At Main Sequence, what we are most proud of is our Founders and their stories.

Michele Stansfield is the co-founder and CEO of Cauldron, whose mission is to revolutionise the biomanufacturing industry. 

Cauldron's bio-acceleration continuous fermentation process significantly enhances industrial fermentation, enabling rapid, cost-effective scaling of precision fermented prototypes to commercial quantities. This method offers increased resilience by minimising risks like climate events, disease, and contamination, and operates with a small environmental footprint. Using fermentation tanks, it produces substantial quantities of food, fuel, or fibre, utilising far less land and water than traditional methods.

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Can you share with us the origin story of how you started Cauldron?

Cauldron was born out of need. When venture capitalists invested in precision fermentation for production of food, fibre, and fuels, they realised there wasn't enough manufacturing capacity for these ventures to scale. To address this, industry leaders convened a 'Conclave Meeting'. Out of this meeting, our company was formed, backing myself and my team to acquire the firm Agritechnology and scale the proprietary hyper-fermentation platform to a global precision fermentation business.

What has your experience been like transitioning to a deep tech Founder and CEO?

Transitioning to this new role has been both incredibly challenging and exceptionally rewarding. What excites me the most is the sense of being in charge of my own destiny. There's a thrilling opportunity here to not just lead a company, but to potentially revolutionise the entire biomanufacturing industry.

What have you been most proud of?

I am most proud of the fact that through the formation and funding of Cauldron, there has been acknowledgement that the work I was doing with Agritechnology generated valuable IP and held the key to unlocking the future of fermentation. 

What are you most excited about going forward? What’s next for you and Cauldron?

Looking forward, I'm incredibly excited about our plans to build the world's first fit-for-purpose hyper-fermentation facility with Cauldron. Cauldron will address a critical need – creating high volume, mainstream molecules at cost parity with conventional products to meet the demands of our growing population. 

We're actively challenging the traditional narratives about how things are made. The goal here is to demonstrate how smarter, smaller, and more efficient facilities can make a significant difference. I can't wait to showcase these advancements and the impact they will have, not just on our industry, but on reshaping global sectors from food, to materials, chemicals, and more  to improve sustainability.

What would people be surprised to know about you?

Like all other deep tech founders, I have found a way to switch off. My form of escape is dirt bike riding! 

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