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Ha, well that certainly doesn't make it true. And, it's moot to boot.
At the end of the day, it's about creating a fiber that can do what previous fibers couldn't do. Whoever can deliver on that will make money. Until then, it's all just PR spin. That gets you VC money, but it doesn't get you sales in the long run.
100% pure spider silk product.
That would be awesome to see on a balance sheet of a Bolt Threads autopsy:
Money Raised: $90,000,000
Ties Sold: 50@$315 = $15,750
Profits: $(89,984,250)
This is correct: All single-celled organisms are not the same. E. coli (bacteria) is a prokaryotic organism and has a very different underlying translation machinery than S. cerevisiae (yeast/fungus). As a eukaryote, yeast is cable of much more complex protein synthesis.
This often gets glossed over as many people refer to all single celled organisms as 'bacteria', but this is not accurate. The following reposted from elsewhere:
I greatly appreciate the vote of confidence, but my expertise is in genetics and I don't have much first-hand knowledge about what's on the cutting edge of recombinant microbiology.
Your points as stated, fit with the current narrative regarding the vat producers: High amounts of 'waste material' relative to desired product. I think that the results thus far for companies like Bolt Threads speak for themselves. If they were able to scale up at the moment, they wouldn't have made only a handful of ties. I truly believe that the vat producers will not be able to match fiber yields with the likes of KBLB, and will likely find their niche in supplying the purified protein for integration into other types of products (ie. Amsilk and their beauty products).
When push comes to shove, once the silkworms reach homozygosity, which I'm sure that ours have and is easy to check/achieve with the right checks in place, that they will do as nature has programmed them to do: Make fiber. That's the real benefit of the animal system vs. yeast/bacteria. The worms output our raw product, which can (with slight modifications) be treated like normal silk for all intents and purposes. The vat producers can do all of the optimization that they want, but the fact of the matter is that their raw product is protein in solution. While it can be artificially spun into a product, they have to put a lot more into their system than we do cost-wise. We have the worms, we're tweaking the silk processing parameters, and at that point, our main input to the system is mulberry leaves or pellets.
I'm sorry I can't be more directly helpful regarding your specific questions, but I'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge where my direct experience lies (the genetic modification process itself).
Thanks for sharing.
2. Create buzz about cutting edge fibers
Yikes. He may be less personable than Kim, and THAT'S saying something.
I should amend and say that I think Kim has good rehearsed video presence, but his demeanor on the CCs of the past is stilted. This Bolt Threads guy is, in the words of Donald Trump, low energy, sad.
I have to imagine that part of Jon's hiring was his youth and energy, given his lack of any textiles experience. One may assume that with youth comes knowledge about the power of new media.
I can say without question, whether that was the case or not, neither Kim nor Jon have a promotional bone in their body.
I have done more new media promotion of KBLB than KBLB has.
http://www.inspidere.com
Ha, aggressive message for the company on the homepage. Sounds like a spurned KBLB investor.
This is correct.
According to your post from last Tuesday, the next ones a doozy though. Unless that's smoke I feel creeping up my side.
You shouldn't paint with such a broad brush. Some are whining and throwing a tantrum, but some, like me, have concerns about what a PR like that says about the company and how they are viewed by larger investors. It's not so cut and dry.
I love that they planted trees, but do you put your gardening efforts in the local newspaper? That could have been PR'd along with the opening of the TX facility, or through a social media post. PRing things on that scale make KBLB look like a small fry.
It's very important for our pipeline to have a reliable source of mulberry. I'm glad they planted the trees. I, and others here, take issue with the tone and delivery of this scale of news. As I've said elsewhere, good news undeniably, but more poor communication. More half statements about things to come, and nothing material worth PRing. JMO. GLTA
For me, EOD. I can't belabor this point anymore as it's not productive for anyone. It's just how I feel about it, and people are free to disagree.
That said, it does not take away from the fact that KBLB has to rebuild their poor reputation on timelines
In the end the "Chinese theft" is a non issue IMO
There would be no DNA available for extraction from the final product. Silk fibers don't contain genetic material. So no worries there
That's not even what I thought you meant, I thought you meant to take a shirt, analyze the silk, figure out the protein structure, and 'reverse engineer' a worm to make it. Both are non worries
And they don't have to steal our worms. They just need a silk shirt to reverse engineer the worms.
Facebook that. Make it something we can share online. It doesn't need to come through Ben's desk. There's nothing material.
It's not the message. It's undeniably 'good news'. It's just miscommunicated, IMO.
The complete lack of knowledge about different ways to communicate different levels of news makes them look like amateurs. We bought and planted 2000 trees? That's a PR, I guess. But you don't stretch it into two. PR that you bought them and introduce Texas. Facebook that they're planted. That's something that could spread.
This update is like a kid writing home from summer camp to his mom (or rather, the counselor writing for the kid).
So does this reset your clock? They're good for another 40 days because they officially PR'd something that could have been a FB post? Not picking on you, just generally curious if you think this bought them another month of silence.
100% utterly tone deaf. Unbelievable.
I'm glad Jon had fun digging in the dirt and playing with ants. That's a real Emerson we've got here. I guess we know what he was up to for the last month instead of getting some business goals accomplished.
Seems to me that the red text would not refer to SSM as we already have the MOU publicly stated from years back. Could it be? I suppose, but if it is, it seems intentionally cryptic.
At a quick glance, I didn't see anything about SSM in the last few communications, but I could have missed it.
My point still stands to reason though, and would even be bolstered by that mention.
All that I'm saying, and repeating, is that just because we may or may not hear about something for a while doesn't make it de facto out of play. Simple as that. I don't count on those things to come up, but I just don't write anything off as 'dead' until I see it in writing.
We see so little in writing with Kim, that possibilities always outnumber assurances. Such is life in KBLB-land.
We never really knew the extent of the relationship. That's one of many communication failures, I agree.
It's not as if I eve think about them operating in the dark shadows or anything. I also assume (but don't know) that they're not instrumental in our endeavors. But, perhaps at the time of the original MOU we couldn't provide them with the starting material? Maybe that's different now?
That's the thing, we don't know anything
The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Totally silent February. Kim is a real Ebenezer Scrooge.
Love the optimism. Hope you're right.
It all comes down to perspective, as most things do. I agree with you that we haven't failed in a major way, but based on many years of communication, certain plans have failed for one reason or another. I also agree, however, it's better to adjust a failing plan than to be too stubborn to do so. I would have liked clearer communication about that though, as many here would. So many years of people giving WAGs because that's all we had to give.
I'm not lamenting other than to reiterate what others here are saying, which is just that Kim's projections in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2016 all paint a picture of company that he and many others thought would be further along by now. It is what it is and I'm still here. I, unlike others, can't afford to wait forever so Kim's missed projections hit me harder than some. If I had nothing but time and a job with a better salary, I'd be in a different frame of mind. But I'm a lowly scientist, just trying to understand the crazy world we live in and trying to make some money to start a happy family.
He didn't fail.
All product, zero showmanship.
Slime is not a fabric. Lots of things can stop projectiles, including steel walls and elephants. It doesn't mean that you strap a pachyderm to a solider in the field. Products have niches, and silk's elasticity and strength combination is ideal for certain applications. Hagfish-derived slime will have it's niches too. Etc. Etc.
Direct competition necessitates overlapping applications. In some cases, there may be overlap between our products and those of competitors, and that should be taken seriously. In other ways, silk will be superior for a given purpose. Alternatively, dissolved silk protein in a solution could be desirable for a completely different application.
It's not all-or-nothing, the business side of this company has to figure out where it's strengths lie, what downstream applications it can monopolize, and focus on those at the outset, IMO. Personally, I don't think we have the DD at the management level to accomplish that. We really should be trying to hire someone in the textiles world to serve as a high-ranking board member, right on par with Kim and Jon (or replace Jon with that person).
Yikes. Looks like 'Silent February' wasn't a good call for the PPS. Who'd have guessed?
Promotion needs to stop being a dirty word at KBLB. PR what's important and material, but use the damn Facebook page and generate/maintain interest. Get your name out there on a regular basis. Do some press, plug the business. The big news/silence/filler PR/silence loop is not the only way to run things.
I don't want them to make news where there isn't any. I understand what's happening on the business side and respect how long each step can take.
That said, there's absolutely no urgency for people to buy and hold this stock, which affects long-term shareholders negatively in the short- to medium-term. Flippers make their money, and that's great, and if you can afford to add on dips, that's great too. But for those that have chosen to buy and hold, days like today are just little slaps in the face, and their directly the cause of the company's lack of public presence, IMO.
Yankee would be the best source for that type of information. I'd be really out on a limb as a genetics guy.
GLTA
IMO (and others on this board know more about this than me eg. Yankee) the consistency issues were as follows:
1) Our silk is of a fundamentally different elasticity and thickness than traditional silk.
2) Silk processing techniques used in current commercial enterprises have machines and workers which are fine-tuned into the classic silk parameters.
3) When treated like everyday silk, traditional techniques are not adequate to produce consistent quality secondary product.
4) The conditions needed to work our raw material has been/is being studied by groups like WM.
5) Giant VN silk plants probably won't have the expertise or technical know-how to make the proper adjustments.
6) When WM receives and processes samples, the optimal conditions and a list of any machine-parameter optimizations will be made known to KBLB.
7) Those conditions will be installed at every KBLB silk-producing facility and workers will be trained in the small but important distinctions between mundane silk and our products.
8) Those facilities will then be KBLB-Ready and will churn out the good stuff in commercial amounts.
Many of these steps have happened and are in the process now. This is not a perpetual thorn in our side, but rather, is the cost of doing business with a material nothing like what anyone has worked with before.
Conditions will be optimized, rigidisized, and standardized.
It's obtuse to purport that just because he's in academia that he isn't also involved in the business side of things.
However, his day to day work is with UND, and as a scientist and researcher his research doesn't start and stop at KBLB's whims. He's constantly working and tweaking. That's his primary job as a researcher at UND.
He is a researcher first, and a member of the KBLB business team second. That is, of course, until Kim can afford to buy him out of his UND responsibilities and give him a full time KBLB salary...
It would certainly be nice if they could process one strain through to commercial production. No arguments there. But keep in mind that Dr. Fraser's work is academic in nature and will always be happening in the background. It doesn't affect KBLB's business model because Fraser feeds Kim strains with desirable properties as he is able to create them. Once created, it's simple to scale up the number of worms and product, but as we all well know, that takes a location and personnel to process the silk.
That's the interesting joint nature of KBLB: Research and Production. Fraser's job literally is to make and test different genetic variants and report on them as needed. Kim's job is to take the best strains and sell them. To date, one is doing a better job than the other.
We're on the same page here, except that:
yea maybe..along with 25 other new strains
Just not sure. But you can't just cross them as simply as that and expect normal results, as our insertions are designed for our specific background genetics. Perhaps they're already working on a platform VN strain in the lab?
I don't see any benefit to KBLB for cross-breeding de facto (DS x VN just mating). Any gains in immunity, if they exist, would be far outweighed by the genetic complications.
What is clear is that this is another topic that has not been fully communicated in a clear way. Par for the course.
I don't think that's correct. That dilutes our product. I'm quite sure it's the other way around.
To make a brand new platform worm based on VN starting genetics seems like a fool's errand.
JMO.
He does have a way of succeeding, in spite of his rampant lack of experience and/or skills. Kim just needs an inanimate carbon rod of his own.
But that's for VN's benefit. They'd be paying for that 'time'. It would be part of a JVA.
If VN wants our genes in their worms, VN has to buy the rights up front I'd think. And I bet it wouldn't come cheap.