Founders at Work: Tomorrow & Terraferma

Sweet Science: A Story of Startup Collaboration at MBC What does it look like when two startups in the same ecosystem decide to work together? Terraferma and Tomorrow will share their individual founding stories and experiences at the intersection of consumer and biotech. They'll pull back the curtain on how shared interest turned into a fruitful collaboration, allowing novel designer taste proteins to reach the market sooner through AI-driven strain design. Expect a candid conversation about building at the frontier of protein science, and what it looks like when two startups in the same ecosystem decide to build together. Alec Lourenco, Co-Founder & CEO at Tomorrow Alec Lourenco is the CEO and co-founder of Tomorrow Inc., a company developing protein-based taste ingredients to replace sugar, reduce salt, and more. He previously worked on synthetic cells and cell-free protein expression at Stanford, and during his PhD at Caltech developed Protein CREATE, a combined computational and experimental platform for protein design. At Tomorrow, he applies that experience to build and scale functional protein design. Victoria Mo, Co-Founder & CEO at Terraferma Vicki has experience ranging from fine-tuning SOTA machine learning models to shipping both digital and physical products. ‍ Vicki received her MS in Computer Science - Machine Learning from Columbia University. Ruby Yu, Co-Founder at Terraferma Ruby has spent the past decade investigating gene expression in organisms ranging from yeast to humans, and she is an industry-leading expert on high-throughput genetic screens for machine learning. ‍ She received both her BA and her PhD in Biological and Biomedical Sciences from Harvard University. About Founders at Work: This monthly seminar series alternates between our San Francisco and San Carlos locations and showcases a distinguished current resident or alumnus from our community. These sessions are designed to provide early-stage founders with real-world advice, practical strategies, and inspiring stories from those who’ve navigated the entrepreneurial journey successfully. This event is open to the public. Please be sure to register to reserve your spot!