Ilan Sobel: Democratizing the Power of Plants & the Future of Scalable Bio-Tech

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21:35Darin Olien:it's incredible I mean the thing that was so astonishing is is seeing what by harvest is doing because you know I spent good part of 15 years running around the world trying to find botanicals and things that have compounds in them to help people but there's a limit to that and the thing that I saw in the supplement world was that they market the idea of what is in a product or in a compound or in a plant, but then it never really makes it to the finished product or the supplement. So you're living on a PR campaign as opposed to the real active, powerful ingredients. And so when I saw what you guys were doing with these bioreactors and at scale, you're taking nature and you're proliferating nature.

22:35Ilan Sobel:We're really, at the end of the day, what we're doing is we're unlocking the treasure that exists inside nature. We have today 500 ,000 plants out there. And we're just, specifically in the last 100, 120 years, we've just been abusing nature. And literally in 30, 40 years' time, if it continues like this, 50 % of the plants that are so critical for our health and wellness, they're going to be gone. 10 billion population, you can see that movie. So our company's North Star is all about discovering, developing, manufacturing and democratizing life-changing compounds from plants that are going to positively affect the health and wellness of hundreds of millions of people in a way that preserves the planet for generations to come because our sustainability credentials are unique we utilize a micro fraction, a micro fraction of the land, a micro fraction of the water and the energy.

23:43And today what's really interesting is if you go back 70, 80 years, the first pharmaceutical drugs were all anchored and based

23:57Ilan Sobel:and derived from the plant kingdom. And then pharma started to realize it's too difficult. It's too challenging dealing with plants for three reasons. And our technology has overcome each of these three barriers. Barrier number one was consistency. Of course, in pharmaceutical world, you need unique levels of consistency. Plants grow in an ecosystem. The more sunshine, the more water. Up and down. It's a different polyphenol combination. Two, it's so interesting that when you look at the phytonutrients or phyto-medicinal compounds that are really critical for the effective functioning of our overall bodies, they're found in such tiny levels inside the plant.

24:49Ilan Sobel:And therefore, you have to grow thousands and thousands of hectares of plants for it to be economically viable. So pharma turned around and said, you know what, it's too difficult. We're just going to synthesize one component, the key molecule. We'll synthesize in a laboratory. We'll get the consistency. We'll get the economics right because I'm just paying for the synthesization inside a laboratory. It's very different to growing thousands of hectares of a plant. And importantly, we'll get the patents because patents are king for the pharmaceutical industry. and by the way you can't generally patent nature.

25:31Ilan Sobel:It's really hard to patent nature. Now our technology, botanical synthesis, which is how we make our VINIA red grape cell blood flow superfood, better blood flow superfood, our technology allows us to address every one of these three problems. In our bioreactors, in a controlled environment, we're able to produce with unique consistency. We have economic viability because we figured out how to change the variables to magnify by an order of magnitude the most critical molecules but still keep the mirroring effect, synergistic effect. And because of what we do, we have patents. So today I sit here in front of what I would say, given your reputation, is the king of superfoods, one of the key legacy originators of the superfood concept.

26:36Ilan Sobel:I come as an ambassador of 500 ,000 plants that are saying to industry, that are saying to the population out there, enough abuse. We want use.

26:53Darin Olien:We understand what's inside, the treasure that's inside each and every single plant.

26:59Ilan Sobel:Today there are technologies that exist like bioharvest sciences and what we do every single day with botanical synthesis, which allows us to use in a way that makes sense for industry to be the bridge between the plant kingdom and industry, whether it's pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, cosmetics, or nutrition, to be that bridge between the plant kingdom and the giants of industry by being able to develop and produce at scale life-changing compounds consistently with economic viability and with patents in a sustainable way. So we're addressing and answering what the plants are looking for, protection that the plant kingdom wants, all the way through to what industry now needs to start delivering because at the end of the day with a population, 20, 50 of$10 billion, we can't survive.

27:55Ilan Sobel:the way we've been surviving the last 100 years. It's technologies like ours. And there needs to be another 100 companies like us because we can't do every plant out there, which really has to change how people leverage the power of the plant kingdom.

28:11Darin Olien:Yeah, I mean, you've done so many things to be that bridge with the science, with the scale, and understanding the plant, and then really harvesting nature and exciting nature to produce these compounds, which nature does, but you can't do it at scale. And that's the exciting thing. But you're also able to look at other compounds. You're not just, I mean, this is your flagship.

28:45Ilan Sobel:Yeah, this is our flagship. and Vinia for us really has been a validation of the power of the technology. Just seeing how improving people's blood flow through arterial dilation increases, significant increases, is able to change their lives, whether it's physical energy, mental alertness, whether it's supporting healthy blood pressure, whether it's reducing oxidative damage to your cells, whether it's reducing oxidation of LDL cholesterol. This is all what our clinical trial, you know, have been able to demonstrate.

29:20Darin Olien:I mean, the fact that you, the company, I mean, you're doing everything right in a sense because, you know, so many people, they want a compound to do something and rush to the market. And then again, they live on the PR of it, not the actual science. And the fact that you've raised hundreds of millions of dollars, done the clinical substantiation but also more importantly you've created these bioreactors to be able to scale to the point where pharmaceutical can use them and and this can make an improvement in people's lives we're at that point where science needs to meet nature yeah and then we have to scale it

30:02Ilan Sobel:yeah right now on our manufacturing facility i have 137 bioreactors that's a lot of bioreactors on the floor. Each of those bioreactors, in the last 12 months, we've digitized our facility. So we're now leveraging the power of digitization, AI. We're now able to understand and capture and measure to the cloud every single biological metric of every single bioreactor at a point

30:32Darin Olien:So every bioreactor has got a lot of compounds.

30:35Ilan Sobel:There are critical, you know, ultimately what we're doing is we know that the cell has a growth curve. And the cells are multiplying and basically as they're multiplying, they're growing. And we've got to make sure that they're growing on the right logarithmic cell curve. And we've got to make sure that we catch them at the right point where their pi-cidrosveratrol and polyphenol levels are at the maximum. How do you lock that in then? So, you know, again, it's deep science. It's where science and biology and technology all meet together. I call it like, you know, basically deep science. And, you know, with the experience that we have, we understand exactly what that optimal curve looks like.

31:24Ilan Sobel:And then we're constantly managing every single bioreactor and measuring to see if the cells are on the right curve. And when they're not, we have some significant experience to know what to do to those cells to help them get back on the curve. Ultimately, what we're trying to do in every single bioreactor, and normally the process takes 18 to 21 days for the cells to multiply and grow, from every single bioreactor we get about 14 to 15 kilograms. I'll translate in the U.S. times 2.2, it's about 30 pounds, 30, 32 pounds of material, finished material.

32:04Darin Olien:And it would take nature years and years.

32:08Ilan Sobel:It's a couple of years at least, right? And importantly, we have a facility today, our first facility, we're about to build our second facility, but our first facility is 10 ,000 square feet. Now that facility can produce the same amount of Pisidre's Veritrol as the entire island of Manhattan. if you had grapevines.

32:31Darin Olien:Wow.

32:32Ilan Sobel:Right. Think about that. Yeah. That's the power of deep science and the convergence of deep science and biology and technology.

32:40Darin Olien:But you're also using nature. You're understanding how to, because like I think of stem cells too, like, right? So I was just talking to a stem cell guy. So the best stem cells are when you take them from yourself and then they have their own bioreactor and you plurforate them and then use them back into your body. It's the same here. So you're understanding nature and allowing nature to do her thing and then just controlling the environment because the environment is everything.

33:15Ilan Sobel:I'm just helping nature down a path that basically allows much more efficiency. So ultimately, nature is not abused. And we're leveraging the power of nature, ultimately, to be able to develop these life-changing compounds that can positively affect the health and wellness of hundreds of millions of people.

33:37Darin Olien:So when people take, like, you know, you don't necessarily feel blood flow. Like, I've taken this, and I love it. but people also get this idea that i have to feel it but also your your your science supports what you're doing so i always say like do you do you notice an apple when you eat it right it's good for you yeah right so so how do you talk to people about like how is why would this be better than something that they can buy on on amazon and and what do they expect to feel over a period of time

34:25Ilan Sobel:that's a great question so firstly we talked a little bit earlier about solubility yeah the solubility is 25 times more soluble and that's than regular resveratrol 82 82 that that's literature yeah it's literature yeah paracet resveratrol is 25 times more water soluble than regular resveratrol. Literature, fact, no arguments about it. From a bioavailability perspective, we have clinical bioavailability study, human beings, on basically demonstrating we last in the body for at least 12 hours and I believe we last longer. We just didn't check longer than that 12-hour time point and we regret it.

35:03Ilan Sobel:But the next time around, we will check to see if it goes longer. But definitely you've got 12 hours, you've got to peak after one, you've got to peak after five. 20 minutes in the plasma And what lands up happening, as we say, the mechanism of action is just, in a way, genius, if you think about it. And you think about the workings of the human body. So we talked before about 60 ,000 miles of arteries, veins, and capillaries. Arterial health is all about well-being. Your well-being is totally anchored in your arterial health. and lining your arteries, your veins and capillaries are endothelial cells.

35:45Ilan Sobel:Okay. And we're talking about billions of endothelial cells. What happens with Vinia and our Pisces-Veratrol? We get straight into the blood plasma in the most localized part of the body, which is the most critical part of the body, and almost like we train the endothelial cells that line all our 60 ,000 miles of arteries, veins and capillaries to produce more of one critical substance that I'm sure everybody listening here have heard about, and that's nitric oxide. It's not doing it through the mouth, right, and converting basically sulfur, basically driving the conversion of nitrate into nitric oxide in the mouth, which is not localized, which is a lot of, let's call it root-based supplements that produce nitric oxide.

36:41Ilan Sobel:They do it starting in the mouth, and by the time it goes into the blood plasma, the solubility has eroded significantly. We do it where it matters, in the plasma, right where the endothelial cells are, and we get the endothelial cells to produce more nitric oxide. And as you know, nitric oxide is the most critical vasodilator for the human body. And as we age, starts at the age of 25, the amount of nitric oxide starts to get reduced significantly. It's about a 70 % reduction from 20 to 70. But what's unique about this product and the power of PyC resveratrol with all the other polyphenols is we have a double mechanism of action.

37:25Ilan Sobel:those endothelial cells, they're a bit fickle. They produce good stuff, which is nitric oxide, albeit it declines over age. They also produce some stuff that we call the bad stuff, and that's ET1, endothelial 1. ET1 is a vasoconstrictor. It hardens your arteries. And as you get older, they start to produce more ET1. So what VINIA does, and we've demonstrated this in in vitro studies, Venea has been able to demonstrate the ability to significantly increase the nitric oxide. We showed an increase in nitric oxide in vitro at 120 % increase and reduce the ET1, the Vassar constrictor, by 50%. So it's a double mechanism of action.

38:13Darin Olien:So not only is it flowing better, it's... It's the arterial dilation, the elasticity, right?

38:19Ilan Sobel:Because you're basically the compound, i.e. nitric oxide molecule, that increases the dilation you're producing more of, and you're suppressing, you're reducing the endothelial cells production of ET1, which is a vasoconstrictor. And with this increase in blood flow, all of those benefits of physical energy, mental alertness, Darren, you feel it. You feel it. People feel that veneer difference. They feel it. Some people will feel it after a week. Some people, depending on your genetics, depending on your fitness levels, for example, athletes, we know they have higher VO2 max, it takes a little bit longer, right?

39:02Ilan Sobel:It can take eight weeks, nine weeks, ten weeks. That's why we always tell our consumers three months. Three months is the period you should be on the product to really get the maximum impact, but you feel it. You feel more physical energy. No more sleepiness in the afternoons, right? You're waking up with mental alertness. No more brain fog. I was one of those people before I came to the company, and you know my story on how I came to the company initially as an investor, right, from a background in fast-moving consumer goods and high-tech. But when I started on this product, I was one of those guys that literally my brain didn't function until 11 o 'clock and five cups of coffee, right?

39:40Ilan Sobel:Literally, maybe four cups, four to five cups of coffee. But now I have the opposite problem. I wake up and you've seen we've exchanged SMSs with the time difference between LA and Israel. It could be 3 o 'clock in the morning. I'll go to the bathroom and I'm on. My brain is working. It's functioning. So I'm getting up in the morning and I'm able to function. That mental alertness, it's a game changer. And then obviously you have those elements that you're not feeling which are so critical, right, which is reducing oxidation of LDL cholesterol. and we understand how important that is. When there's LDL cholesterol buildup, you don't want that LDL cholesterol to oxidize, right?

40:21Ilan Sobel:And then you have basically everything that polyphenols do around reducing oxidative damage to your cells and fighting the free radicals, right?

40:29Darin Olien:Which is always increasing as we age.

40:31Ilan Sobel:And then basically helping to support healthy blood pressure. These are the key elements. And then ultimately you start to see many other benefits which are all related to blood flow because this is what we're doing. We're just increasing blood flow, and you have more blood flow basically to the epidermis layer of the skin. Guess what? Better skin health. It's all about blood flow is the carrier of oxygen, and oxygen is the source of life, and that's what we're doing.

41:01Darin Olien:Yeah, so the longer you stay on it, the more it goes from hierarchy of needs and it continues to go.

41:09Ilan Sobel:And that's why we have a business which is 90 % subscription on our website, veneer.com. It's 90 % subscription. And we have, I believe, in benchmarking versus other supplements out there, some of the leading supplements. We have, I believe, one of the lowest churn rates because once you're on the product, you stay on the product.

41:33Darin Olien:Yeah. So not only are you feeling it, but it's, again, it's backed in real science. and clinical. I mean, the science is heavy.

41:44Ilan Sobel:We started with Invitro. Then we did animal trials. And then we did human clinical trials. We have a number of different trials that we did from a clinical perspective.

41:53Darin Olien:I mean, you can name on one hand how many nutritional companies have actually done human clinical trials.

41:59Ilan Sobel:I think, correct. Within the industry, you have literally, you can count them on your hand. Correct. and we continue to invest you know in the science because we're a science-based company and that's really important validation for the consumer i mean it's so exciting i mean

42:16Darin Olien:i mean me and other colleagues looked at your company it was just like oh my god i mean dr barbara was like this is what i've always wanted someone to do because you see the power in nature you see the power and necessary compounds for the body. And in order for us to scale something, we don't have the landmass. We have all those issues, environmental issues and pesticides and herbicides and things in the air and things in the water. And it's almost impossible today to control those variables. Before we continue the pod, I want to share something. I've tried so many supplements. I've been in the space for 25 years.

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43:52Darin Olien:Every formula is frequency charged to promote balanced energy immune system and cellular renewal. And the wild part, the more consistently you take it, the more you feel everything in your body. It's the same with me. The more I use it, the better I feel. My sleep improved, my skin glows, my stress goes down, my testosterone goes off. It's like my whole system is humming again. So if you're tired of low energy, brain fog, and or just not feeling the same and like something's missing, check out Mana. Go to manavitality.com. That's M-A-N-N-A vitality.com. Use the code Darren20 and you get 20 % off your order.

44:40Darin Olien:This isn't about health. It's about living in harmony with your greatest and highest potential.

44:46Ilan Sobel:We were one of those few companies I think you can you can count them on a couple of fingers that actually control the entire process from cell all the way through to capsule right and for me look I will tell you straight out the last six years have been probably the most challenging six years of my professional career I've probably worked harder than I've ever worked before even though I told my wife it was going to be a period that I was going to be, you know, a little bit more accessible. But all of us at Bar Harvest, we're on a mission. We're on a mission to develop life-changing compounds from the plant kingdom and unlock the treasure that exists in the plant kingdom.

45:30Ilan Sobel:And what keeps me going every single day, just given the hours that we work, is customer reviews. I get in my inbox as CEO of the company every single review that comes in. Every review I read. That's normally what I do when I get into bed. I file them away, it comes into my inbox, and I sit in bed, and I read the reviews. And every day I'm probably getting anywhere from 20 to 40 reviews. Today we have more than 10 ,100 verified reviews with a 4.7 out of 5 rating. And it's those reviews when you see how it changes people's lives, right, that literally gives me the strength to get up in the morning and to continue with my team, to power through and to continue to climb Mount Everest again and deal with challenges that we have from a biology perspective.

46:32Ilan Sobel:And it happens periodically as we scale more, scale more. You hit challenges. And we have an amazing team of PhD plant cell biologists that work. They've been, you know, all of our biologists have been with us for more than 15 years, right? So like there's, you know, deep know-how. And we work through and we figure out these problems. But actually it's kind of like a interesting cycle that we have here, the cycle of life in the context of it's the feedback that we get from consumers on how the products change in their lives how it's changing people's lives from giving them more of that physical energy more mental alertness to do more in life to get more out of their lives you know whether it's you know somebody who's a little bit older in their in their in their life cycle and has to all of a sudden you know deal with grandchildren having the physical energy or People that are looking for vascularity in the gym and want to go that extra five, 10, 15 minutes on a treadmill, now they've got the energy to do it.

47:39Ilan Sobel:Or it's people that are just exhausted mentally and all of a sudden their brain's functioning on a different level because they're so much more mentally alert and on and on and on. and almost so that we started to see from first responders, amazing results, firefighters started to send us communication to say, listen, this product's amazing. Two o 'clock in the morning, you know, we're sleeping fast asleep, the bell rings, I got to move. And every move counts in saving people's lives. And your product keeps me alert, keeps me focused, right? And I've got the physical energy now to keep on going longer, all the way through to I remember receiving an amazing review from a lady in, I would say, rural Ohio that was managing a triage center, emergency center, and saying what Vinia does, keeping her on her toes, giving her the energy, making decisions on you go here, you go there in a triage center that was basically covering just a massive geographical area and so busy.

48:43Ilan Sobel:And so when we saw all these benefits we were giving first-line responders and veterans as well, many veterans, we decided to give these people a very unique benefit of 20 % discount for life on our products in the context of our commitment to give back to the community. So, you know, we have the ability to really influence the lives of everyday people, right? You know, people just trying to get more out of the 24 hours that they're living and dealing with the challenges of a very turbulent life all the way through to really impacting those people that care for us every single day in the community.

49:36Ilan Sobel:And that's what's the best part of our job is to be able to actually see that firsthand because with Vinia, you feel it. Yeah.

49:43Darin Olien:Well, that's, I mean, I don't know what's more important to life than to help people. And the fact that you're taking the time to hear directly from them is the fuel that keeps you going. And, you know. Yeah, it definitely is my source of strength. Well, especially from your background, you were doing stuff and you function high and you're doing things. But those companies weren't lined up in the same way that can help populations and help people from elderly to athletes to everything else. I mean, that's.

50:28Ilan Sobel:Yeah, you're 100 percent right. look, my experience in fast-moving consumer goods, you know, running significant businesses around the world and then moving into the high-tech world and kind of, you know, rebirthing myself and reinventing myself into high-tech, it prepared me so well for this challenge. You know, everything, you know, I'm obviously deeply spiritual. I really feel that like God had a plan for me. and you know the plan was 18 years running around the world for a multinational running businesses in the fast-moving consumer goods and then you know six years as an entrepreneur starting a business with two co-founders that we sold to a major fast-moving consumer goods in the technology space those skills really prepared me to be able to help this company because when i came to the company as an investor and it was actually Darren it was like to pretty much to the day six years ago I came to the company as an investor and I was like I'll keep my language appropriate on this podcast but I was like holy macaroni I'm like this company's unbelievable this technology it's almost like I found a gold mine of R &D at that time it was like 13 years They had figured out how to scale the technology, not to the level today, but at least gone to one scaling point.

51:54Ilan Sobel:They had just completed the clinical trials, multiple clinical trials. They just published one trial at the American – they presented, I should say, one trial at the American Diabetes Association, right, at the New Orleans Conference. The regulatory path work had been done. The IP was really well thought through. and, you know, I don't come from money, you know, just being an immigrant, classic immigrant story, and, you know, everything I have on my, you know, that I'm wearing, you know, I've worked for and I value. And so whether I put$5 ,000 or$50 ,000 or more, it's the same diligence that I do on a company, and I drove them crazy.

52:37Ilan Sobel:I drove them crazy because that's who I am, right? I think you're getting to know me and you understand the nature of the beast that you're dealing with, right? going deeper, deeper, deeper, trying to catch them out. And every time I thought I had the scientists in a corner, based on my experience, they came out like with boxing gloves and they came out shining. They could validate everything. Exactly. Everything was validated. Everything. Literally. Okay. It was almost like being in an audit with the Ministry of Health in Israel where they're coming in and they're asking, here you go, here you go.

53:12Ilan Sobel:Okay, okay, okay. It was amazing. And I decided to invest in the company. and at the time the CEO, who today is a great friend and my partner, that is the chairman of the company today and also is the president of our CDMO, Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization, he came to me and he said to me, listen, you drove us crazy during the diligence process. And I'm like, I'm deeply sorry. It's just the nature of the beast. I hope it wasn't disrespectful. He says, no, it wasn't disrespectful at all, but you drove us crazy. But I realized through this process I need a professional CEO to be able to unlock this gold mine in a way and to be able to mine the gold.

53:55Ilan Sobel:And I think you could be the right guy for this. I want you to seriously think about coming on board as the CEO. And it was like somebody had punched me, you know, in the face because I just didn't see it coming. Right. And I went away and I spoke to my wife and had, you know, probably two or three weeks of conversations. and I realized that I had a chance here to lead a movement of change in the world. I had a chance here to be able to really positively impact the lives together with the team, an amazing team around me already. Quality people, commitment like you can't believe, to develop life-changing compounds from a health and wellness perspective and to be able to unlock the treasure that exists in the plant kingdom.

54:45Ilan Sobel:And very quickly I seized the opportunity. I will tell you it's been probably the best five and a half years of my professional career and my personal life because I work damn hard, but I'm so happy doing what I do, working with the people that I work with. Such amazing scientists just blow your mind every single day the way these people just figure things out. and 75 ,000 customers of which the large proportion of those are subscription. And we've been a business, as you know, that's been hand to mouth, hand to mouth from a supply chain perspective because as we produce, the demand builds. And then we've got to go and produce more.

55:29Ilan Sobel:And it's just scaling that business. And now I'm really glad to say that a couple of weeks ago, we're a NASDAQ-listed company today. And a couple of weeks ago, we raised a significant amount of money to build a second facility, which is going to be a 100-ton facility. Wow. Right? And again, my dream, and this is what's amazing about the technology, but my dream is to have a facility literally in every major country in the world, and we can do that because when you look at our technology and the way the technology is built and, you know, you've kind of had an eye into the facility when we've done a number of the tours over Zoom, but when you understand that we built a 25-ton facility for$5 million, right?

56:18Ilan Sobel:That's not a lot of capital for a 25-ton facility that ultimately from an investment perspective can generate$60 to$70 million of revenue a year. And the biggest challenge in biomanufacturing today, whether it's with biologics or just generally with biomanufacturing, is that it's not replicable. It's not scalable because it's like$150 million of capital and it takes a long time to get that return. What's unique in the brilliance of Dr. Yoki, Yoki Hagai who's the co-founder of the company and she's the mother of the technology, the brilliance of the system that she built is that we can scale it for really capital levels that are like in a way software economics in biotech, which is unique.

57:11Ilan Sobel:And that's what excites me because we can really amplify and scale these life-changing compounds and drive the most important word in our North Star of the company is democratization. Democratization, the power of the plant kingdom.

57:31Darin Olien:Yeah, that's huge. And, you know, with Vinia flying and the new hydration and what else are you excited about are you looking yeah i've got something i want to show

57:43Ilan Sobel:you something actually i'm gonna i'm just gonna jump from my chair now because i brought i brought something to show you yeah you got some other secrets life-changing compound well i'm i'll

57:54Darin Olien:wait for the life-changing compound for sure i traveled um thousands and thousands of miles to find compounds and the fact that you're just bringing it to me and I don't have to be on a train or a donkey or a water buffalo. By the way, I've ridden a water buffalo in the Philippines and survived it. This is much easier.

58:20Ilan Sobel:So, you know, with Vinnie, it's almost the way, the best way to talk about it is if you look at, like, the blue oceans, right?

58:30Ilan Sobel:And let's just, I'm going to say that again, okay? Just for cutting, all right? So with Vinia, I want to kind of reference a little bit of the blue zones. Yeah. And Vinia is really the power of the French paradox to the next level.

58:49Darin Olien:Okay, everybody. Are you ready to upgrade your operating system? I know I am. I'm always game to do that. Not just physically, but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. That's what we're doing over at Super Life Patreon. This isn't just behind-the-scenes membership. It's a global experiment in conscious living that I am connected to, committed with, in every cell of my body. Each week, you'll get exclusive access to deeper podcast conversations, extended interviews, voice notes from the road of me personally, personal reflections, behind-the-scenes footage, community wellness challenges, and even surprise drop-ins that I no longer do on social media because I don't really dig it anymore.

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1:00:21Ilan Sobel:You know the French paradox. You know the French people, they have a very fatty diet, lots of pate, lots of lipids, but they have amazing cardiovascular health. What was it that's giving them this amazing cardiovascular health?

1:00:38Darin Olien:It's got to be the olives.

1:00:39Ilan Sobel:Well, no, it's the moderate consumption of red wine. I'll get to the olives in a second. It's the moderate consumption of red wine, which is two to three glasses of red wine every day. And when the scientists looked to see what it was inside the red wine, they realized it was this magical molecule called Pisaed resveratrol. Say it again.

1:01:01Darin Olien:Pisaed.

1:01:02Ilan Sobel:Better. Pisaed resveratrol together with all the other polyphenols, catagen, coercetin, anthocyanin, and tannins. And off we went and basically leveraged that knowledge base that consumers have on the French paradox because a lot of consumers understand the power of the red grape and the power of red wine and cardiovascular health, and that's what we're bringing them. Without the poison of the alcohol. Right, exactly. And obviously in a much more magnified level because we magnify the levels of the Pisces. So now what's next for us in our direct-to-consumer business is going back to the blue zones, is the power of the Mediterranean diet is anchored as well in the olive.

1:01:49Ilan Sobel:right and we have just like today in the case of our red grape cell blood flow super food product we where we are the only company that can produce past the edresveratrol commercial industrial scale because of the magnification a hundred times we took an olive and there's a very unique polyphenol antioxidant in the olive called verbosco side say that verbosco side verbosco side okay it's also a glycoside so it has amazing solubility okay and today in our olive cells and here we have yeah i have some of our olive cells okay which we now are producing at large scale we're just working through the regulatory path and working through the clinical path We today produce verbosicide at the highest levels in the world.

1:02:47Ilan Sobel:Verbosicide is a very potent anti-inflammatory polyphenol from the olive. Inside every 100 milligrams of this material, it smells good, it's the same as two liters of olive oil from a verbosicide perspective. Wow, really? Yeah. I don't suggest you drink two liters of olive oil. But literally 100 milligrams of viboskoside is equivalent to two liters of olive oil.

1:03:16Ilan Sobel:So this material now, we did some initial in vitro research and we demonstrated on human liver cells the ability to significantly reduce the fat levels. And if you think about the United States of America today, and I see it just by me being in all the airports and you look at people and I do my own kind of research, you have 100 million people today that are dealing with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. So the opportunity of going after that liver health space is significant. So this is next in line for us, which we will look to bring this to the market towards the end of next year.

1:03:57Darin Olien:Amazing.

1:03:58Ilan Sobel:And then what we decided to do as a company two years ago, So once we developed the platform technology, we decided that, and I was kind of driven by in the last four years, every month I'd get a call from a major company saying, we know what you've done on Venea. Can you do the same thing to this plant or this plant or this plant? And I became known as the no guy. And I'd say, yes, I can do it, but no, I'm not doing it for you. Now, the no I was not doing it for you wasn't because I didn't want to do it. That's what drives me. But it was because we weren't ready yet, because we hadn't got to the scale that I felt that we needed to be at in order to open our technology to the industrial giants out there, the giants of industry.

1:04:56Ilan Sobel:18 months ago, we got to a level that we felt was real scale. and we opened up a contract development and manufacturing organization. And it's actually a research and development and manufacturing organization because we're doing a lot of R &D. And this allowed us to unlock the power of our technology to solve major problems that giants of industry today are having in the pharmaceutical world, in the nutraceutical world, in the fragrance world and the nutrition world, cosmetic world as well. And today we have four major contracts. And I want to talk a little bit about two of the contracts. And these are companies that I can name, compounds I can name because a lot that we have is under NDA.

1:05:50Ilan Sobel:And so you'd have to tie me up and do a whole bunch of things for me to say anything, which I won't still. I've been well trained. but we announced a deal three weeks ago and I'm so excited about this. Literally, I just want to scream from excitement because the opportunities are just so significant and that's saffron. Okay, you got it. So we created a super resveratrol, right? The opportunity to create with a partner a super saffron. This, Darren, there's a lot of, I'm personally connected to this, and I'll touch on that in a second, but I think people understand that saffron today is the golden spice.

1:06:40Ilan Sobel:It sells for about$10 ,000 a kilo at retail, and 90 % of saffron today comes from?

1:06:50Darin Olien:India, no?

1:06:51Ilan Sobel:Iran.

1:06:52Darin Olien:Iran, oh.

1:06:54Ilan Sobel:major child labor issue related to when it flowers and picking the saffron and when you actually go to clinicaltrials.gov it's kind of crazy if you think about it there are literally tens of really good clinical trials with significant clinical evidence around Saffron's ability to have a significant impact on well-being as it relates to indications like Alzheimer's, okay? Indications like dementia, indications like ADD, ADHD, eye health, skin health. But the challenge has been no consistent supply, not economically viable, right? And so no giant of industry out there has been audacious enough, bold enough to enter into the market with products which are anchored in the actives inside Saffron because you might have a product in the market today and not tomorrow because of the supply chain.

1:08:09Ilan Sobel:So we have now partnered with a company called Saffron Tech. Saffron Tech is another Israeli-based company that have developed over the last four years amazing technology to grow saffron indoor. And they have the genetics of the plant with very high levels of the critical actives, which we will use as our starting point and put it through our system where we do the tissue culture work, we train the cells. the whole process that I took you through. And ultimately, we believe we can create a super saffron which can have a significance and to be able to democratize. Now, I use the word democratize a lot, and people say, what do you mean by democratize?

1:09:03Ilan Sobel:And I say to them, it's anchored in being able to make health and wellness affordable. And you know, for Vinia, when we launched, I'll give you an example. For Vinia, when we launched in the US market in May 2021, three-month subscription, recurring subscription, was$99 for three months. You know what the price is today? Fast forward five years, five and a half years, four and a half years, nearly five years, $99 for three months. Why have we done that?

1:09:36Darin Olien:Because you've stabilized supply.

1:09:39Ilan Sobel:One, we have a commitment to democratize. We're not an hour-gouging company that's trying to drive margins, take prices up. Yes, our margins have improved significantly as a company. At the end of the day, we still have to make a profit, and we're not there yet. We're working really hard to get to EBITDA profitability, and many of our shareholders are, you know, there's a constant dialogue I'm having. But what was critical was a dollar a day, roughly a dollar a day. We have to democratize these life-changing compounds. Otherwise, in a way, we're defeating the whole purpose of what we're trying to do here, right?

1:10:17Ilan Sobel:Because we're just going to make the elite healthy. Longevity is only going to be, you know, the E in longevity is going to be for elite people, right? But we all have blood. It doesn't matter what religion, it doesn't matter where we're born, we all have red blood, right? We all interface with the plant kingdom. So the plant kingdom has to serve everybody. So right now the ability to democratize a super saffron and to make it affordable. So you look at, for example, ADD, ADHD. How many kids, I have one of them, who suffers from ADD, ADHD with all the different drugs out there and the consequences of taking those drugs, right, from a hunger or lack of hunger perspective to stunting growth to mood change, you have saffron.

1:11:12Ilan Sobel:The ability for saffron to positively impact the lives of young children, teenagers with ADD, ADHD, it's a game changer. So this is the compounds that we're really trying to drive with our technology. Amazing. we are at uh 3 30 okay uh it is totally okay for you to go where there's no but we have to do you want to give you a heads up though because i didn't realize you're going straight to two rather than 2 30 so you will probably be done for that hour um

1:11:50Darin Olien:because extra 30 minutes i believe okay uh we can finish up in like 10 minutes yeah

1:11:57Ilan Sobel:We'll finish up in a few minutes. Okay, no problems, no problems. And then we'll come back to the product at the end. That's a good way to end. So the ability for us to create a super saffron and to be able to democratize it, working together with our partner, I'm so excited. Literally on Thursday we get the saffron plant. Our scientists are starting to work on taking the cells from the critical parts of the plant where we know are the most important parts as it relates to the critical actives. And what's good about this time is normally we're deep in nature trying to find a plant, right? This time we have the plant on our doorstep, so it's a lot easier for us and we're going to move much faster.

1:12:41Ilan Sobel:And I think we're going to see some really interesting results, you know, coming out of this train over the next few months. And then the other life-changing compound I want to talk about is some work that we're doing with an amazing company called Tate & Lyle. I'm sure you've heard of Tate & Lyle. They're probably the biggest sweetener company in the world. Amazing company, amazing people, amazing commitment to sustainability, values that are totally congruent to ours. we forged a very strong partnership in December of last year when Tate and Lyle had spent a lot of resources going around the world trying to identify plants out there that nobody had spoken about.

1:13:35Ilan Sobel:Nobody had gone and done any research. Plants that were possessed sweet proteins because today we're dealing with the evil of sugar. And stevia has made a small indent, but it's very challenged from a taste perspective. And there's like a ceiling that has hit here in America. And so Tayden Lyle literally scoured the world and they identified a number of plants out there that could be the next generation of non-nutritive natural sweetness. So they identified the plants, but they had nobody to unlock that potential until we met with them. And over like a four-month period, they did very heavy diligence on us to understand our technology and our ability to magnify and multiply.

1:14:34Ilan Sobel:And I'm very excited today to say we're working on some of these plants to develop the next generation of non-nutritive natural sweetness. Now think about that, Darren. We've talked about saffron in the context of, let's call it cognitive age decline, that is the biggest fear of every human being, right? All the way through now to dealing with the evils of sugar. And you look at the perils of sugar and what it's done to the American health system, right? with type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and on and on and on, and the degrees of people challenged with those health and wellness real challenges, we're now working, spending our energy working on two compounds that are real life-changing compounds with a deep mission to be able to democratize them.

1:15:33Darin Olien:Right.

1:15:34Ilan Sobel:And I go back to where I started in this discussion. We have an opportunity to drive a movement of change, which is why meeting you was so important for me. And I'll personalize this in a moment because it's people like you that started these movements of change that really helped the consumer out there understand the gravity of industry versus the plant kingdom and trying to find that right balance. and that's why it was so important for us to start to collaborate and work together on this movement of change because this is what we're trying to do. And every person that's on our vineyard or take our olive sales, these people are not just taking our products.

1:16:17Ilan Sobel:They're coming on board actually as investors in our company, retail investors in our company. As a NASDAQ listed company, you can buy shares tomorrow on the market because they want to be part of a movement of change. and this is a movement of change ultimately you know i'm blessed i've been happily married for just on 27 years remind reminds me i've got a anniversary coming up i better not forget it uh we've been my wife and i we've been blessed with three kids and as a father as a father i kind of step back and i i really worry about this world i worry about my children i worry more deeply about my future grandchildren because 2050 10 billion people how are we going to feed ourselves there's so many indications out there right that are still unresolved we're destroying the plant kingdom Kew Gardens which is the botanical gardens the London Botanical Gardens published a report a couple of years ago that talked about over the next 10 years, 50 % of the plants that have medicinal value are going to be destroyed.

1:17:26Maybe it was 20 years, but in the near future.

1:17:29Ilan Sobel:And so we have an opportunity with our technology to really drive a movement of change. And it's not just a company, it's a movement. It's people who want to protect the planned kingdom, to use the planned kingdom and not to abuse the planned kingdom. And this is the power of what we're doing, and this is ultimately the legacy that myself and my entire team want to leave for the world with our technology. And we're just lucky that Vinia for us has been that proof of concept where all of these companies that we're working with today, they're like, wow, you did that? Wow, that's amazing. We love the science.

1:18:07Ilan Sobel:We can see the scaling. We can see the consumer reaction to it. We want our own life-changing compound. What about if it was the next generation of natural non-nutritive sweetener? What about if it was saffron? We're working on another compound in the fragrance world where you've got deforestation and this particular plant tree species will be extinct in the next 20 to 30 years.

1:18:36Darin Olien:That's how a lot of change can happen in what you're doing. Well, we should drink.

1:18:41Ilan Sobel:I think we should drink too with our new Vinia Blood Flow Hydration. So this is the product, a couple of things before we drink. As we talked about earlier, this is the first product on the market which is delivering you everything you need in hydration but it's powered by blood flow, right? Leveraging one capsule of our Vinia Red Grape Powder in every single of our six flavors in the stick packs. We have six flavors. We have lemon lime. We have lemonade. We have some orange, fruit punch, a berry, and a watermelon. Now, we realized that for this to scale, in the consumer world, taste is king. And so we actually worked with one of the best formulators from the Coca-Cola company, an ex-Cola company employee, used his talents, right?

1:19:37Ilan Sobel:And he was an amazing guy. His name is Lewis Hines. He works for a company called Bevnology. We've probably put more than 1 ,000 hours of R &D time in developing these flavor systems. It's got a very unique sweetness system as well. It's 25 calories, right? So it's not a lot of calories. 25 calories. There are literally four to five grams of sugar in this product depending on what flavor, of which two of those four grams is from coconut water, right? So it's a good source of sugar and the rest is organic. The other two grams is organic cane sugar, right? And you need to have a little bit of those sugars to be able to drive the absorption of the electrolytes in the body.

1:20:22Ilan Sobel:And so for us, we believe that we've now bringing to the market but the unique system whereby we're able to optimize hydration by leveraging the power of blood flow. Because at the end of the day, the fluids and the electrolytes, they've got to get to all those 60 ,000 miles and get to all the cells in your body. And to do that, you need to have good blood flow. We have a 90-day money-back guarantee on this, not just on efficacy but also on taste. So if you don't like the taste of this product, call up our customer service hotline. I'll give you back your money. No questions asked. That's how confident we are on the solution that we're bringing to the market.

1:21:11Ilan Sobel:So let you be the master of the verdict of our taste.

1:21:20Darin Olien:Okay.

1:21:21Ilan Sobel:One sec, let me.

1:21:23Darin Olien:Looks good. Smells good.

1:21:29Cheers.

1:21:30Ilan Sobel:Cheers. Thank you for the opportunity of appearing on your podcast.

1:21:33Darin Olien:You betcha.

1:21:38Oh, yeah.

1:21:39Darin Olien:Wow, that's really good. I told you, man. I told you. That's really good. No aftertaste. It's getting the 60 ,000 miles rolling right now.

1:21:52Ilan Sobel:The sensory, you know, it's tasty skin. thank you brother it's a pleasure thank you for for giving us this opportunity to talk about the movement of change and hopefully bringing many of the viewers out there on board as part of our movement of change get as much help as we can get get it flowing get that blood flowing

1:22:13Darin Olien:thanks brother thank you cheers cheers