impact than building a small company, but we don’t know how to do it. So we trust in you, line trust, we follow you.
But they also liked the idea of building a bigger impact because their motivation as scientists to do this start-up was seeing the real impact of something that was on paper, like bringing research to something meaningful.
Maureen: Right. From the lab to reality.
Matias: Yes, to reality. For them it was more like an intellectual challenge. Are we capable of bringing to reality this tech? So for them it was initially enough to create a small company, a local small company.
When I presented that we could potentially build together, they started to get more excited. So, okay, maybe we can be more ambitious and create something bigger that has a bigger impact. And that’s even better. They would never think too much about the money part. It’s more about what it means.
So I was happy because we were aligned on goals and values. So we started to work together. We did a lot of things in the meantime, but I realized after, like two years after, once we were receiving our first institutional investment, that they didn’t really understand what the journey was. In between they were saying, this is harder than I thought. This is like doing many PhDs at the same time.
Maureen: Oh, how so?
Matias: There are infinite questions you need to answer. You always need to answer fast and you always don’t have time to develop all the knowledge. You need to make decisions without developing the knowledge. So it’s super complicated. But it was something that they realized that was different than they expected, that I couldn’t realize sooner to explain the difference.
Maureen: Yes, but I also think that there’s, you there’s something to be said for individual talents, right? And so you understand, which is why I always go into these shows talking about the background, right? You have a unique background that qualifies you to understand what was required for the growth of that organization.
They are scientists. You could not switch places. You could not go into the lab and try and develop the technology, they cannot go out into the world and grow the business with the economics understanding and the scalability and the global positioning and all of that stuff. So it takes unique talents coming together for that to work.
And I think it’s also pretty remarkable that I know you mentioned it took all of 2020, but you built pretty fast trust there, right? For them to have you come in and for them to say, okay, you lead the company, the blind trust well said, it’s truly what it was for them to let you in to say, okay, this is the way we’re going.
Matias: Yes, and that’s amazing. Every time I think about it, think about it, it means a lot because they were working on this tech for decades. They were working together for 10 years and Claudia, our CTO, was studying plants and the core material that we use in our tech for 40 years since she went to Davis to study in the US. So it’s a life dedicated to studies. And they were offering me that without a lot of trust. So it means a lot.
Maureen: And I said when we came back from our little break that it probably wasn’t luck. But there is a lot of luck there because you’re lucky you found each other. Because there can also be many instances where someone like that comes in.
And by like that, I mean somebody who says this can be a global company and we can do this and we can do that. And they have intent, right? The fact that you had aligned values, from what you stand for and a kind of mindset. As well as [you were aligned on] where do we want this company to go. That was lucky. That you found each other in that way, yes.
Matias: Yes, it was definitely destiny. I wasn’t planning. So I have a clear idea of what I wanted to create in terms of value and goals, but there wasn’t a specific project.
I wasn’t thinking of agriculture specifically for my next startup. And they came with this tech and this idea. And luckily we get connected and luckily we were aligned because it couldn’t happen.
We connected. If the pandemic didn’t happen, I could have been working in, I don’t know, in Google, in AI, I don’t know. I cannot imagine. So it’s a different path.
And luckily we were aligned on values and goals because if we weren’t, it wouldn’t be possible to reach this point. We’ve been developing, working together for more than four years to build a company because it requires a lot of time to build a company.
Maureen: Right, absolutely. So let’s talk about some of that traction. So you’ve won some very impressive awards and gained some great investment. Talk a little bit about that.
And then I want to talk a little bit about your business model too, because there’s some interesting things that I noted that I want to ask you about, but talk about the traction a little bit first.
Matias: From the early beginnings, I was aiming to build a global company. So from the early beginnings, I was applying to every incubator, acceleration program that was for international startups that could help us to bring me and us to connect with international markets, to understand if we were able to fulfill a need that was global and not just local in Argentina.
So we started, the first program was Startup Chile in Chile. It’s one of the best in Latin America. They’re really good at helping startups to develop this startup mindset.
So I knew they were very good and it’s good that they connect with professional PCs. From there, we went to a similar program in South Korea. That was a crazy personal experience. Super interesting, not really useful for the company, that experience itself, but it was a really good experience. Very personally interesting.
Then we went to the US, to the Alchemist Accelerator in San Francisco. They were the first ones to give us some money that we invested to do our first field trials to validate our tech in the business model we were thinking was actually working and providing value.
Maureen: Did you do those field trials in the US?
Matias: We did the first one in Argentina. So now we do field trials in the US, but the first ones were done in Argentina. So we were taking advantage that the science was based in Argentina because we had Argentinian costs. with the money that Alchemist was giving to startups in a very early stage, as money enough to pay the bills during the acceleration program in San Francisco. So it was to pay the housing movement.
We were paying for fuel trials in Argentina. So we were using that unfair advantage in our favor to develop the science deeper. And more recently, we went through IndieBio, a special program in New York. We received investment from BioService, which is a big agricultural company, public in NASDAQ.
In November last year we won Grow-NY, the work competition that is sponsored by Cornell and the New York State government to bring innovation in agriculture and food to the state. So now we are based in Ithaca. I am not in Ithaca at this moment. I came to Barcelona to visit my family for a few days. But we are now based in Ithaca, an upstate New York.
And we have the goal to develop our business, luckily, with farmers, but also have more team members working in the US.
Maureen: What a cool full circle moment for the Grow-NY win with that being an economic development competition, right?
Going back to your interest in government and your passion in economic development. UNIBAIO won the million dollar top prize in the 2024 Grow-NY competition, but as you mentioned it’s sponsored by New York State and Cornell.
Those parties came together under an economic development intention to attract global companies to New York State, specifically a specific region in upstate New York. And that’s exactly what happened. And it is with the intention of supporting the community just as you were talking about doing from the very beginning.
Matias: Yes, it’s exactly the type of work that I was doing at the beginning when I started my journey. So I was truly understanding their goals and why they were doing what they were doing. And it’s amazing. Really, I’m surprised in a good way that they are doing that because not many governments have the vision or the ambition to do these kinds of programs. And I am convinced that that creates a developmental impact.
They want to create more jobs, not just any type of jobs, well-paid jobs. What I call “it jobs”. And they also want to keep the jobs in the food and ag industry because it’s a traditional industry and it’s going to be critical in the following decades because with climate change, we need to make sure that we’re going to be able to have enough food, healthy food.
And New York State is bigger than just Manhattan. Having a lot of land that is capable of producing food. If we combine it with innovation, that makes sense in the short term, but also in the long term.
It’s very broad, it’s a test review from the state government that I’m surprised about and it’s super good. And I’m happy to be part of that. And of course, proud and honored to be one of the winners because there are not many. So now I feel like it’s also a good responsibility, but it’s also aligned with my values and goals. So it’s super good.
Maureen: Right, right, yes. I have recently spoken with a couple of the folks who are integral in the creation of the Grow-NY competition with that economic development focus.
be an interesting future episode for us to bring some of those folks on who were integral to talk about that. Because, not to be repetitive, but this idea of how food, beverage and agriculture are so integrally connected to economic development, I think is a fascinating thing that is not often covered in content that’s being developed.
So just as a side note, I think that’s an interesting thing to do.
So I want to ask you about your business model a little bit, because I noticed on the UNIBAIO website, you’re positioning your offering as services rather than products. And so talk about that a little bit.
Matias: Yes. Good question. Indeed… We are always evolving. So during the Grow-NY competition, during the finals that takes several months, like three or four months, one of the feedback that we got was that our business model wasn’t convincing the judges, but it was too risky to have the main business model that we still have in our web page.
So we developed an additional business model during the Grow-NY competition. And now we are more excited. originally our business model was mainly B2B and offering the IP, offering the know-how.
Our expertise is on science development, specifically in material science. So it’s how to enhance formulations for microchemical components. So the companies that produce the crop protection products like the medicine and nutrients that we need to grow our food.
These companies develop formulations combining many different chemicals normally, but also biological ingredients. And we have a tech or a knowledge that can be applied to improve these formulations so we can get the most of them or we can use less to have the same results. So it was always conceived like we are not going to sell anything to a farmer.
We are going to sell these to chemical companies, companies like Monsanto or Bayer, these kinds of big chemical companies, and giants globally.
So we can partner with them. They can license our knowledge. They can use it in one of their formulations and they can bring a new version of an herbicide globally.
And in that way, we can create this global impact that we want, because if not, it’s going to take decades to convince every farmer in the world because it is physical, so it’s difficult to reach many, many, many people.
So that was the main strategy, and we are working on that. We are partnering with big chemical companies. We are in the trade iteration process on how to use our tech knowledge in their specific products they want to optimize, because every product is different, so it requires some kind of adaptation on our tech knowledge to their specific product.
Maureen: And the end goal being increasing the effectiveness of the end result, right? So the ABC agrochemical company can come to you and say, I want this to be more effective. You as a service provide the technology to understand how to improve that effectiveness based on your understanding. And then they go and now they have a more effective tool..
Matias: With a license; it’s always a licensing model. With licensing, they manufacture the sale and they buy every sale they make, they pay as a fee. So it’s simpler and it’s easier to scale up, at least theoretically.
But the downside on the risky side, was the feedback that we got from the charities was everything in your commercial development is tied to someone else. It’s you’re going to sell only if one of these chemical companies adopts your tech and it will depend on how fast they do it. So even though we are showing progress and we are progressing in these discussions and results with these companies.
We are not under control on how long it’s going to take. So it could take one year, three years, who knows? And that is too risky for a VC or a startup investor because you need to have a specific runway to support the growth of the company. So when we got this feedback, we were thinking on this idea, but we didn’t make the decision until we reached the finals. And we decided that we were able to offer a product to the farmer.
So we decided to develop our tech as a product, like an additive and an actual type of product that the farmers can mix in their tanks where they mix the pesticide they buy to enhance these pesticides with different goals.
Normally it is reducing the cost of the chemical they’re buying because they can use less and have the same results.
But sometimes they have too much pressure. For example, there is too much fungi pressure in the New York area in apples. The humidity in the summer is so high that they have a lot of fungi infection on the apples. And every fungi infection is a black dot that consumers don’t like in the apple.
They’re wasting a lot of apples. They’re wasting like between 20 and 40% of the apples because they are not perfect. And they’re not perfect because of the fungi.
So in this case, the value proposition is we can help you to have more perfect apples because if the treatment you are giving to the apple to make it healthier with a fungi works better, that means more good-looking apples that consumers want and pay more for it. So the value proposition there was having a higher efficacy, more control. The same kind of thing could happen in other crops with insects that evolve and now they are not being controlled as well as before.
Or that happens a lot with the new biological alternatives, like the organic alternatives on pesticides without using chemicals. Many of them are good ideas, but they don’t have the exact efficacy as the chemicals. So having more efficacy is needed so you can control the pest.
And some other cases are about regulatory pressure, like the EU. Now I’m in Europe. In Europe, it has the highest standard in chemical use in farming. There’s many, many products around the world that do not enter the European market if they abuse chemicals.
For example, bananas in Ecuador or Central America. All the bananas we eat globally, most of them produce in the same region using the same type of chemicals. And they use a lot of these chemicals. They spray these chemicals every three days during the whole year. All the time they’re showering the crops with chemicals. So it’s very nasty.
They don’t have an option if they want to have enough production to provide global consumers the amount of bananas we eat because we eat a lot of bananas. But now, for example, Europe banned this chemical they are using. And now they’re in trouble because they say, oh, I need to find an alternative that helps me use less of these chemicals because if I don’t use less of these chemicals, I will not be able to sell to the European market. That is one of the main markets because in Europe they don’t produce bananas.
So all these things are affecting the decisions of farmers and by enhancing the crop protection products they use, we can help them in many different ways. But we are not the solution itself, we are the enhancer. We turbocharge, that’s what we call our product, we turbocharge the solution. And it’s just a powder you can mix on the tank with all your crop protection pesticides you use.
Maureen: Right. I’m in upstate New York, as many of our listeners know. And so the apple scenario that you shared is very common here. Something we hear about a lot.
Grapes is another one, right? Pottery mildew is an issue in grapes. Then the banana scenario you shared too, I watched a documentary years ago about how fragile the banana market is in the world. It’s crazy.
We rely on the same variable of bananas globally. Somehow these bananas die, we run out of bananas and we don’t have any replacement.
I don’t know what the issue is with the cocoa market, but I know that the cocoa market is also very fragile and problematic, big supply chain issues. So a big thing about the ability for you to scale, especially with this direct to farmer option is understanding the effectiveness of your product on their agricultural output.
And so you mentioned you’re doing some field trials, some in the US, some in Argentina, there may be more, but how do you go about that? Like, how are you prioritizing what field trials to do? How do you understand effectiveness so that that farmer can trust you that they know what’s going to work and that you know what’s going to work so that you can have those conversations?
Matias: Yes, it’s complicated and it’s a continuous discussion with my advisors and the team because we have a lot of options.
Our tech is very subtle. It’s not magic, so it doesn’t work with everything, but it has worked with many, many different things and most of the most common youth things by farmers. So that brings a problem in the go-to-market strategy. What do we focus on? What is our focus at the beginning?
You need to have a focus to do two things, to do the commercial development, to convince the farmers to use it, but also to have the validation of the farmers’ needs. And validation requires money and time, so it is critical to make a good decision.
One thing that we did was because of this Grow-NY competition, that was a good award, to help us to focus on what are the needs of these specific regions.
How can we help? So how can we help? What are the main crops, grapes, apples? Which problems do these crops have?
We started to have interviews with farmers to understand their specific problems because upper growers in Argentina. They don’t use as much fungicides as the US because it’s a draw region. So they don’t have fungi disease.
It’s not because of the fault of the farmers, just nature is different. So we didn’t know anything about the specific problems in the New York area in farming. So we needed to understand that.
Then when we found out that we could provide value specifically in the region, we started to focus. And now we are doing trials with Cornell, with Penn State, then we extend those trials with the same type of chemicals to other crops relevant in the US, with tomatoes and potatoes in North Carolina State University.
So we are doing local validation. But before deciding where to focus our efforts, we need to understand the market. And to understand the market, we had so many options available that helped us a little bit, and had these incentives of having someone to work with because at the beginning was not necessarily the award because we were at the end of the process.
We have the incentive of having someone local that was helping us to understand the value proposition, the needs of the farmer. So through the Grow New York competition, we were able to reach many farmers in the region that we were able to interview and to learn the needs so we can adapt value proposition and then develop the go-to market strategy and the new business development, validate it, do the science, develop the product, scale the product, and now sell the product.
Maureen: Right. Yes, yes. And to your point too, from an economic standpoint, understanding when the economics of it all work, right? Because many of what you’re mentioning are specialty crops. I’m sure that’s quite intentional, right?
That to go specialty crops as opposed to commodity crops to start. So we’re running low on time. I’d love to double this and I have so many other questions that I’d love to ask you about. So I’m trying to kind of prioritize this a little bit.
Matias: Yes, I can go fast.
Maureen: It seems to me, and please correct me if I’m wrong here on this one, but it seems like there are quite a few biotechnology products that are coming into the market in the last handful of years. What are your thoughts on that, number one? And number two, how do you differentiate?
Matias: Yes, that’s great. I’m super excited about them. We think that the future is going to be biological. Very likely it’s going to nowadays, like around the most optimistic data is around 10 % of the market is shared by biologicals. So most farmers globally are still using chemicals. Hopefully in the future it will be the other way. It will be 90% biologicals, 10% chemicals.
We are going to use only chemicals in the case where a non-biological isn’t developed yet, because diseases are evolving all the time, so chemicals are super fast to kill something.
The time it takes to develop a new biological alternative is faster than the time it takes nature to develop new diseases. So probably we are not going to be able to get rid of all chemicals in the future, but we’re going to be almost fully organic if we can.
That is going to take probably a few decades. It’s not going to be fast. Like electric cars, we have a lot of electric cars, but it is not yet only electric cars. It’s going to take decades. In the transition, we are super relevant because we can help to use less chemicals and also help to adopt more biological alternatives faster.
I don’t see them as competitions because as I mentioned, we are not the specific solution for any pest. We enhance others’ solutions. Indeed, we are partnering with many of these new developments.
Developments made by big chemical companies that have their own portfolio in biologicals and we’re helping them to improve these products so they can have faster penetration in the market. And we’re also helping the most innovative companies, startups, working with innovation like RNA or peptides or many, like two in the edge for the big chemical companies that hopefully we can help them to have this additional efficacy to be economically viable and then grow a business around the tech.
So we are doing that at the same time. We’re working with big chemical companies on chemicals with the small companies on new innovation. And we see ourselves as partners with all of them. So that’s a huge differentiation.
There are not many companies like us that we can work with many others at the same time to develop our brands. So our proposition is pretty unique. We are not alone. There’s others as we have different types of the … formulation. That can help to improve formulation as all these companies focus on formulation tech like us as different types of core tech, we can also be complementary.
So I don’t necessarily see them as competition either. I also partner with some of them, trying to see if we are compatible, if we can combine to get even more results. I think we are still in a time where we have more to win if we cooperate than by competing. So it’s competition theoretically, but this is starting to grow. So we have more to win if we cooperate and to help to adopt this kind of tech faster.
Maureen: Right. Yes. And that dual focus that you’re talking about, and you’ve talked about focus in a lot of different ways. I’m talking about the dual focus that you have from the formulation support that is the B2B model and then the direct to consumer model with the farmers. I think that there are times where that focus on multiple customers can actually be a distraction, right? And so it’s so critical to have the balance of
Matias: I know. Yes. That was also part of the discussion. So we never did. So we didn’t do this double approach from the beginning because it was too much to do and deviated from the tension. Now we realize that we can do both because we have developed the science to a point that we can use the same core tech for both business development and commercial strategies.
We are not dabbling in science. That is the most expensive part in our company. We are using economics of scale. It’s the opposite. We are using the same cortex, the same team to have a double revenue source. And we are using the validation that we do with the big chemical companies to decide where to focus on the rectifier.
Because when we learn that something works, then we can develop the product for the farmer specifically. And then when we convince a farmer to use our tech as a product, like as an actual brand, we also use this commercial data to accelerate the decision making on the big chemical companies.
So the two business models are very shortly minting. It’s offering one to another. And then we think it’s going to help us to accelerate our development and not to deviate effort.
Maureen: Yes, yes. And I think that that is the piece that’s essential, right? Is that they feed each other and not that they’re two totally different paths, right? So good on you to have that focus. not surprised with your business understanding. So last question for you. What is next for UNIBAIO specifically, especially as it relates to your global positioning as a global company?
Matias: Yes. We are happy that we’re launching this year in Argentina, Turbocharge, our additive that the farmers can use in the farm directly to enhance the pesticides they’re using. And in the US in the next season, we were aiming to reach this season, but we couldn’t. It was difficult with the EPA and the FDA. There’s a lot of backlog, so we couldn’t reach the goal of April. It’s going to be next season. We’re happy about that.
This year we’re going to start seeing farmers using our tech. And we also started collaboration with big food industry companies, like the ones who produce food sourcing from farmers, that they also want to use our tech in global markets to source from different places in the world. All this is going to come in the following year, all focus on the direct-to-farmer approach.
And hopefully we can also have the first licensing agreement this year with one of the big chemical companies that will be huge and that will scale a lot our impact.
Maureen: Yes, that’s fantastic. I love your story. Thank you for taking some time to talk with me today and share your story and UNIBAIO’s story. And it’s inspiring to see you executing that on the global stage just as you intended. So congratulations.
Matias: Thank you, Maureen. It’s my pleasure.