Transcription of Marine Plant-Based University with AlgEternal:

Alissa Miky: Hi everybody! Thank you so much for joining the Marine Plant-Based University. And today we also have a wonderful guest. So, David, thank you so much for the time.

David Ramjohn: Absolutely. It’s my pleasure. Alissa, for you.

Alissa Miky: Perfect. So, David, could you please introduce a little bit about yourself at the beginning?

David Ramjohn: I’m David Ramjan, originally from Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean, currently in Texas, USA, where I’m the CEO of an algae biotech company called MicroAlgae, where we have patented technology that allows us to grow microalgae at scale. Primarily a marine biologist turned entrepreneur, and I’m now here in the U.S.

As a legal permanent resident under category E 1 9, E 1 6, sorry, which apparently is reserved for aliens with extraordinary ability in science and business and so on, Somebody at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service has determined that I make, you know, I meet those qualifications.

I myself was quite surprised at it, but you know, we’re focused on. Using microalgae as an economic platform that can generate, you know, economic, social and environmental benefits for all of humanity. And we see this as being the natural successor to petroleum as an economic platform. Essentially thinking that petroleum is nothing more than ancient microalgae in the first place.

You know petroleum comes from. Carbon that was sequestered by these organisms over hundreds of millions of years and turned into crude and natural gas by the effects of time, temperature and pressure. So whatever we can make from petroleum, we can make from microalgae and macroalgae. Marine plants, as you know, as your university is called, is a very good, you know, catch all term for it because microalgae is phytoplankton.

Macroalgae is just… That you can see with the naked eye. Don’t say that . It’s same, you know, it’s the same principle.

Alissa Miky: I get the point.

David Ramjohn: the key issue is that they photosynthesize, you know? So I’m like I said, I’m I, I call myself an evangelist.

Alissa Miky: Love it. I love that.

David Ramjohn: CAPY, it’s, it’s a term that was coined by a colleague of mine Dr. Mark Edwards. And, you know, I’ve, I’ve co opted it and use it regularly because people need to know, we need to spread the word about this group of organisms and, you know, what they’re capable of doing, you know, we have to look at what they have done, what they currently do, and what, if we are wise enough, we can harness them to do for us in the future.

And I use the word harness rather than exploit, because, you know, language is very important. Oh, for sure. You know, by harnessing them, I think we get across the meaning that look, we’re not trying to use the organisms or overuse them. We’re trying to get them to do what they’ve been doing for the past 2.

7 billion years. It’s just that with technology and all modern, you know, equipment and AI and everything, to get them to do it faster, more efficiently, and to generate the benefits that we need, you know, quicker. Because we’re, you know, we’re in dire straits in terms of, you know, what’s going on with our planet.

For sure. And the fact is that microalgae are the organisms that made this planet hospitable to us in the first place. Yes, true. But people don’t understand that, you know, they, microbes rule the world, okay? For sure. For sure. Yeah, you know, we as, as a species… We tend to overlook microbes unless they can kill us or unless we can make bread and bear from them.

For sure, for sure. So, you know, it’s, it’s one of those situations where, you know, if it weren’t for microbes, a lot of what we take for granted wouldn’t be here or wouldn’t be functional. You know, even, even us, you know, human beings. I asked the question of students and, you know, people I talk to all the time, how much of, of your body.

Is actually human cells and most people don’t understand the question to begin with, but the fact is that a significant percentage of our bodies are not human cells, the bacteria and other, you know, organisms, excuse me, they live on us and they live in us and the flora and fauna that live inside of us in our intestines and so on are critical to our health.

And we have been, through the overuse of antibiotics and so on, have been destroying our internal flora and fauna to the point where we are having illnesses that we never had before. And we’re having all sorts of symptoms come up now. And we’ve gotten to the point where we have to be using prebiotics and probiotics to put back into our system the bacteria and other microbes that we have removed through the overuse of antibiotics.

So the importance of microbes cannot be overlooked. And in a natural system, in an ecosystem, it is microbes that do the most work to support those ecosystems, whether it be in aquatic or terrestrial ecosystems. And this is where microalgae come to the fore. In any ecosystem in which they occur, they support the trophic levels above them.

So all of the other organisms that don’t photosynthesize are going to be eating microalgae because they need a food source and microalgae through photosynthesis is producing the most common food source on the planet, glucose. So the photosynthetic process is the single most important biochemical process.

Oh, sure.

Alissa Miky: Sorry to cut in David. I’m really, you know, Andrews like, you know, people need I totally on the same page. That’s why the marine plant-based university is here today. We would love to explain about what’s the benefit, what’s the, you know, the, what’s the importance of the digestion because I’m actually originally from Japan, and as you know, Japanese is a one, number one longevity country because we understand the most important thing is the digestion and we also care about.

Not just having the bacteria, but also soluble fiber and soluble fiber. The balance is important. Nutrition is important. So that’s why I, that’s why this university is a great, you know, I believe that this university can be a great platform to understand about those importance. But, you know, today those kind of a lecture we can do with the other, you know, situation.

I’m, we’re, we’re doing a kind of a lecture contents over there, but we have a precious moment today. We would love to listen your story because, you know, it’s unique. Yours really unique. Well, because listen, you are the micro allergy, you know, scientist, then why did you decided to start to study with that?

Why did you decided to, you know, create this company? Can, let’s like, I would love to listen more your personal information.

David Ramjohn: Oh, sure. So it all began in undergrad botany many, many years ago, more than I care to, to tell. But the professor walked in on the first day and drew a circle on the board. And that was his representation of the most common algal cell there is, which is a sphere.

And he drummed into us during that semester, these organisms were, how important they were to, to our life form. And we didn’t even open a textbook in that class. And the majority of, of, of the semester teaching us about microalgae and their importance. And that information stayed with me. You know, I didn’t actually put it to use until probably, you know, 10, 15 years later when I was working in Trinidad and Tobago and was appointed to a committee that was looking for ways to diversify away from petroleum.

And my mind went back to microalgae as a sustainable and renewable source of biofuels. And In researching the biofuels aspect of microalgae, I recognized that there was so much more that could be done with microalgae than just liquid fuels. And in fact, it may be, you know, more useful and more economical to do the higher value products.

Rather than going after a commodity like biofuel, you know, we should be focusing on the food and the feed and the, the pharmaceutical aspect. You know, cosmetics, you know, soil amendments, there’s so many other things that you can make from microalgae. So it came to me that, look, biofuel might not be the thing that we ought to be looking at, at these organisms for simply because nature have been making petroleum, which is a biofuel.

For hundreds of millions of years on a planetary scale that we simply couldn’t compete with you can lift a barrel of oil from, you know, from the Middle East for about eight U. S. dollars, it’ll cost you about eight U. S. dollars to make a gallon of biofuel from microalgae. So just, you know, it just doesn’t make economic sense.

So I went on to develop a business plan built around microalgae for non fuel purposes. And that really was, you know, the genesis of this whole thing. I built my business plan to work in Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean, as I told you. And was successful in getting you know, funding through the Export Import Bank of Trinidad and Tobago to fund that project.

But the technology that I was using came from Texas. It originated here in Texas. And I had met the the company back in 2013, after scouring the landscape to see what technologies were available to grow microalgae, to harvest microalgae, and to produce the product. Because it seemed obvious to me that the most important thing, if you were trying to make algae an economic platform, was going to be the ability to produce it at commercial scale.

So if you want to make food from algae, you’re going to have to be able to produce, you know, algae or microalgae at the same scale that we produce corn, cotton, wheat, you know, soy, all of these products. So I had focused on finding the technology to grow the microalgae at scale. And yeah, in all of the technologies that I reviewed, this one from this company here in Texas was the best.

So I’d been at the. In 2013 and had agreed to use their technology in my project And went about, you know, setting up and doing everything. So kept in touch with the company from 2013 onwards.

Alissa Miky: Could you please give any like you know, message for the audience about, especially who wanted to start the Marine plan based business?

What would you want it to give them advice?

David Ramjohn: So have a plan what you’re doing. That you secure the capital that you need to do it. Give yourself enough operational runway, enough money for, you know, installing your, your, your CapEx, because that’s one of the things that absolutely needs to happen for this industry to succeed.

You know, we are looking for new investors at this point in time, but the algae industry is new, , and investors don’t understand it. They don’t see, you know, what, what’s going to come back to them, but it requires patient capital. So you have to have these things in place Otherwise, you’re not going to be able to get anything off the ground regardless of how good your idea is You know, we’ve got two excellent products a line of skincare and a line of soil amendment that have excellent reviews And you know, we’ve got technology that works and all we are looking for now is capital to scale But that’s been one of the most difficult things for us to secure Because either the investors have been burnt by the biofuels fiasco They put a lot of money into that and lost it, or they just don’t know what can be done with microalgae.

So they become now a key part of the audience that we need to educate. Put money into this, because that’s what the industry needs. It’s the same thing like the oil industry, which is subsidized and which has received a lot of funding, you know, before it became profitable. So algae is just like that. Look at Japan.

Japan actually has a project going on now. Called the Matsuri, which you may be familiar with, and Japanese government has put 400 million U. S. dollars into the Matsuri, and there are over 50 companies that are signed on to it, and the Matsuri is looking at creating an algae based, a microalgae based economy for Japan.

That’s the scale at which we need to have funding coming into this. You know, so, so we as a company, and anybody else looking to get into this. Get your funding first, you know, don’t don’t try to get it without having a plan.

Alissa Miky: On the same time, I guess one more important thing is most of the technology company don’t understand that marketing.

Of course, we need to create a good quality, good product. There’s no debate. However, even if they have a great product and they don’t have power to spread it out, that’s That’s a, you know, fail too. So honestly like a marine plant based biotech company always have that struggle. They are really good at technology, but they don’t know how to spread out.

So that’s why we are here today. We would love to, as our company, we have 1. 3 million followers in TikTok with no advertisement only in three years. So we are happy to share our story, our knowledge. To kick back to the community. So David, if you need any support from our side, always I’m here and I’m always happy to share my story, but thank you so much for the time.

This was a really interesting story. And especially there’s not many startup company are focused on the micro allergy. And most of it are marine plant based organization. The company are belong to CB or those kinds of a kelp, as you know. But it was great. It was really interesting story that you really start from the scratch and congratulations.

I cannot say, I cannot wait to see you soon. Thank you very much, David.

David Ramjohn: Thank you very much. Y’all take care.