🧬 Sales Funnels, Patents, & Cell-Based Milk: TurtleTree’s Early Bets | Fengru Lin Rerelease (2/3)

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"Sales is really a numbers game. It's about how many you can fill at the top of the funnel and how many you can convert over time."

In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, host Jon Chee continues his conversation with Fengru Lin, CEO and co-founder of TurtleTree. Fengru shares how rigorous sales training at Salesforce and entrepreneurial autonomy at Google Cloud shaped her approach to customers, investors, and organizational change—then traces how a cheese-making hobby, poor dairy supply chains, and exposure to cell-based meat and seafood startups led to TurtleTree’s founding, early patents, and strategic pivot toward precision fermentation of high-value milk proteins.

Key Topics Covered:

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Find our guest, Fengru Lin, at these links:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fengru/

Website: https://www.turtletree.com/

Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/

Learn more about Excedr:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/

Website: https://www.excedr.com

Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin, Owned by Excedr:

Website: https://flow.page/kyojin

Resources & Articles:

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Basics: https://www.salesforce.com/crm/what-is-crm

Strategic Selling & Complex Stakeholder Management: https://www.salesforce.com/sales/strategic-selling

Manufacturing ERP for Better Production Planning: https://kanhasoft.com/blog/manufacturing-erp-production-planning

Precision Fermentation for Dairy-Identical Proteins: https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/formo-foods-precision-fermentation-casein-dairy-protein-self-gras-cheese

Comparing Lab-Cultured Dairy vs Traditional Dairy: https://eureka.patsnap.com/report-comparing-lab-cultured-dairy-vs-traditional-dairy-nutritional-metrics

Health Canada Approves Lab-Grown Milk: https://www.greenprophet.com/2026/06/health-canada-approves-lab-grown-milk

The Best ERP Systems for Small Food Manufacturers: https://www.top10erp.org/blog/the-best-manufacturing-software-for-your-small-business

Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:

Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com

Google Cloud: https://cloud.google.com

TurtleTree: https://www.turtletree.com

Memphis Meats / Upside Foods: https://www.upsidefoods.com

BlueNalu: https://www.bluenalu.com

Fonterra: https://www.fonterra.com

Abbott: https://www.abbott.com

00:00 Intro

00:37 Inside Salesforce’s customer-centric sales machine

02:35 CRM, service, and marketing clouds as one seamless funnel

04:19 Why sales is scientific—and critical for life science startups

05:40 Sales, ERP systems, and operations in food manufacturing

06:49 Applying sales funnels to investor outreach

07:35 Handling rejection and building emotional resilience in sales

08:36 Mentorship, “know your audience,” and selling up the chain

10:09 Selling into large pharma vs small biotech organizations

11:17 Executive buy-in, customer success, and organizational change

12:46 Autonomy and “owning a business” at Google Cloud Taiwan

14:19 Cheese-making hobby, Southeast Asia dairy challenges, and supply chains

16:16 Discovering cell-based meat, imagining cell-based milk, and talking to experts

18:06 Bootstrapping, hiring scientists, and filing TurtleTree’s first patents

19:04 Patent drafting lessons, avoiding kitchen-sink claims, and commercial timelines

The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.