Founders Fund’s outlier bet on humanely killed fish
Founders Fund’s outlier bet on humanely killed fish
Founders Fund 对“人道屠宰鱼类”的非主流押注
Earlier this week, at TechCrunch’s newest StrictlyVC event in El Segundo, Shinkei Systems founder Saif Khawaja and Founders Fund partner Delian Asparouhov sat down for a conversation that kept circling back to a question that doesn’t usually come up at a venture event: How do you know if a fish is stressed out? 本周早些时候，在 TechCrunch 于埃尔塞贡多（El Segundo）举办的最新 StrictlyVC 活动上，Shinkei Systems 创始人 Saif Khawaja 与 Founders Fund 合伙人 Delian Asparouhov 进行了一场对话。对话不断回到一个在创投活动中并不常见的问题：你如何判断一条鱼是否处于压力之下？
It’s a fair question for Khawaja to field, since his company, Shinkei, has built its entire business around the answer. Shinkei makes a refrigerator-sized robot called Poseidon that fishermen install on their boats. The machine scans each fish with computer vision, identifies the species, and locates the brain. It then pierces the brain and severs the gills, so the fish dies before it can thrash or suffocate. 对于 Khawaja 来说，这是一个他必须回答的问题，因为他的公司 Shinkei 的整个业务正是围绕这个答案建立的。Shinkei 制造了一种名为“波塞冬”（Poseidon）的冰箱大小的机器人，渔民可以将其安装在船上。该机器利用计算机视觉扫描每条鱼，识别品种并定位大脑。随后，它会刺穿鱼脑并切断鱼鳃，使鱼在挣扎或窒息前就已死亡。
It may not sound so compassionate, but it’s much better than the alternative, which is a slow death over a few minutes to an hour that floods the fish with stress hormones and lactic acid, which dulls flavor and shortens shelf life. The whole thing is an automated, industrial-scale version of ike jime, a centuries-old Japanese technique traditionally performed dockside by trained fishermen at the moment of catch. 这听起来可能并不那么“仁慈”，但它远好于另一种选择——即鱼在几分钟到一小时内缓慢死亡，这会导致鱼体内充斥着压力荷尔蒙和乳酸，从而降低风味并缩短保质期。整个过程是“津经”（ike jime）的自动化工业规模版本，这是一种拥有数百年历史的日本技术，传统上由训练有素的渔民在捕获瞬间于码头完成。
By killing the fish instantly and draining its blood, ike jime delays decomposition long enough for the flesh to be safely aged for days, sometimes longer, before it’s served. That aging period is what gives top-tier sashimi its concentrated, umami-heavy flavor, as enzymes slowly break down the muscle. 通过瞬间杀死鱼并放血，“津经”技术能延缓腐烂，使鱼肉在食用前能安全熟成数天甚至更久。正是这段熟成期，让顶级刺身在酶缓慢分解肌肉的过程中，产生了浓郁的鲜味。
Khawaja’s origin story is somewhat unusual for a hardware pitch. He grew up taking fishing trips with his family in the Middle East, and the idea for Shinkei didn’t click until college, when he read an essay by an animal rights philosopher titled “If Fish Could Scream.” Its premise was that fish lack vocal cords, so the suffering most of them experience on the way to your plate is essentially invisible. Khawaja 的创业故事在硬件领域显得有些不同寻常。他在中东长大，常随家人出海钓鱼。直到大学时，他读到了一篇名为《如果鱼会尖叫》（If Fish Could Scream）的动物权利哲学论文，Shinkei 的构想才真正成型。该论文的前提是：鱼没有声带，因此它们在被送上餐桌的过程中所经历的痛苦本质上是不可见的。
But Shinkei’s ambitions have expanded well past the killing machine. The company now describes itself as a vertically integrated fish harvester and processor, deploying robotics and AI across the chain from boat to plate. Shinkei gives Poseidon machines to fishermen for free, then pays those fishermen a premium price for the fish that come out of them, well above what the catch would fetch at a standard dock auction. 但 Shinkei 的野心早已超越了这台屠宰机器。该公司现在将自己定位为一家垂直整合的鱼类捕捞与加工企业，在从船只到餐桌的整个链条中部署机器人和人工智能。Shinkei 免费向渔民提供“波塞冬”机器，然后以高于标准码头拍卖价的溢价收购处理后的鱼。
In exchange, Shinkei takes full possession of the fish rather than letting fishermen sell it on the open market. The catch then ships to a 16,000-square-foot plant Shinkei bought in Tacoma, Washington, where it’s broken down and sold under the company’s consumer brand, Seremoni, marketed as “ceremony grade” fish. 作为交换，Shinkei 获得鱼类的完全所有权，而不是让渔民在公开市场上出售。捕获的鱼随后被运往 Shinkei 在华盛顿州塔科马市购买的一家 1.6 万平方英尺的工厂，在那里进行分割，并以公司旗下的消费品牌“Seremoni”进行销售，主打“仪式级”（ceremony grade）鱼类产品。
The most visible proof point so far is on the menu at Erewhon, the Los Angeles grocery chain beloved by influencers. Erewhon sells Shinkei’s fish as Seremoni Grade Miso Black Cod, hot off the prepared-foods bar, and the marketing around it leans hard on the “sustainably caught, humanely harvested” framing. The arrangement is still a pilot, running for now out of Erewhon’s Manhattan Beach location, with wider rollout to other stores contingent on how well it sells. 目前最直观的证明是在洛杉矶网红超市 Erewhon 的菜单上。Erewhon 出售 Shinkei 的“Seremoni 级味噌黑鳕鱼”，在熟食区热卖，其营销重点极力强调“可持续捕捞、人道采收”的理念。该合作目前仍处于试点阶段，仅在 Erewhon 的曼哈顿海滩分店进行，是否推广至其他门店取决于销售情况。
Khawaja says the company already supplies fish to restaurants holding a combined 50 Michelin stars, and claims something that has reportedly never happened before: Japan importing American-caught fish into its own fish markets, which have historically treated American seafood as distinctly inferior to the domestic product. Khawaja 表示，公司目前已为拥有总计 50 颗米其林星的餐厅供应鱼类，并声称实现了一项据称前所未有的成就：日本开始进口美国捕获的鱼类进入其国内鱼市——而日本市场历来认为美国海鲜远逊于本土产品。
Whether buyers will pay a premium for “humanely killed” fish, the way many now do for humanely raised beef and poultry, is still an open question, and even Khawaja says it’s secondary when explaining the company. He told the El Segundo crowd the real selling point isn’t the animal-welfare story so much as the practical one around quality. 消费者是否愿意像为“人道饲养”的牛羊肉买单那样，为“人道屠宰”的鱼类支付溢价，这仍是一个悬而未决的问题。即便是 Khawaja 本人在介绍公司时也表示，这只是次要因素。他告诉埃尔塞贡多的听众，真正的卖点与其说是动物福利，不如说是关于质量的实用价值。
A catch that might normally have a 5-to-7-day shelf life can stretch to 12 or 14 days, he said, and the company has cooked fish three weeks after coming out of the water with no issue. Shinkei’s newest product, an in-plant sensor system, tries to quantify that by scanning fish and projecting an individual shelf life for each one. That matters in an industry where, by Khawaja’s estimate, roughly 18% of product is lost to spoilage just between dock and store, before retail loss is even counted. 他说，原本保质期只有 5 到 7 天的鱼，现在可以延长到 12 或 14 天，公司甚至成功烹饪过出水三周后的鱼，且没有任何问题。Shinkei 的最新产品是一套工厂内传感器系统，通过扫描鱼类并为每一条鱼预测保质期来量化这一优势。这在一个行业中至关重要——据 Khawaja 估计，约有 18% 的产品在从码头到商店的运输过程中因腐烂而损耗，这还不包括零售环节的损失。
That spoilage problem is tangled up with a detail of the American seafood supply chain that surprises most people who haven’t worked in it. A meaningful share of fish caught in U.S. waters by U.S. boats gets frozen and shipped overseas, often to China, for the labor-intensive work of heading, gutting, scaling and filleting, then shipped back to be sold here. 这种腐烂问题与美国海鲜供应链的一个细节纠缠在一起，这让大多数未从事过该行业的人感到惊讶：美国船只在美国水域捕获的相当一部分鱼类，会被冷冻并运往海外（通常是中国），进行去头、去内脏、去鳞和切片等劳动密集型加工，然后再运回美国销售。
Industry estimates of how much American seafood is imported run as high as 90%, though roughly half of that, by some estimates, actually originated in domestic waters before making the round trip abroad. Reporting has tied parts of China’s seafood processing sector to forced labor, including Uyghur workers in Shandong province and North Korean labor in Liaoning, making the system a target of U.S. trade and labor scrutiny in recent years. 行业估计显示，美国进口海鲜的比例高达 90%，尽管据一些估算，其中约一半实际上源自美国本土水域，只是在海外绕了一圈。有报道将中国部分海鲜加工行业与强迫劳动联系起来，包括山东省的维吾尔族工人和辽宁省的朝鲜劳工，这使得该体系近年来成为美国贸易和劳工审查的目标。
There’s been a push within the industry to “re-shore” some of that processing, spurred partly by tariffs and pandemic-era disruptions that made the China round trip less attractive. The bet that Shinkei — and Founders Fund — are making is that re-shoring the entire chain, catch, kill, process, and distribute, all under one roof in Tacoma, can be done profitably enough to outcompete it. 受关税和疫情期间供应链中断的影响，中国往返加工模式的吸引力下降，行业内出现了一股将部分加工环节“回流”美国的呼声。Shinkei 和 Founders Fund 的押注在于：将捕捞、屠宰、加工和分销整个链条回流至塔科马的同一屋檐下，能够实现足够的盈利，从而在竞争中胜出。
For Founders Fund, the wager fits a pattern, which is backing founders who are often outside of fashionable categories. Asparouhov, who speaks a mile a minute and without reserve, put it plainly to attendees: there’s essentially nobody else on Earth who wants to spend their life on robots that kill fish, and given the smell of the Shinkei’s office, it’s no wonder. 对于 Founders Fund 而言，这次押注符合其一贯的模式，即支持那些往往处于热门领域之外的创始人。语速极快且直言不讳的 Asparouhov 向与会者直言：地球上基本上没有其他人愿意把一生花在制造杀鱼机器人上，考虑到 Shinkei 办公室里的气味，这也就不足为奇了。