We recently connected with Dean Sauer and have shared our conversation below.

Dean , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

PyroFarms’ mission is to bring nature’s natural wonder, beauty, and glow into the home, office, and classroom. We combine the flow of art with the structure of science.

Dean , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

As a young scientist working in the lab, I had several duties and responsibilities. One of my responsibilities was to culture mammalian cells (grow mouse and human cultured cells). This is a very complex and challenging task that requires specific training, education and discipline. Part of the discipline was working on the weekends. My cells did not know it was the weekend and required care and feeding. At the time I felt it was my duty to take of my cells so I never left them to neglect. I always was there for my cells. However, in the back of my mind, I was asking myself, ‘how is this going to help me in my career?’. Twenty years later it turned out that it was the exact training I needed to start my company, PyroFarms.

At PyroFarms we grow and culture plant-plankton (phytoplankton) that we call PyroDinos. PyroDinos are much easier to take care of (compared to my mammalian cells). My early Lab Associate background prepared me to master the culturing (growing) of these cells. I now sell PyroDinos to over twenty countries and on Amazon and other online platforms.

Conversations about M&A are often focused on multibillion dollar transactions – but M&A can be an important part of a small or medium business owner’s journey. We’d love to hear about your experience with selling businesses.

I have sold two businesses, A DNA Art Company called Yonder Biology and a Consumer BioTech company called Biological and Popular Culture (BioPop). When I sold my first business, Yonder Biology, it was a process that seemed to take forever (two years). I now realize this is typical. A relationship between a business owner and an investor needs to be cultured (like my cells) and grown to a place of mutual trust. Once the trust between parties is established then, a sale is possible. In both instances, it was a breakout moment for the company that catapulted the buyer into action. For the DNA Art Company, a highly successful Kickstarter (crowdfunding) campaign was the breakout, and for BioPop it was an outstanding quarter of over a million in sales.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

PyroFarms sells living algae. In therory the algae is easy as a houseplant to care for. However, not all people have green thumbs and some do fail to care for their algae properly on the first go-around. Here is how we address this potential weakness.

We consider Customer Serivce a part of Marketing. How we perform and react to customer complaints is by treating these negatives as an opportunity. An opportunity to engage the customer directly and show them how dedicated we are to them, our products and our plankton. We have generated hundreds of positive reviews and a good portion of these review mention Customer Service or a PyroFarm Employee by name. This is how we approach this business sector, Customer Service, where some other companies only try to do the bare minimum to satisfy a customer complaint.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://pyrofarms.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pyrofarms
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/PyroFarms
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@pyrofarms

Image Credits
Dean Sauer, PyroFarms