From Seed to Success: How Saeed Amidi Built an Entrepreneurial Engine in Silicon Valley

Episode 39 • 18th December 2024 • Barking Mad • BSM Partners

Jordan Tyler: Have you ever dreamed of turning your groundbreaking idea into a successful company? Whether you're envisioning the next big tech innovation, redefining sustainable agriculture, or creating products that could reshape the pet industry, the journey of entrepreneurship is exhilarating and fraught with obstacles.

Success requires vision and grit, but also the right resources, opportunities, guidance, and support to navigate the unpredictable and ever-changing world of startups. Based on BSM Partners extensive experience, often the most innovative companies are young, scrappy startups seeking investment partners to jumpstart their success in the market.

However, most startups will fail, regardless of what industry they're in. According to a report from Embroker, which we've linked in the show notes for this episode, roughly 90% of startups will fail—10% within the first year and 70% between year two and year five. The No. 1 reason startups fail, according to this report, is misjudging market demand, and the No. 2 reason is running out of funding. But, with the right guidance, partners, and support, these odds could greatly improve.

On today's episode, we're taking you behind the scenes of startup acceleration, particularly through Plug and Play, an accelerator program serving more than 300 startups at a time across over 19 industries worldwide, including animal health and agricultural technology, or ag tech.

Throughout the episode, you'll hear from my friends over at Plug and Play Topeka. the founder of Plug and Play himself, and a pet food founder who attributes part of the success of his company today on his experience with Plug and Play five years ago. Over the next hour, we'll spell out funky venture capital jargon and learn about the ins and outs of the program, plus an exciting announcement at the end of the episode, so be sure to stick around.

Welcome to Barking Mad, a podcast by BSM Partners. I'm your host, Jordan Tyler.

Plug and Play was founded in: 2006

Saeed's own journey as an entrepreneur has certainly inspired the way Plug and Play supports startup founders today. When we sat down with Saeed at the Plug and Play Silicon Valley Summit, held at the company's headquarters in Sunnyvale, California this November, he explained becoming an entrepreneur himself wasn't so much a matter of interest as it was one of necessity.

Saeed Amidi: You know, I sometimes discuss with friends, are you born an entrepreneur or do you become one? And it's a big question. And then more importantly, how do you become a successful entrepreneur? In my particular case, I had heard business all around breakfast, lunch, and dinner table. But if you ask me how I became an entrepreneur, I had to become an entrepreneur.

In: 1979

And in: 1970

And I started my first company that summer. It is called American Liquid Packaging System, ALPS, and it has a division, which is like import export business for plastic raw material. And very soon after one or two years of opening that division, I started representing ExxonMobil for polyethylene and polypropylene. And I still run that company. It's about $300 million a year. And then through the packaging business, I got into bottled water business, which is the second division of Alps. And combined, it has a revenue of about $700 million, 3,000 employees, and I call that my day job. So, that's a long way to say I had to become an entrepreneur to live with the same standard that I was living before the Iranian Revolution.

Jordan Tyler: Saeed told us the story of how he went from a resourceful founder to a champion of founders. The story is one of incredible opportunity, starting when he rented an office space across the street from Stanford University in Palo Alto, just a stone's throw from Silicon Valley proper.

Saeed Amidi: At 165 University Avenue, which we now we call it Lucky Building.

Jordan Tyler: In that office, Saeed became Pierluigi Zappacosta's neighbor, the man who brought Logitech, a prominent computer hardware and software developer, from Geneva, Switzerland to the United States, before taking the company public. Next to crop up in the neighborhood was Osborne Computer, the first portable laptop computer. From there, Saeed bought up more real estate in Silicon Valley, soon becoming the landlord of PayPal Founder Peter Till. Then came Andy Rubin with his Sidekick mobile phone. This pattern continued, and before long, Google moved into one of Saeed's office buildings with just three people and a dream. According to Saeed, the company stayed in the building until they were 50 people strong, and we all know the rest of that story.

So, all this to say, you can't build an empire—or a startup for that matter—without hard work, discipline, and resilience. It also takes patience. But sometimes, a little luck goes a long way too.

Saeed Amidi: In real estate, people say three things are important: location, location, and location. I would say in technology, also, I got lucky. I was at the right place, right time, where Google was born, PayPal was born. And again, as an import export guy and a bottled water guy, I said, “My God, maybe I should get involved in technology.”

It took me a while, but I started investing in startups through a small partnership called Amidzad. And we did four or five angel investments a year. And quite frankly, we had Dropbox in there, we had Lending Club in there, we had PayPal in there.

hange. The term dates back to: 2013

Saeed Amidi: So I said maybe my hobby is better than my real business and that is why I opened Plug and Play and quite frankly, we thought initially we are sort of like co-working space. So the real estate itself was a business, like WeWork, but then I get really excited about meeting the entrepreneurs and learning about what they are doing. And next thing I knew, they said they need money. Then they said they need connections. They need customers.

So, I wish I had a master plan, but I didn't. It just sort of evolved from providing real estate for our startups. And then the biggest part of being successful as an entrepreneur is the people you connect with and the money you can raise. So, we try to create a mini-Silicon Valley in this building. I used to call it Silicon Valley in a box, where you meet your investors, you meet your customers, and you build a community.

Jordan Tyler: For Saeed, this community building is part and parcel of Plug and Play's success, and that of its founders that it supports. It's all about connecting the right ideas to the right people, and bringing a range of stakeholders—from corporations to investors, academia, and even nonprofit foundations—to the table to drive sustainable innovation forward together.

Saeed Amidi: I believe Plug and Play is my 12th company that I started. Between my packaging company, bottled water company, I think I started nine more. Some succeeded, some failed. But then what has become exciting is that I know the entrepreneurs and what they need. Then I kind of learned what Mercedes needs, what Walmart needs, in the case of animal health and food, what Cargill needs in Topeka, Kansas. And if you kind of understand these conglomerates and their research and their innovation journey, and you complement it with technology from startups, and lately I am, have become really excited about universities and the research they do and the smart people that graduate from all of these universities.

So, I started with entrepreneurs, I went to corporations, then I went to these universities, and I am opening 20 offices inside the campus of university. What is most exciting about this summit is that we still have an incredible amount of startups. I think we featured 340 startups. So we had about 800 corporations. So, you have the entrepreneurs, you have the corporations, we had close to 450 VCs and angel investors. But what is new now that excites me, now we combine academic, entrepreneurship, corporations, and most unique is the economic development or the city or the state, the governor. So now we combine economic development, universities, large corporations that could use the technology, and the startups.

So quite frankly, it's like a whole ecosystem that has come together. And the most unique element, we announced it that Knight Foundation and Carson Foundation in Minneapolis, now the foundation would love to promote entrepreneurship. So, they have come to the table too. So, this is first in our 10 years of doing a Summit that you have not only entrepreneurs, corporations and VCs, but you have these two other, I call it pillars of growth and pillars of economy, come all together to support the entrepreneurs.

everywhere at Plug and Play's: 2024

Saeed Amidi: In: 2023

So, we feel the community helps each other. And then we also did about 30 follow-on investments from our funds now. So, as long as we can choose the best entrepreneurs, the best technologies to solve a real-world problem, we would love everybody around us to benefit from the platform as well.

Jordan Tyler: Now, Plug and Play is a vast global enterprise spanning a wide range of industries. But to get a better understanding of how the program works on the ground level, we sat down with the Plug and Play Topeka team, where Director Lindsay Lebahn, Ventures Manager Mark McAllister, and Program Manager Anne Gunden lead nine-month programs for the company's Agtech and Animal Health verticals.

Startups going through these particular programs are bringing forward innovations in agricultural technology, like analytics and automation, field monitoring and precision farming, soil sensing and analysis, and supply chain optimization, as well as animal health initiatives spanning alternative feeds, early disease detection, livestock monitoring and production efficiency, and drug and vaccine development. Both sides of the equation are laser focused on solutions that advance sustainability.

Now, for those of us who don't have a ton of exposure to the venture capital or VC world, myself included, let's break down some of the descriptive jargon and nomenclature Plug and Play uses. Don't worry, there won't be a quiz later, but just so we're all on the same page, there are a ton of resources out there for startups and some programs operate differently than others.

So, Mark. I've heard you all use the word accelerator, but I also know there are incubators and foundries and other terms floating around out there in the startup space. So, would you mind breaking down the difference for us?

Mark McAllister: Y Combinator is an incubator, Techstars and Plug and Play are an accelerator. You'll have several other venture firms that will treat it more like a foundry, and a foundry in that case is where you essentially either locate a problem set, locate a technology, and then you go out and you find a team that you attach that technology, and then you give them the resources to develop that. And then you kind of throw them off out into the world and you take an X amount.

The term I think is just best used to describe the function that that organization plays. So, Y Combinator will go out and find founders who have a product, but are very, very early and will help them develop that product, partially through their network, but mostly because Y Combinator has a tremendous set of founders and their mentor network is really good in software. But Techstars and Plug and Play, again, we prefer commercialization. We prefer something that can meet a need. So, we're really good at brokering the relationship between the startups and the corporates, which really exclusively just makes us an accelerator program because we're not incubating ideas. I mean, we can, again, where we bring in some of our research partners with a really young founders, like, well, maybe I could do this. But typically, we're pretty much just an accelerator program. We're here to help you sell partners.

Jordan Tyler: Awesome, thank you so much for that. Now, I've also heard the words “cohort,” “batch,” and “pod,” which are just kind of fun words to say, but what do they mean? Anne, would you be so kind to take us to school on this?

Anne Gunden: So, for our programs, as we source these startups who are of interest to our corporate partners, once they're selected into the program, they become this cohort. I use that term a lot. We also use the term batch, which is good to know, because undoubtedly you're going to hear us use the word batch.

So, in our Animal Health program, the current startups in that program are batch eight. So batch and cohort, they're our eighth cohort to come through the program. On the Ag side, it's the 10th batch.

But we also use that term because we do, for our program, we do all of our planning hand in hand with the other verticals in our pod. So, our pod is called the Sustainable Future Pod, so we work directly with New Materials and Packaging, Food and Beverage, Sustainability, and then Animal Health and Agtech, our two verticals. So, we also use the term cohort to talk about that pod cohort since they're on like the content calls together. But yeah, so cohort batch, that's our group, our group of startups currently going through the program.

Jordan Tyler: I'm so glad I asked because I can see how I can get confusing as we're talking about it, but I like the way you explained it, makes perfect sense, so thank you for that. Now, as I'm thinking about the program, I would imagine the value that a founder or a team gets out of the program might depend on where they're at in their individual startup journey. So Mark, I'm going to throw this one to you. Would you mind talking about the range of stages people are in when they come to you?

Mark McAllister: Predominantly, we work with seed stage companies. Early commercialization is prime location for us. But, again, I think the latest we've accelerated was a Series C company. We discuss quite frequently with, with Series A, some Series B. Again, if you're interested in participating with more of our kind of thought leaders in a particular sector within animal health, or any of our verticals, right, we'll work with anyone in that range who's kind of interested in sitting down with the corporates that we've got in the program. So predominantly it's seed, I think that's the vast majority, but we range as well.

Jordan Tyler: Okay, let's break that down a bit. The startup life cycle is actually really fascinating. And I found a resource from Silicon Valley Bank that explains the various stages of venture capital and startup funding. I'll link that resource in the show notes for this episode, for any listeners out there who want to learn more about the land of VC.

Anyway, according to this resource, Pre-Seed startups haven't received funds from an investor yet. Usually, they're bankrolling their great idea themselves or through friends and family and sometimes through micro-VCs. From here, companies grow into the Seed stage where they're seeing early-stage funding from certain VCs and angel investors, which are individual investors who use their own funds to invest rather than taking funds from a pool, which is loosely how venture capital works.

The next phase is Series A, which involves bigger investments from larger VCs and angels. Series B, as you probably have guessed, involves more venture capital, usually firms that specialize in later-stage investments. And then you have Series C and beyond, through which startups sort of graduate to seeking funds not only from VCs, but also from private equity firms, hedge funds, and banks. So essentially, as you move through each phase, you're gathering more funding, you're compiling more resources, and you're growing and scaling the business.

So, now that we have that information under our belts, let's bring things back to the Plug and Play team. As we were talking, Lindsay added some really great context about how else Plug and Play supports the startups in its cohorts and batches.

Lindsay Lebahn: A lot of our partners utilize Plug and Play for their external and long-term innovation. So, they are looking for us to vet and source these newer, no one knows about them companies. We're trying to find the needle in the haystack, right? And to do that, you have to sort through a lot of hay. That is very time consuming.

There's a lot of smoke and mirrors out there or people that won't make it. And so part of our job as a trusted partner to our corporates is to do some of that due diligence up front and make sure that they are getting quality startups that fit their specific need. And so that's why we kind of have that Pre-Seed focus is because we are trying to find that needle in the haystack.

And yeah, because this is five years out from shelf life, they've got time to work and to mold these companies to really fit within what they're already doing. But what makes Plug and Play special, I think, is that because we don't take any equity, we can work with some of these more mature startups, some of these ones that are Series A and Series B, and sometimes those are a need and a fit for our partners too. If they go through a big switch or COVID happened, we saw this in everyone's supply chain. We need to fix this right now. What do you have that we can implement right away? Plug and Play was perfectly placed for that because we do have relationships with these older, more mature startups that could “plug and play” into their model.

And so, because we don't take that equity, I think that's like the biggest part for the startup is they don't have to give anything to work with us. And so we can provide custom solutions along the gamut.

Jordan Tyler: Fascinating. I love that. Now I'm curious to learn about this vetting process. What sort of criteria does Plug and Play look for when it's determining which startups to partner with and bring into the program?

Mark McAllister: I think the biggest thing is the focus areas within the program, and we'll typically make those public pretty early in the process of our prospecting slash selection period each year. Most of our corporates are looking for currently commercialized solutions. There are exceptions to that rule, where companies more in the ideation phase end up having a really great conversation with one of our partners and either end up co developing or we put them in touch with one of our university research partners and something develops out of that. There's several examples of that.

So, we're not exclusive to this, but generally speaking, the companies that succeed the best in our program have an initial product, have some initial commercial traction, are kind of looking for their next big corporate partner, or in, you know, in the first several quarters of their traction growth on the commercialization side, have validation of the products, either through the regulatory or through other traction. And then it's just again, as our name suggests, a plug-and-play fit for most of our corporates where we say, “Hey. You know, you're looking for this type of product, got a company who's got this product. You guys should chat.”

Lindsay Lebahn: While Mark is our point of contact, it's his team and he gets to lean on an entire ventures team that spans 62 offices worldwide. And so, a lot of times we aren't just an American accelerator program. We are a global accelerator program and we're acting as a launch pad or a soft-landing pad for some of these startups because they were, you know, sourced in a different country and now they get the opportunity to come to the United States and open some of those doors and work with some of those corporations that they've dreamt about forever.

So, I do think, while Mark makes all of our final decisions, he does have a team behind him. So it's not just Mark behind his like keyboard warrior, looking up like “new technologies in animal health.” You know, we've got kind of people on the ground that are going to conferences and meeting all these people, university connections and getting that technology early and making sure that we keep a pulse on them. Like, “Hey, let me check back with them. They aren't ready for us yet, but eventually they will be.”

Mark McAllister: Lindsay, I think that's a really great point. The statistic that I share quite frequently is over the last four years, about 60% of the startups we accelerate are US-based and the remaining 40% are global, predominantly out of Europe, but we've worked with several Asian companies, companies from South Africa, right? We're very, very much a global accelerator program and we source as such.

I think we're very agnostic on the requirements we set for startups other than their capability and their product. We will quite literally work with anyone that meets a need for our corporate partners. Obviously, you know, if you're predominantly in the European markets and we're going to introduce you to a US-based corporation, there's some challenges in bringing a new product to a different market. Obviously, that's understood. But again, if you solve the need for one of our corporates, there's a pathway for us to work together.

Jordan Tyler: So now that we sort of understand the basis of the program, let's move on to the value. Coming to you, Anne, what do startup founders gain access to by participating in one of Plug and Play's programs?

Anne Gunden: I think the biggest and most obvious value they get that kind of differentiates our program from others is the direct corporate connections. Part of our invitation to them in the program is this kind of like dangling the carrot of, “Listen, we have partners who are interested in your technology, like, be part of the program.”

But then additional things that come from that. We have a really, really great mentor network, which tends to be for startups who maybe don't have like a pilot outcome or something, you know, kind of the next step with corporate partners, they tend to rank the mentor network as like the biggest value takeaway.

And then obviously if there's someone who is able to secure some kind of pilot or project or something with a partner or a relationship with a partner, that tends to be the biggest value. And that's feedback we asked for at the end of the program. So, statistically speaking, those are the two biggest value adds.

And then other things that come up frequently are the cohort interactions and whether it's connecting with founders who are in a similar space or doing something technology that's adjacent to theirs or whatever, so kind of that cohort interaction, I think it's very much kind of like being away at summer camp, right? You connect with friends, that way you meet new friends. So, I think that's a huge value add, too. And then the content series that we offer. A lot of times that depends on what stage they're in, maturity wise, funding wise, but some of the earlier stage startups really, really love the content that we offer too. And if they're later stage, that's less valuable to them. So, I'd say those are the highlights.

Mark McAllister: I think any disciplined investor will have a pretty robust set of industry relationships and will typically validate any of the technology they look at through that network. We'll typically also, you know, structure some introductions.

The interesting part about Plug and Play is, as both an investor and a group serving our corporate network, I think we preempt a lot of that upfront. So, all of our programming, all of the focus areas within our accelerator program are preset by our corporate partners and any of the startups that we sourced for the program, certainly any of the startups that we accept for the program, are essentially pre-qualified to meet a certain set of requirements or focus areas from our corporate partners. I think that's kind of the secret sauce of why most of our programs have a really high level of engagement.

And I think the other thing, too, is as a network, as an ecosystem run by the corporates, we obviously don't ask anything of the startups we work with. There's no equity charge. There's no fee up front. It's free to participate. If you qualify on the set of needs a particular corporate’s looking at, that's pretty much your free ticket into the program. And I think that from all of the founders that I've spoken with who've participated or are aware of Plug and Play, that's typically up there as well on the reasons they really enjoy our platform.

Jordan Tyler: Let's kind of move on now to what a typical program agenda looks like. And I'll throw this one first to Anne because I know that you are heavily involved in coordinating this whole shebang. So, let's use the Agtech and Animal Health batches as a sort of framework for the whole global enterprise. If you could walk us through this process and how key points or events along the way help these founders prepare for the big pitch day, which is the conclusion of the program at Plug and Play's June Expo in Topeka.

Anne Gunden: So, once we have selected our group of startups for the program, the first part of it is kind of beginning of the school year, right? It's like the onboarding, the intake stage where we're trying to learn as much about them as we can beyond what we already know. So, a series of intake interviews, gathering of information, and the first introduction to our corporate partners is involved in that kind of intake stage.

In this new program, we did our in-person batch kickoff. The first time where we're like, we already know who's in the program, we're going to get them in the same room with our corporate partners, and we're going to get that part of this program started from the get-go.

And the other part of that kind of onboarding intake stage is another series of corporate startup interactions. We call them our Corporate Focus Weeks. We have what we call reverse pitches where our corporates pitch to our startups. They talk about who they are, how they work, how they're organized, what their needs are, what it's like to work with them, what types of things they can offer startups. So, we're getting all of the details. We're initiating these relationships, hoping that then the rest of the program is the time to foster those relationships.

So, plant those seeds, then the startups can jump into our content series where we run typically industry-agnostic content series, but we have started to get into kind of industry specific stuff too. So, virtual workshops led by subject matter experts, whether that's mentors in our network or other people we know in industries who can talk about a variety of different things, whether it's fundraising advice or business development, optimization, or branding, or trying to land in a new market, either regionally or technologically speaking.

And then that goes hand in hand also, or at the same time runs parallel with our mentorship aspect of the program. So that's when we're doing the matchmaking. We're trying to find the best mentors to fit with the startups. Now they're getting into kind of the pick and choose this content, this workshop interests me, whereas this one's not relevant to me. So, then they're kind of starting to individualize their own needs throughout the program, which is kind of cool—not kind of cool, really cool—and that's leading them toward kind of this big graduation event where they can kind of showcase what they've learned or how they've grown since the beginning of the program.

So, that relationship that we've established with the corporates at the beginning becomes really cool because we'll see those grow. But undoubtedly, we will also see at the end of this program, our corporate partners paying attention to startups. They did not pay attention to you at the beginning of the program, and because of the things that they've gone through during the program, all of a sudden, there's going to be an increased interest in what those startups can offer. So yeah, that's the program in a nutshell.

Jordan Tyler: Yeah. It's almost like a coming of age story for these founders. You know, they're trying to figure out how their innovation is going to be best suited in the real market. And I would imagine having access to mentors and corporate partners like that is just invaluable.

Anne Gunden: Yes, we've had some really cool takeaways that have come as a result of working with mentors that have led to significant pivots for startups. So, the very first batch that I led, Animal Health, we had a startup that started out in the human health space, was looking to expand in the animal health space, had a really good relationship with one of our mentors and decided at that point, animal health is not for us right now. Like we're going to shift back. The interesting like add on to that particular story is that they have since changed. They have since decided animal health actually is. But anyways, that founder told me that was our most valuable takeaway from the program was realizing that we weren't ready for that pivot.

And then last batch we had, again, it was an animal health company who, after talking to some mentors and then working with one of our partners, like our educational university and economic development partners, realized that their technology could be used in a very different way and hit a very different market and a very different focus than they had intended.

So, the mentorship can be more than just like, “I'd like your advice on this.” “Oh, that's helpful. That's kind of what I thought or not what I thought.” It can lead to these really significant pivots that could make or break a company, to be completely honest. So those are just two really cool success stories from the last couple of batches.

Lindsay Lebahn: I think from the outsider too, sometimes it's like your babies. You don't notice how much they've grown cause you're with them every day. So, these are Anne’s babies, right? Her startups are her babies for this batch and this cohort. And so, you're like, “Have they really grown that much?” You don't really notice it.

And then we have our partners and our mentors and people get to see them once or twice a year, and they get to see a four-minute pitch at the beginning of the program and what they think is their best foot forward. They go through our entire program series. So, whether they think they're growing, they're absorbing it, these little nuggets make a really big difference here or there. Then they get to pitch at our Expo, at our, like, graduation event, and every single partner talks through how much better that pitch is. And it's really fun to see that growth.

Jordan Tyler: Absolutely. I love the way you put that, Lindsay. So now we know all about the Plug and Play program from the team itself, but let's take it a step further. I'm super excited to share parts of a conversation I had with Rich Kelleman, founder of Bond Pet Foods, a BSM Partners client revolutionizing protein for pet food using precision fermentation to create biologically identical animal proteins, just without the animals.

Rich Kelleman: So, we are a Boulder, Colorado-based company that's working with fermentation to make meat protein like chicken, turkey, and fish without the animal for pet food applications.

Our proteins are complete, allowing brands to fully replace their meat meals, byproducts one to one in their recipes. It's lean, it's scalable, so the math makes sense from a unit economics standpoint to include it at high inclusion in their formulations. Just as important, it's wholly more sustainable and humane compared with meat and animal ingredients that are available in the pet food supply chain today.

gural animal health cohort in: 2020

It was actually through the Foodbytes program that he became familiar with the Plug and Play team—or rather, where the Plug and Play team first voiced an interest in partnering with the Rich and Bond.

Rich Kelleman: Rabobanks Foodbytes, we participated in that just to see if we can fine tune our pitch, but also like, through that work, understand how we could focus on the things that matter from a business development and also capital journey standpoint that could allow us to take the next steps with the business.

So they'd have a pitch competition and they invite startups in food and ag to present their proposition and what they're trying to bring to the world. And then you get real-world feedback from ADM and others who are on the judge panel and then investors were in the audience too. So, it was a good forum, but Plug and Play was there, and so after my pitch, I was sitting at the table in my booth and the team came up and I said, “Hey, we want to learn more about what you're doing.” And that conversation slowly kind of built to an invitation to participate in a food batch that led to a lot of opportunities for the company.

You know, I think more valuable aside from the program itself was just the networking opportunities that Plug and Play helped broker, including introducing us to a key partner that's now in the Bond family. So, it was a little bit serendipitous. I didn't know much about Plug and Play at all. Just part of another program and them being present in the audience, that's how I was introduced to PnP and the program.

Depending on what your business is and how you're looking to build it and grow it, their network is so wide and deep, and they have really strong relationships with multinationals and other global players. So, when there is a fit, they're uniquely positioned to help make those intros.

Jordan Tyler: So, take me back—you're going through the program. What really stood out to you throughout that experience?

Rich Kelleman: So most of it, with the exception of the pitch event itself, the program was virtual. I think there were opportunities that were part of the calendar of the program where, all right, if you're looking at things like establishing your brand and marketing, there are modules and speakers and people that they would plug in for a session or a seminar around that. If it was around packaging and logistics or something like that, there would be kind of a webinar around that and with opportunities for Q&A.

So, depending on what your pain points were and what you were trying to solve for with your business or improve with your business, there were opportunities for you to learn from people who have been through it before and giving you access to have that Q&A with them, just so that whatever they've learned, you could try to dial in with more specificity into what's more relevant for your business.

That said, and I think that's a great part of Plug and Play program. At the end of the day, like a lot of this is about how you can accelerate your work in different ways, or get a clear understanding from, in our case, pet food brands. And what they're looking for with their proteins, their ingredients and their materials, and the Plug and Play team being able to connect us with those partners and have whole conversations around what we're creating and what real value that has or doesn't have to these different players, I think is where the gold was for us as part of this engagement and in the program itself.

And then, yeah, as I mentioned, you know, as we were looking to really see how we could ensure that there was future offtake for our ingredients and a partner on the other side who would be keen on using it, the ingredients and the recipes, that's where they were tremendously helpful just to facilitate some of those introductions and conversations.

Jordan Tyler: Right. And so I know this was several years ago, but I'm thinking about the pitch that you had coming into the Plug and Play program. And I'm wondering if you remember making any major changes to that pitch based on your learnings from the program and how any of those changes may have lent themselves to your ability to establish future partnerships and kind of propel you and Bond beyond the program itself.

Rich Kelleman: Rabobank’s Foodbytes and Plug and Play were back to back, and so the one two punch of going through in a hothouse kind of way, the story and what we were trying to do really was helpful to fine-tune the fundamentals and the chapters of the narrative so that people could really understand what this was and how it could be valuable for the pet food world.

But I think one of the things that was helpful is when, you know, within the pitch, I kind of took a step back, and this was after kind of seeing that things weren't landing the way that I wanted to, and just providing a different point of reference for what we're doing. And for example, I think this was part of that pitch—we're not creating a new way to make ingredients that could have value in the pet or human food supply chain. The technology, that's been around for more than half a century to make everything from enzymes for cheese manufacture, to good bacteria for probiotic supplements, to, uh, vanilla, and a host of other ingredients that we're consuming on a daily, weekly, monthly basis.

And kind of including that early in the story, I think to help people understand that this isn't some spooky, scary stuff, right? It's just a creative way to employ that same kind of food process to create a different kind of protein and ingredient that could have value for a different audience.

Jordan Tyler: Totally. Yeah. I remember from some of the conversations we've had in the past for other things and stories I've written about cultured protein in the pet industry. That point really resonated with me. Even having knowledge of the industry. I'm still a consumer, right? And I still see things through the lens of a pet owner, as well as an industry analyst, and being able to demystify this whole concept as you said in that way and bring it back to things that we all know and love, like cheese, was like a light bulb moment for me personally, and obviously for others as well.

So, super interesting that part of that was developed through your time at Plug and Play. I'm curious though, I know you've participated in other programs. How do you think they compare to the Plug and Play program?

Rich Kelleman: I think they're all complimentary. Purina was so focused on the pet food space. So, you're surrounded by early-stage entrepreneurs who are roughly at that same point in their journey. So that community that they created just allowed you to kind of think through maybe some of the things that you're trying to solve for at that early stage in their development. And then still some good friends that are in pet, like we call each other a couple of times a year just to check in and see how we can be helpful for each other.

Foodbytes was a very short program in the sense that it was just about the pitch and how you could really tune it in a way that, you know, you could leave that exercise with confidence and then start stumping for cash and closing your round and giving your business the liquidity and capitalization that it needed. So, it had a specific purpose, but they also built a community that lives. And so you could have access to that to really help as you kind of step into your work and tap into others that could be helpful.

Plug and Play, again, for me, there's all of that, but it really was for me, anyway, about the vast strategic network that they have and a different kind of horsepower that they could bring and also just exploring how we can accelerate different facets of our technology or applications development in a different way. And so that's, for me, if I look at all the different programs that I've participated in, that's what differentiates Plug and Play compared to perhaps some of the others that I'd gone through in the past.

Jordan Tyler: Yeah, they're just different types of programs and you get different things from them and probably, like a lot of things in this life, you get out of it what you put into it. And it sounds like you really put in the time and understood what you were looking for and what you could gain from each of these programs in turn.

Rich Kelleman: You know, initially I approached a lot of these programs with skepticism, like what are we really going to get out of this? You know, this is more work. I've got enough work. Right? But what I realized, especially after going through the first and then the second, it's like, especially as an early-stage company, the more shots you can take, like on goal, seize that opportunity, because you never know.

For people who are considering these programs, especially with programs that are known and established like Plug and Play, just take the shot. Like, you just never know what you'll learn and where some of the connections that you'll make participating and then where they'll take you.

Jordan Tyler: I love that guy. Super glad he was able to come on and share his experiences from the program. So now that we know a little bit more about the Plug and Play program and how it works, for all of the aspiring entrepreneurs out there, let's bring it back to Saeed's story, from which we can all learn a great deal.

For him, it's all about the journey. Even though he's been doing this for years, he remains energized day in and day out about partnering with ambitious founders and helping them and their ideas grow for the betterment of all of us, including animals and pets, as well as the planet.

Saeed Amidi: First, you know, I must say, as I mentioned, I didn't have a master plan. It was a real estate play that evolved into an investment platform and then acceleration, but more and more as I get older, I think impact—like if you help an entrepreneur team build their dream and especially in sustainability, in diversification of entrepreneurs, if you can have double bottom line, make money, but also have a positive impact, may it be in people's lives, may it be job creation, you get incredibly excited.

So, I usually show up to work at 6:30 in the morning here in this office and my friends feel I am crazy. So they say, “Why do you work that hard? Why do you travel so much?” But the idea is, if you really are enjoying every day, and 90% of what I do, I love. I say, I cannot ask for the other 10%, you know, like, I'm a lucky guy as is. So, that's kind of what motivates me.

One measure of success is return on capital, but I think making a positive impact and kind of having a community that respects Plug and Play is very important to me. I get a kick out of that, even if I don't get money.

Jordan Tyler: Are you not inspired? I know personally, I've really enjoyed working with and learning from this group, and it was a really singular experience attending the Plug and Play Silicon Valley Summit and taking it all in firsthand.

is far from over. In January: 2025

mpany that brought us Pong in: 1972

Entrepreneurship isn't for everyone, but it is critical for our future. And accelerator programs like Plug and Play are a vital lifeline for the brave few who choose this path. By supporting startups and entrepreneurs with big ideas, we're able to leverage the most cutting-edge technologies and most effective approaches to advance the way we live, including optimizing the health and wellness of our beloved pets.

Thank you for tuning in to Barking Mad, a podcast by BSM Partners. If you'd like to know more about us, please visit our website at www.bsmpartners.net. Be the first to know about new episodes by subscribing to the podcast, and keep an eye on BSM Partners, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram profiles—all linked in the show notes for this episode—for the latest on BSM Partners co-branded podcast with Plug and Play. You won't want to miss it!

We'd also like to thank our dedicated team, Ada-Miette Thomas, Neeley Bowden, Kait Wright, and Dr. Katy Miller. A special thanks to Lee Ann Hagerty and Michael Johnson. See you next time!

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