Project summary

Our theory of change begins with cultivated meat as a vital potential solution for ending factory farming. To realize its transformative potential, increasing exposure & excitement (to future talent, investors, etc.) is essential to navigate its current trough on the Gartner Hype Cycle. Cultivated meat can also provide a valuable blueprint for ethically managing meat production as we develop increasingly powerful future agentic AI systems.

Video searches are increasing across social media for ‘lab grown meat’, and the public is finding content that makes them think it’s weird and repulsive. Videos like this, which describe cultivated meat as gross and scary, have 1M+ views & 27K Likes on social media. This fearful mindset has become pervasive, which is why it’s been so easy for politicians to ban cultivated meat in an increasing number of countries & 7 US states in the last 12 months.

Our nonprofit, From Fauna, has worked over the last decade to teach people about cultivated meat in a way that is appetizing and inspiring. We’ve learned that all it takes to make someone excited to try cultivated meat, rather than scared of it, is the right messaging.

For example, we published the world’s first textbook on cultivated meat with Oxford (representing the largest collaboration in the history of CM), created the first university courses at institutions like Stanford, and worked with leading companies like Mission Barns to create beautiful marketing materials.

We recently started making videos to educate consumers on cultivated meat, and combat the growing amount of misinformation that is proliferating around the internet. Since launching ~3 weeks ago, we already have 500K+ organic views on our content, as well as 100K+ Likes, and we’re just getting started!

We’re ready for the next phase where we can scale Views from hundreds of thousands, to millions!

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@labmeatguy

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/labmeatguy/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LabMeatGuy

What are this project's goals? How will you achieve them?

Continue the rare momentum we have – grow all of our social media accounts, as we have been! With more funding to make more videos, we plan to achieve 5M+ Views by EOY and 10K Followers across multiple platforms.

How will this funding be used?

The funding will be used to create more + better-quality videos; we have some ideas that we feel can go very viral and it's time to leverage those to grow cultivated meat even bigger, to draw in more talent, founders, supporters, etc at a time where it's desperately needed. This quantity of money will help us fund content until the end of the year and if we can keep up the rate of growth we're on, we'll be self-sustaining soon and won't need to rely on future philanthropic funding exclusively.

Who is on your team? What's your track record on similar projects?

Each video is different, but we have a group of editors and VFX partners who we contract for each project.

What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails?

Causes for failure:

-Funding gap that interrupts consistent publishing cadence

-Bottlenecks in production (e.g., design/animation bandwidth) slow output

-Misinformation headwinds/policy bans outpace our ability to respond quickly

-Algorithm shifts reduce organic reach before the brand is large enough

Outcomes:

Slower growth → less counter-messaging during key news cycles

How much money have you raised in the last 12 months, and from where?

We've raised ~$50K, but our focus has not been on fundraising but rather content production.