How an Octopus can Accelerate your Bioprocess - An interview with Cristofer Rybner of Reocto
For biomanufacturing to have the global impact we’re all hoping for, many things will need to change. Biomanufactured products like food and textiles, while starting in the luxury space, must eventually come down in price to become widely accessible. This will require changes to the underlying technologies. One critical piece of infrastructure is the bioreactor—where cells or organisms are grown at a massive scale 🌱.
Typically, startups and new companies use the reliable stirred tank bioreactor (STR). The STR has been the workhorse of biopharma since the early 1900s. However, it was designed to maximize protein production, not biomass. Plus, it supports products with extremely high profit margins (think antibodies, vaccines 💉).
But for biomanufacturing to make an impact on commodity products, the bioreactor needs to evolve. This week, I spoke with Cristofer Rybner, co-founder and self-declared "operations" guy at Reocto, a startup on a mission to revolutionize R&D-scale bioprocessing 🚀.
Like many startups, Reocto was born out of a hackathon. In 2021, Cristofer met Filips at a Baltic deep-tech hackathon. The challenge: “What will bioreactors of the future look like, and how will they operate?”
Cristofer and Fillips came up with a modular solution, identifying a unique gap at the bench scale. Their design won the hackathon, and several industry judges even asked them to "please make this" 👏. The enthusiasm stuck with them, and shortly after, they connected with Toni, a bioprocessing expert, to level up their designs 🧪.
Despite living across three countries (Cristofer in Estonia, Fillips in Latvia, and Toni in Slovenia), the team extended their initial design and developed an MVP. One of the earliest prototype bioreactors looked like an octopus, which inspired the name Reocto 🐙.
One of the most impressive things about Reocto is that they’ve entirely bootstrapped the company 💪. Avoiding the need for external fundraising has allowed them to work at their own pace and focus on building a product that truly meets their customers' needs. While the pressure of VC funding can drive results, it can also create unrealistic expectations 🏃♂️💼. As Cristofer put it:
“It’s our time and our money, so we work at a pace that ensures we deliver a product our consumers love.”
And it’s clearly working for the team. Despite being spread across multiple countries, they’ve built a fully functional 50ml bench-top bioreactor that undercuts similar products by a significant margin. Key to their success is absolute role clarity: Cristofer handles operations, Fillips leads sales and management, and Toni is the product and bioprocess specialist.
When I asked about the design process, Cristofer lit up ✨. There's a real sense of pride here, which is awesome to see in a founder. A key part of their design strategy was simplicity—they focused on removing complexity to keep costs low while maintaining core functionality.
A unique feature of the Reocto is its design: many probes and sensors are inserted from beneath, like octopus tentacles 🐙. While each unit contains just one reactor, multiple units can be daisy-chained together and operated via the same software.
Given that Reocto bootstrapped their MVP, I was curious about the challenges they faced along the way. Cristofer highlighted prioritization as one of the biggest hurdles.
"There are so many things we could do. Figuring out what we should do has been hard."
Early-stage startups face infinite possibilities—prioritizing the right ones can make or break you. It's a delicate balance between blue-sky thinking and staying commercially driven 🎯.
Another challenge is familiar to anyone in sales:
"Everyone is happy to chat about collaboration and partnerships until we mention money 💸."
On the flip side, when I asked Cristofer about the high points, his face lit up when he mentioned storytelling:
“Taking people on the Reocto journey and turning them into believers is one of the most rewarding parts of being a founder.”
Cristofer’s (and his team’s) ability to tell a compelling story has paid off, with multiple people offering their time and expertise to help accelerate Reocto’s journey 🛠️. Great storytelling is often an underrated skill for founders, but it’s crucial for gaining buy-in from investors, customers, and early hires.
"We’ve benefited greatly from the multiplier effect of a supportive community of experts."
So, what’s next for Reocto? In the future, they plan to incorporate more automation into their hardware and add AI/ML solutions to their software to increase the predictive power of their bioreactors 🔮.
As the biomanufacturing industry grows, I’m excited to see the innovations that will emerge in the B2B space. Optimizing the “picks and shovels” will be essential for producing large amounts of biomass at a low cost, and changing the bioreactor design is a critical step in achieving that goal 🛠️🌍.
As I do at the end of every interview, I asked Cristofer if he had an 'ask' for the community. Reocto are looking for collaborators and beta-testers for their products, ideally anyone working on developing their bioprocess from bench top to early pilot scale.
