Invested In Climate

Mushrooms that eat waste with Mycocycle & Gener8tor, Ep #55

Jun 6, 2023

38:46

Today, we’re going to talk about mushrooms. More than a delicious pizza topping, fungi can be useful in many different ways and it might even play a heroic role in addressing climate change. How might mushrooms help? Let's count some of the ways. They can be eaten and help reduce our dependence on animal protein. They can replace animal-based leather, sequester carbon, serve as a biofuel, improve soil health, and thereby reduce our need for fertilizers. They can accelerate reforestation, create an alternative to petroleum-based plastics and packaging, and finally, they can help break down and absorb pollutants.

This last use case is called bioremediation and it’s the focus of the startup Mycocycle – a company that’s making impressive progress using mushrooms to clean up waste.

We’re joined by Mycocycle Founder and CEO Joanne Rodriguez, as well as one of her investors Ryan Jeffrey, Senior Managing Director at the venture firm and accelerator, Gener8tor. We chatted about the opportunity to transform the waste management sector, how fungi can help, Mycocycle’s traction, Gener8tor’s investment thesis and how they’ve helped Joanne’s journey, and much more.

Hope you enjoy this one, mushroom jokes and all. Here we go.

In today’s episode, we cover:

[3:25] Joanne’s background & how she got to where she is today
[4:23] Ryan’s background & how he got to where he is today
[5:52] What is Gener8tor?
[7:11] Mycocycle, the problem it's aiming to solve & the company’s approach
[9:37] The process of leveraging the power of fungi & nature to break down waste
[13:47] Why did Gener8tor decide to invest in Mycocycle?
[16:14] The role of fungi in battling climate change & the opportunity
[18:06] The fungi-for-bioremediation business model
[20:45] Surprises & lessons of working with fungi
[21:19] The Department of Energy's Argonne National Labs & what it allowed Mycocycle to do
[24:08] Mycocycle’s experience with Gener8tor’s accelerator
[25:39] Mycocycle’s milestones
[26:46] The types of companies that Mycocycle is looking to partner with right now
[28:05] Mycocycle’s environmental impact & carbon measurement
[29:34] John’s view of milestones & risks for Mycocycle to reach commercial success
[30:57] How John sees the space in 3-5 years
[33:15] How Joanne sees the space evolving & opportunities to improve waste management
[36:34] What’s next for Mycocycle
[37:36] A final mushroom joke