Founder Laura Katz shares her entrepreneurial journey to fill a crucial yet overlooked need and demand in the nutritional market.

Portrait of Helaina CEO, Rachel Katz.

In an eye-opening interview exclusive for our Social Capital Insider, Laura Katz discusses the inspiration behind starting Helaina, a company that is working to advance healthspan by developing novel nutrition products — notably by replicating the proteins found in breast milk using advanced biotechnology.

“My background is as a food scientist. So, I had the fun role in my previous life of developing new food products from idea to shelf and doing the technical bits of making new food products,” she shares. “And I saw so much innovation going into alternative dairy and alternative meat products, all of these alternative things and using technology to make them taste like the real thing.” This, she explains, led to her epiphany: “And so I thought, ‘Okay, this is great, but what if we use this technology towards nutrition as an outcome and can we paint a world using science where our food can be our medicine and therefore use food to actually advance our health?’”

Coincidental to that awakening interest, Laura learned of the black market for breast milk for a remarkably varied population of bodybuilders, cancer patients and immunocompromised people in addition to parents of newborns, all of whom were willing to “go on the internet to buy breast milk from strangers.”

Interest in developing the product evolved into an awareness of a market opportunity. Relating this idea to the food supplement industry, she shares “These really impactful ingredients are starting to make markets for themselves. So, I started to understand that, and how these things could all piece together. And I realized, okay, there’s a business to be built behind this.”

Laura also discusses the challenges of building an impact-driven company and the importance of staying true to the original mission and purpose, even as the company grows.

“I think to me the most important thing is that you can’t lose your why while you’re doing it. And it’s really, really easy to lose the why, very easy. It’s so easy to get caught up in the whole fundraising process,” Laura says, discussing how and why “it’s really easy to get involved in the politics behind building the company and some of the challenges and success that comes with it.”

Her attitude, she states explicitly: “I really want to see this product change people’s health and I know it can.”

As she spoke to us in July last year, she noted Helaina is preparing to launch its first product, Effera, which is a lactoferrin protein that can be used as an ingredient in a variety of food and beverage products to support immune health, gut health and cognitive function. The company plans to initially sell Effera as a branded ingredient to other brands.

Laura highlights the versatility of Effera and the potential applications across different markets from women’s health to healthy aging to active nutrition. She expresses excitement about the future potential of Helaina to continue developing innovative nutrition products.

“So, our goal is to be the Intel inside of nutrition. And what that means is Effera is our first product that we are selling to other companies, and we see so much benefit that this could have for so many different populations, from early life to end of life nutrition, that we want to be enabling other brands where we sell our product B2B to these brands to incorporate this into their products.” Selling it as a branded ingredient “allows us to work with all different types of people and improve overall access of the technology rather than just trying to do it ourselves,” she explains.

Laura discusses the potential she sees to develop many kinds of products. “So, this is the fun part,” she says, noting, “I’m a food scientist, so this is what I get excited about. We’ve taken our protein, and we’ve tested it in yogurt and bars and beverages and ready-to-mix powders.”

It’s a world of exciting promise she opens our eyes to. “We want to be the most innovative nutrition business offering the most important nutrients of the future,” she says. Click on the link below to get the full picture.