EP · 010
HE FOUNDED BLOCK TALK RADIO BEFORE PODCASTING WAS A THING. 30 YEARS LATER, HE WAS RIGHT.
“
14 years of living on government grants teaches you about building something before the market exists.
Aaron Dossey
Aaron Dossey grew up in Oklahoma catching insects in his grandparents' garden. He got a PhD expecting to become a professor. The faculty jobs had disappeared. So he applied for a Gates Foundation grant in 2011 to research insect protein for human consumption, was told they couldn't give money to an individual, and started a company on the spot. For 14 years he was the first in the Western Hemisphere doing serious insect protein research. The world is catching up.
Key Takeaways
- →Insects as mainstream ingredient, not novelty: Aaron argues insect protein will only scale if it's processed into pasta, cereals, and tortillas—not served whole on a plate. Companies that got hundreds of millions in investment failed because they built large farms without creating the consumer market first.
- →14 years of SBIR grants as a survival career: After planned faculty jobs evaporated due to budget cuts, Aaron funded himself continuously from 2011 to 2024 through Small Business Innovation Research grants—becoming, by his account, the first company in the US doing insect protein research at that level. His company ran out of money in 2024 and grants dried up in 2025.
- →Sequencing all life on Earth for $1–3 billion: Aaron makes the case that sequencing the genomes of every species on Earth—insects comprising a majority of animal species—could be done for roughly $1–3 billion, less than what Elon Musk paid for Twitter. He argues this genetic blueprint would be the greatest scientific legacy any billionaire could fund, accelerating AI-driven drug discovery and crop engineering.
- →The Vertebrate Studies Institute: Jurassic Park for real biodiversity: Aaron's nonprofit envisions a facility in Orlando with a world's-largest biodome—possibly shaped like a beetle—housing 500 to 1,000 insect species alongside working genomics labs visible to the public. The thesis is that people don't protect what they never see, so direct exposure to biodiversity changes behavior and policy priorities.
- →Academia's 'crab in a box' problem: Aaron describes PhD advisors refusing to write recommendation letters for their own students to avoid training competition, and dual-hire arrangements filling scarce faculty slots with spouses rather than open candidates. He ties this directly to decades of federal funding cuts concentrating resources and incentivizing protectionism over mentorship.
In This Episode
- How a high school insect collection became a 14-year research career
- Why the faculty jobs Aaron expected after his PhD simply weren't there
- How a Gates Foundation grant required him to start a company from scratch with no lab, no staff, and no food science background
- What insect protein actually is, why 80% of the world already eats it, and why the US is still catching up
- What 14 years of living on government grants teaches you about building something before the market exists
Full Essay
We turned this conversation into a long-form essay. More context, more depth, and the moments that didn't make the edit.
Read on Substack →What We Discuss
Growing up in Oklahoma: grandparents' land, insect collections, and a love of the natural world
Graduating with a PhD into a market with no faculty jobs
The Gates Foundation grant and starting a company in two weeks
What insect protein is and why he was first in the Western Hemisphere doing it
14 years of SBIR grants: how you sustain a life and a mission when the market doesn't exist yet
Q&A
Questions answered in this episode
Why don't Americans eat insects as food?
Aaron attributes it partly to climate—insects are harder to forage in cold northern winters—and partly to associations in European culture between insects and disease (the Black Plague era). He notes that in parts of Africa, it's specifically Western cultural influence that has driven communities away from insect consumption they practiced for generations.
Are insect protein companies actually profitable?
According to Aaron, major insect protein startups in Canada and France received hundreds of millions in investment but folded because they scaled insect farms without building a consumer product market. His critique: they got the cart before the horse, producing a commodity with no existing buyers instead of creating demand through food products first.
How do you fund a science career without a faculty job?
Aaron funded his company through back-to-back SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) grants for 14 years after faculty positions disappeared due to budget cuts. He warns it's not a reliable path—academic reviewers lose interest once research stops being novel, and the market isn't interested until it's profitable, leaving innovators stranded in a 'valley of death.'
Why does genome sequencing of insects matter for medicine?
Insects are among the oldest and most optimized animals on Earth, meaning their genes—for antimicrobial peptides, venoms, enzymes, and structural proteins—represent millions of years of biological refinement. Aaron argues feeding insect genome sequences into AI systems would accelerate drug discovery, crop engineering, and synthetic biology far faster than working from human or plant data alone.
What is the fastest way to get insect protein accepted by mainstream consumers?
Aaron identifies roughly 1% of consumers as early adopters (sustainability-minded, bodybuilders, novel food enthusiasts) and another 10% who convert once they hear that insects are raised in clean indoor facilities without pesticides. The remaining majority, he says, comes around through visibility—when insect-based pasta and cereals appear regularly on store shelves and friends and family are already eating them.
More Conversations
Keep Listening
Every episode is a different story about the space between one chapter and the next.