Lab-grown chicken coming to a plate near you
Small Steps Vol. 80: 🖤💛❤️ NAIDOC Week 💚💙; the state of the climate-tech industry 🌏; and Australia underreporting on emissions 🚫.
Kick start
🖤 It’s NAIDOC Week! From 2 to 9 July, we celebrate and recognise the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the oldest, continuous living cultures on earth. This year’s theme is For Our Elders, celebrating elders as cultural knowledge holders, trailblazers, advocates, teachers, survivors, leaders and loved ones.
Learn more about this year’s theme here, or check out these NAIDOC Week cultural events to celebrate:
Shadow Spirit: Flinders Street Ballroom, Naarm/Melbourne. On until 30 July.
Uncle Greg Muir, A Retrospective: No Vacancy Gallery, Naarm/Melbourne. On until 8 July.
Fist of Fury Noongar Daa - Q&A and special NAIDOC screening: ECU Mount Lawley, Boorloo/Perth. On 18 July, join for a special screening of the Bruce Lee kung fu classic, dubbed in the Noongar language. This is the first feature film event to be re-voiced in an Australian language.
Eora NAIDOC Inner-City Family Fun Day: Carriageworks, Gadigal land/Sydney. On 7 July.
Inaugural UQ NAIDOC Week Keynote Lecture with Professor Marcia Langton AO: University of Queensland, St Lucia, Meanjin/Brisbane. On 7 July.
The Wonder of Little Things - Conversation with Kara McEwen & Lea McInerney: Charles Sturt Libraries, Ngutungka West Lakes, Kaurna land/Adelaide. On 7 July.
What we’re thinking about
🧫 Lab-grown meat now on the menu in the US. Cultivated meat was cleared for sale in the US last week, with Upside Foods and Good Meat receiving approval from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to start producing and selling their lab-grown chicken. This follows the FDA declaring both companies’ products being safe to eat less than a year ago. They’ll still need separate approvals for cultivated beef, seafood or pork, and for now, the products aren’t available in supermarkets - they’ll be starting on the menus of a handful of upscale restaurants.
The US is the second country in the world to approve the sale of lab-grown meat, following only Singapore. On our home shores, Food Standards Australia is currently assessing an application from Sydney-based luxury cultivated meat company Vow, and is predicted to follow the US’s lead shortly.
In case you’re wondering what the difference is between lab-grown meat and alternative proteins, lab-grown chicken starts with stem cells from a fertilised egg, which are tested for resilience and taste. After submerging the cells in a nutrient-rich broth, they adhere, produce protein, and are texturized into nugget or cutlet shapes. In contrast, plant-based ‘meat’ is produced from plant proteins such as soy, wheat, rice, fungi or pea.
🥗 Climate Salad’s 2023 Industry Report. Climate Salad has released its 2023 report, thanks to the 228 climate-tech founders who completed this year’s census. You can read the full report here, but if your short on time, here are the highlights:
Total capital deployed in the Aus climate ecosystem increased from $338m in 2021 to $553m in 2022, but founders intend to raise another $1.5b in the next 12 months.
Aussie climate tech is punching above its weight, with 47% of companies already global (and 94% having global ambitions).
3000+ new jobs have been created in Aus in climate tech, with another 2,400 coming soon.
Impact measurement remains a challenge for many startups, despite 34% of companies already making a positive, measurable impact.
Climate tech is diverse, but as in other sectors, more support is needed to support First Nations and gender diverse founders in particular.
💨 Looks like you missed some. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has found that Australia has allegedly underreported its annual greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 28 million tonnes. Through its independent emissions review collated in its methane tracker, the IEA has estimated that Australia’s coal mines emitted about 81% more fugitive methane emissions than the government’s official reporting shows, and that oil and gas generated 92% more. This calls for more accurate domestic methane tracking, given the limitations faced in collecting data.
New paths
👩💻 Trace is hiring an Account Executive, a Sales Development/Demand Generation Representative, and a Sustainability and Customer Success Specialist (Sydney).
🏋️ MoreGoodDays is looking for a Physical Therapist (contract, open to remote).
🧻 Who Gives A Crap is after a Logistics Director, APAC (Remote/Melbourne).
🎧 Music Health is hiring a number of roles in product, sales and customer success - check them out here.
🐛 Goterra wants a Finance Manager (Canberra).
🔥 Also, check out our Giant Leap Fund jobs board for over 80+ available positions or fill out our expression of interest form. There’s even more jobs at ethical companies on the global B-Work job board.
Giant leaps
🎉 A huge month for Conserving Beauty. Not only did international superstar Dua Lipa recommend their product, but they also scored a feature in Digital Nation. Congrats!
🎟️ Hex is running a major event, HexPo 2023, for students and future founders on September 28 in Melbourne. Don’t miss it!
🙌 Music Health featured on the ABC discussing their four-day work week policy.
👏 Giant Leap featured in Digital Nation, discussing the balance in investing in businesses that generate revenue and while doing so, grow their impact.
For the road
🇹🇻 Preserving Tuvalu in the metaverse. Plans are progressing to make Tuvalu -- one of the island nations most susceptible to rising sea levels -- the first nation to have a complete digital twin in the metaverse. However, this is a firm Plan B for the country, whose citizens are doing everything they can to stay in their ancestral home.
✏️ Interview tips for founders. Antler has spoken to over 3000 founders over the years and has put together a guide on how they can put their best foot forward during an interview. Among other tips, it suggests founders be succinct with their responses and come armed with examples to illustrate them.
🤖 Meet the very human workforce underpinning AI innovation. A subclass of jobs where workers spend their days inputting data and teaching AI platforms has emerged. This long-read article in The Verge tracks the lives of workers from Nairobi through to Texas. It’s not all doom and gloom either – some enjoy teaching AI obscure bits of information, such as how to identify various items of clothing.
🩺 Surviving the tech-wreck as a health-tech. Funding challenges present a problem for health-tech companies who often require significant investment and time to make a meaningful impact. Jiang Li, Founder and CEO of Vivalink contends such companies can thrive during this period, but need to make careful, tactical decisions on both funding and partnerships.
💉 Treatment in the metaverse. The metaverse has the ability to deliver treatment to underserved parts of the world, but what will that look like? This summary of academic research on the matter suggests we could see surgery, training and psychiatric help all delivered by the technology.
💰 Struggling with pay rise negotiation anxiety? Penny Holloway summarises the top negotiation tips that Normal founder Lucy Wark shared with Startmate’s Women Fellows in this helpful guide. As a starting point, it suggests benchmarking your current salary against the industry average and mapping out your achievements to date. If you can’t move on salary, don’t forget about the other kinds of benefits you could be asking for.
🌡️ The UK’s ‘marine heatwave’ has scientists worried. Oceans are warming in the UK, which could see an increase in shark activity, jellyfish and poisonous algae blooms -- basically bringing the same problems we see on the Australian coastline to the UK.
💊 How will prescription MDMA and psilocybin work? It’s now legal in Australia to prescribe both psychedelic drugs, but only in a clinical setting. Psychiatrists are now concerned that demand for the treatment -- which requires two practitioners to every one patient -- could lead to an increase of self-medication and microdosing.
Save the date
📅 July 24: AWS’s ANZ Generative AI Accelerator. Applications now open.