Founders Interviews — Julian Melchiorri — Arborea
First, can you tell us about your professional background and the path that led you to Arborea?
My name is Julian, I’m the CEO and founder of Arborea. I’m a multidisciplinary entrepreneur with a background in engineering and innovation. I have a double master’s degree in Innovation Design Engineering from Imperial College London and RCA. I also studied at Tufts University in Boston, in the Biomedical Engineering department.
During my academic research, I focused on photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is one of the world’s most important chemical processes on our planet, in fact all life depends upon it.
At that time, as a young engineer and innovator, I wanted to find solutions to the most pressing needs of humanity and the environment, and I felt there was an enormous opportunity for humanity to develop BioSolar technologies that could harness photosynthesis in a more versatile and industrializable way.
I think we often forget how important sunlight is in our lives. Without sunlight, there would not be life on this planet. Sunlight controls the climate and allows photosynthesis to happen, with all the series of cascade reactions that sustain many biological and geological cycles. Fundamentally sunlight gives us energy, gives us food, and gives us fuel.
How was Arborea born?
Arborea was originally founded to develop biosolar technologies. I think humanity was extremely clever at developing technologies that could convert solar energy and make power out of it, but I also think that we are missing half of the picture by not converting solar energy into biochemicals if we truly want to prosperously evolve our society throughout the centuries to come.
During my academic research, I was working on photosynthesis and I was thinking, can we develop versatile photosynthetic device that can sequester CO2, produce oxygen, and biochemicals without needing fertile land? As a consequence of my research, I was able to develop a unique prototype of an artificial leaf only made with biological materials.
I picked up from the research of Tufts University on silk protein, which have incredible bio-stabilization properties, and I developed a composite biomaterial and stabilized chloroplasts in its matrix to allow the material to produce oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide. It was very exciting. The invention gained international attention, and I had to make a decision.
I would either continue to develop that specific technology through a PhD or maybe do something else. I ended up deciding to create Arborea instead, maintaining the same vision of developing biosolar technologies for the good of humanity and the environment, and not continue the development of the silk-protein-based photosynthetic materials, mainly due to fundamental issues related to costs and industrialisation.
After Arborea was founded, we came up with the first prototypes of the BioSolar Leaf technology, a completely new technology that can finally harness microbial photosynthesis on a truly scalable and cost-effective way to industrialize photosynthesis, which is our ultimate goal. So that’s how everything started.
How is your product different from the others in the market? What makes it unique?
What is unique about our technology and products? From the technology side, the BioSolar Leaf technology radically reinvents how photosynthetic microorganisms are grown to produce them in a truly cost-effective and scalable way.
Photosynthetic microorganisms are basically microscopic plants that grow in water. Our technology can grow any of the 30,000+ photosynthetic microorganisms available in nature. These microscopic plants contain naturally thousands of healthy bioactive molecules, minerals, vitamins, protein and many other nutritious compounds.
Additionally, the BioSolar Leaf can uniquely sequester carbon dioxide from raw process gasses without having to concentrate the CO2 or compress it, making the carbon-sequestration process cost-effective and our process carbon-negative. And in fact, that’s what we do with the BioSolar Leaf, we turn carbon dioxide and sunlight into food and protein without needing any fertile land. You can also imagine the environmental implications, the positive impact that this would have.
How does Arborea’s technology impact the world?
To start, we have picked one photosynthetic microorganism that has 70% protein content, then we were able to remove the taste, the color and ended up with a special protein with a very clean taste and color, and a unique multifunctional profile that is adaptable to a wide range of applications.
This protein provides both nutritional and functional properties to food, such as emulsification, foaming, oil holding and many more. And yes, in some cases, replaces the functionality that’s provided by egg protein, whey protein and other animal-based protein or less sustainable protein out there. But also provides a unique combination of functional and nutritional properties that no other protein can provide today.
It is a very nutritious, versatile, very functional, clean in taste and color protein that is also carbon neutral and doesn’t use any fertile land to be produced. So it’s hyper land efficient and land efficiency is extremely important. Unfortunately, we don’t have an unlimited surface area on our planet, and we need surface area exposed to sunlight to produce food. We’re already exceeding limits in terms of CO2 emissions, fresh water use and decreasing the amount of natural habitats mainly due to inefficiencies in our current food system. And we would like to stop this, or at least to decrease it as much as possible. We would like to break the vicious cycle between the increase of food production and biodiversity loss. We hope and we think that our technology would be instrumental towards that objective among others, such as addressing food security and global micronutrient deficiencies on the longer term.
What has been the most crucial moment in the history of Arborea so far?
Moving the company to Portugal back in 2021 was a very crucial moment. We had to relocate the entire company, hire a local team and quickly develop our technology in a very short period of time, including adapting to a new language, legal and bureaucratic system.
So yes, it was a crucial moment, but I think we succeeded really well, thanks to our team and their great dedication to our mission.
If you could go back in time, is there anything you’d do differently?
Well, I think everyone makes mistakes. Would I go back in time to change things? Do I have regrets? Probably not. Of course, we make mistakes, but regrets, it’s a bit different. I mean, I don’t like to tell myself that I should have done this, I could have done that, because otherwise, you get into an interesting psychological loop, which is not helpful.
I think it’s important to recognize when you make mistakes, but then we need to focus on the present and plan the future by trying to avoid making the same mistakes rather than having regrets.
Do you have any tips or advice for an aspiring founder?
The advice I would give to very early stage tech founders is to dedicate most of the time to commercial and business development activities, especially in the early days, rather than just focusing on the technology.
This would help make sure that the technology you are developing is solving real commercial issues and its pricing or business model are working within a real business opportunity. Of course, the humanitarian and the ecological impact of a technology is more important, but it needs to make commercial sense if you want to make a sustainable revolution out of it. The better your sustainable or humanitarian solutions work economically, the better they are going to deliver impact globally.
Lastly, what has been the most challenging part of growing your startup? And the funnier part?
The most challenging part was the move to Portugal because we had to do this towards the end of the COVID crisis. So we were hit immediately, as everyone else was, with the supply chain crisis and the implications of the war in Ukraine, including major delays and steep price increase for most goods and consumables including stainless steel and technical equipment.
The most fun part of growing a company for me is working and solving problems together with your colleagues every day. Sharing the pains and gains while supporting each other.
