SnapDNA’s CEO David Medin talked with the Denver Gazette Wednesday about the start-up foodtech company’s move from Silicon Valley in California to Broomfield, the technology it took them eight years to develop, and rapidly growing from four employees just six months ago. Answers have been edited for length.

Q – SnapDNA is obviously in rapid growth mode, tell us about managing that.

CU economics professor on King Soopers strike: Don't believe everything you hear

A – We have to transition the company from research and development to commercialization. We’ve proved the tech works. We took on an extremely challenging technology project, and have been at it for eight years. We originally thought ‘How hard can this be?’ Well, we found out. … In order to monetize this tech, the food industry has a lot of requirements. And you have to hit every one. Think about it in all-too familiar COVID terms. If you have a product that’s 99% accurate, where you only have 1% false positive, that’s a success. But in food processing, at that rate, you’d have 100,000 positive (false foodborne illness tests), you’d have plants shutting down 20 times a day. They can’t afford that. You can’t go with something unless you’re absolutely positive it’s proven technology. Ours is more like a 1 in 10,000,000 positivity rate. … We had to wait until we could check every box.

Q – So what did it take to get FDA (Food and Drug Administration) approval?

A – There’s no FDA approval. Every food company does its own testing. You might have a leafy green guy that would not be happy if some poultry guy says it works. Our technology works for all of those.

Gov. Jared Polis' State of the State address

Q – The Colorado Office of Economic Development and Information Technology required you get some more capital money before they were willing to give you $1.45 million in job growth tax credits. Obviously that happened?

A – We’ve raised about $4 million since September. We also put our own money into it. When we started it, it was all our own money. Then we went to friends and family. Then angel groups and early investors … A lot of people knew me from my past experience (with startups in Silicon Valley) and knew I wasn’t lying, and that we were trust worthy. … We also did some crowd-funding last year. We have not done the traditional VC (venture capital) route.

Q – Why did you leave Silicon Valley if you had so many contacts there?

A – Silicon Valley has changed quite a bit since I’ve been there for 28 years. It used to be you could get anything done there. That’s not the case anymore. Apple and Google have gobbled up all the real estate and pushed a lot of the smaller companies out. Especially hardware companies, local machine shops and contract manufacturers. All of those types of entities have disappeared there. It’s so much more expensive to do stuff there. .. Also, we’re in the category where our product can’t fail – like aerospace, automotive or medical. We can’t have products failing and shutting down food companies. So our products have to be built at the highest quality. A lot of manufacturing is coming from China. If you want people focused on quality, you have to build it local. That’s why all our products are going to be made in the U.S.

Q – Why Colorado, and specifically Broomfield?

Legislative leaders set agenda, priorities for 2022 session

A – In that Denver-Boulder corridor, there are a lot of manufacturing of plastics and metal and a lot of small companies that get it done right with quality level. Local manufacturing is a big deal. That’s why we picked it. We looked all over the country, and specifically picked Louisville Tech Center as where we want to be. (They have a sublease in Broomfield) .. and there’s a real diversity of talent there. Look at what we’re doing: biosciences, physics, mechanical engineering, thermodynamics and software. We thought this place was unique with those different disciplines. And to be honest, it fits our lifestyle. We love being outdoors. You know, work hard play hard. I’ll tell you, before I moved I got the IKON pass.