Starting with any relevant education, walk me through the twists and turns of your career to date? How did one opportunity lead to the next + what was the key takeaway/ experience in each role + how did this lead you to where you are now)
My family has been related to the agribusiness sector since 1887, (this is to date more than 137 years). I studied Business Administration in Uruguay with an emphasis on Marketing and started working as a meat broker for one of the biggest Brazilian meat broker companies in the early 2000s.
In those almost 7 years that I was working as a meat broker, it allowed me to get to know the meat processing sector and travel the world. I knew the producer side, which was where we spent most of our time on vacation going to the countryside. Every change in my life and career was accompanied by an opportunity to do and learn something new. This was the transition from Broker to Trader where for those who don't think there seems to be no difference, there was! That change was accompanied by a different country, culture, and many other things in a new world which allowed me to do the most important thing: to continue learning!
...which allowed me to do the most important thing: to continue learning!
I moved to Canada in early 2007 when I studied International Business at McGill University while working as a meat trader for a European meat group until 2012. I made sure to always keep up with the latest technological trends, an area that I have always been passionate about and, that is why in each job of my career I always tried to apply the latest technologies to automate tasks and work more efficiently.
My motivation was to never stop learning, that was my great push to always try to innovate. When I left meat trading, I continued preparing but from another angle, reinforcing with courses in business intelligence and analytics to see how I could add value but from another angle and participant in the chain: the meat processing plant.
The meat processing industry is very complex and has small margins. UBI Meat arises through an unsatisfied need in the sector, which I discovered and suffered with and could have used when I was a Meat Broker and Trader. Thanks to the advancement of technology specifically in artificial intelligence, we were able to continue innovating and adding value to the meat supply chain which still has a lot to benefit from.
The realization that there was an unmet need propelled me to take charge.
What was the pivotal moment that put you on your current founder path?
The pivotal moment on my founder's path occurred after two decades in the meat sector. Through extensive global travels and interactions, I identified a common threat—unresolved issues and shared concerns within the meat industry. The realization that there was an unmet need propelled me to take charge. Unconvinced by existing solutions and fuelled by the desire for independence, I embarked on creating something groundbreaking, leading to the inception of UBI Meat.
Can you provide a quick summary of the technology/ area of innovation and its potential application?
In a nutshell, we utilize artificial intelligence to identify the percentage of fat in meat. Our algorithm empowers slaughterhouses to grade and classify meat based on fat percentage. This marks the initial step towards a larger vision where our solutions will extend to consumers. Our future aims are for individuals to use their smartphones to capture a photo, receiving detailed insights into the quality, traceability, and history of the meat cut—whether in a restaurant or supermarket.
What stage are you at?
As of now, we've marked 2023 as a "validation" year for our solutions. Successfully capturing the interest of key global meat producers, we are gearing up for an investment round later this year. The objective is to scale our solutions and make a widespread impact across the entire globe.
Discuss the biggest challenges of getting to this point? With the benefit of hindsight, what would you have done differently if anything?
One of the biggest challenges at this stage of fundraising is finding the right partner. Since we see it as a unique opportunity to partner with us, and just as the investor must take their precautions, we as a company also must take ours in choosing the right partner to help us scale the global solutions that we have and can offer. I wouldn't have done anything differently or regretted anything we did, except for having done more!
How have you approached funding?
We were always very respectful and unlike other startups we saw where they accepted investments with inflated valuations of those years, today having been cautious ends up giving us the reason to have waited. Our solutions are now more mature and clearer in the eyes of the investor, where they can see the potential and how far we can go with them.
At that time, we only accepted or "let in" Techstars (with $120k) and a couple of angel investors (adding $200k) who we felt were good strategic partners and could contribute much more than money alone could provide. Then we decided to go through the bubble period in the startup and VCs sector cautiously and grow gradually with our capital.
Have there been any pivot points in the company’s lifetime? What triggered these? Has the value proposition changed?
There were several pivotal moments, one could say, and many of them were validation from our clients regarding our solutions. We knew that we were solving a real problem that meat processing plants have, but their recognition and satisfaction when it came to renewing is something that pushed us to move forward. To the point that we had faith in even going beyond the processor and working today on solutions that reach the consumer.
What has the been the greatest source of help/ guidance along the way?
One of the greatest or best sources of help has been the one coming from mentors. Not only are they the ones from programs and accelerators that we have participated in, but also the mentors that we have met throughout our lives, and they are people who see us work unconditionally every day to solve those problems that are very difficult and even seem impossible to solve. They see that our desire to win goes beyond monetary matters and this is where they like to help us the most since they know we do it for passion and not for money.
As my daughter always says: never give up!
Best advice you’d pass on to other founders?
As my daughter always says: never give up!
My advice is to enjoy what you do, with passion and humour to try to get through the bad times and never stop learning. It could be said that a Founder’s Day is more filled with difficult and complex situations to resolve than with joys, in that sense we are like an iceberg where from the outside you can only see the tip, but the reality is that most of us are under the water putting out fires.
What do you think are broadly the biggest needs and opportunities in the Animal Health and Petcare markets?
The animal industry has many unmet needs, but one of the biggest challenges that technology and artificial intelligence have not yet been able to solve is these types of diseases that are imperceptible to the human eye, and where only with the intervention of a laboratory can certain diseases be detected. I think it is one of the challenges that hopefully soon AI can help solve and improve food security.
What’s going to have the single biggest impact on change in your area of the market?
One of the changes that we are already hearing more and more is the increase in controls on food safety and sustainability. UBI Meat's challenge is to clarify the path of how our solutions are directly and indirectly helping the environment by aiding meatpackers to produce meat more efficiently.
The way UBI Meat is helping meatpackers is through artificial intelligence, something that existing machinery cannot achieve and ends up becoming obsolete. The transition from Hardware to Software is being much faster than people imagine and the "irons"(or machinery) break more than one knows.
Leaving aside external problems or factors that affect international trade or the import of products/machinery as we saw in Argentina during the last year. This is a change that is happening rapidly, and people are opting for more intangible solutions such as software where the cost is equal to or less than the maintenance of a machine which can cost up to $1 million dollars.
What do the next two years have in store for you?
We are very eager for the near future! We believe that we will contribute a lot to the meat supply chain not only with current solutions but also with new ones to come. We would like to be able to launch the correlation solution between our measurements and other studies we are carrying out, to directly help producers and feed lotters to reduce the number of days of feeding animals in the corral.
And why not also dream about the solutions that are direct to the consumer which will be ready in a couple of years, where anyone can go with their cell phone to the supermarket or butcher shop, take a photo of the cut of meat and have everything included: history with the attributes, and solutions that UBI Meat is providing.
