Jamie Mitri Podcast Transcript
Jamie Mitri joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of The Digital Executive podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to the Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Jamie Mitri. Jamie Mitri is an entrepreneur with degrees in chemical engineering and biology. Jamie spent her career developing and manufacturing medical devices and biotechnology products used in the ICU of hospitals, overseeing environmental compliance, including air pollution and wastewater, and more recently as a project manager, focusing on business strategy and marketing.
Jamie founded her company, Moss Pure, at a startup competition at MIT, where it won first place startup at the MIT Lebanon Challenge. Jamie then participated in the United Nations Development Program. Where Moss Pure won Top 10 Startup during the MIT competition. Jamie realized that live Moss has tremendous health benefits.
However, most Moss companies use preserved or dried Moss, which are no longer living. Since preserved Moss is no longer living. The benefits of live Moss cannot be used. So, Jamie created Moss pure. Moss Pure is the world’s only live moss air filter and stress relief device while acting as an aesthetically pleasing decor piece in your home or office.
No watering sunlight or maintenance is needed as Moss Peer’s proprietary engineering sustains the live moss with the product itself, working in synergy to allow Moss to obtain its nutrients from the air and become an air filter.
Brian Thomas: Well, good afternoon, Jamie. Welcome to the show!
Jamie Mitri: Thank you for having me.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely appreciate you making the time this evening. Jamie. It’s always awesome talking to someone that’s an entrepreneur and doing some really great things. And we’ve got someone today. That’s just amazing with what you’ve come up with. Obviously, it started out as a challenge and we’ll get into that.
But thank you so much. And Jamie, we’re going to jump right into your questions here. You’ve got quite the career in biology, chemical engineering. You’re a project manager. Now you’re the founder and CEO of Moss Pure. Could you share with our audience the secret to your career growth and what inspires you?
Jamie Mitri: Yeah, I mean, I just love to learn and I have a lot of interest, both in science and interior design and fashion design. So, my core you know, education is in chemical engineering and biology. And in my career, I went through many different, you know, many different roles at many different companies, primarily in the biotechnology industry.
And as an environmental engineer, so I created healthcare products and, but also, you know, healthcare products that we’re using the ICUs and hospitals to treat patients and diagnose patients. With certain diseases, but also as an environmental engineer, I also developed and was behind the compliance of, you know, anything that had to do with air quality, wastewater, stormwater, quality, hazardous waste, recycling.
So, I love science and I also love fashion design and interior design, and I really just wanted to create a product that had both of that, you know, both my interests in it and. Throughout my career as I was actually creating medical devices, I would bring in doctors and patients to get their feedback as we were developing the product soon as an engineer.
And 1 of the big things that I kept getting was we want an aesthetically pleasing piece. We don’t want to we don’t want a piece. It looks like a scientific device. So I always knew if I ever had the chance to create my own company, my own product, I was going to merge my 2 interests and make an aesthetically pleasing scientific product.
Brian Thomas: I love that story, how you brought that all together. I know you know, dude’s a little bit of research on you. I saw, you know, obviously you’re in that science field and, but you had this passion for interior design and you brought those both together beautifully as we’ll talk about here. So thank you.
And Jamie, we love to hear entrepreneur stories here on the podcast. It’s awesome. Where did you get the idea for your award-winning project? And now company Moss Pure.
Jamie Mitri: Yeah. So, it kind of just goes in line with what I was saying. I was at the point in my career where I was like, if I ever create a product, I’m going to merge those two.
And I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I just didn’t know how to start. I came about a startup competition at the Massachusetts Institute of technology called the MIT 2020. I ended up. Going through the competition, and I won 1st place there in the chat and in our track, which is health, energy and waste management.
And then the U. N. came by, they heard about the project and the product. And then they asked me to go through their startup competition called the development program. And I want top 10 startup worldwide. So, while I was actually in the competition, I didn’t know I was going to work with Moss, but I came about, you know, live Moss and it has so many tremendous health benefits.
But when I looked deeper into things, the Moss wall market was in demand. And there was a gap, many people and many companies out there weren’t able to use the benefits of live Moss. Many companies, even to this day, use preserved Moss, which is no longer living. The Moss is treated with so many chemicals and dyes.
It can’t be used as an air filter, for example. because the moss is no longer living. And these companies were saying one, that their moss was living and it was an air filter. And I was like, that’s scientifically not possible. And also, they’re not really being honest here because the moss is actually not living.
And, you know, the very few companies that were trying to use live moths, they were literally sticking live moths on a frame. And if you do that, if you bring out live monster, you just stick on a frame, it’s not going to survive for more than 3 days inside. And it’s going to meet a lot of watering. And that was the thing.
Customers wanted live month and they didn’t want to. They didn’t have to. They didn’t want to have to water it. That was the biggest thing live loss. No watering aesthetics. So, I created more spare, which is a live loss air filter and stress relief device. It’s patent pending for both of those. We don’t need watering sunlight or maintenance.
And it’s also an aesthetically pleasing to core piece for your home and business. And we’re not just sticking Moss onto a frame. There’s a lot of science patent pending science that goes behind it, but we also create a very simple, aesthetically pleasing the core piece. And that’s where I bring in my interior fashion design.
I made it. I didn’t want it to look like a scientific device. I wanted it to look like a beautiful piece, but also have amazing health benefits for both you and the environment.
Brian Thomas: Love that story and that’s amazing your competition which led to another competition and being, you know, listed as the, in the top 10 globally is a tough feat for sure.
But yeah, I’ve seen some of your artwork as I, I like to call it, because it looks like art beautiful. So thank you for sharing and Jamie. Switching gears a little bit, we all love beautiful living things, especially if there’s no maintenance with them. Of course, in your case, there’s also several benefits to having living moss in your environment.
Could you walk us through some of these benefits?
Jamie Mitri: Yeah. So the first thing, you know, no watering, how did I do that? Well, that I knew that was a requirement the customers wanted. As part of the MIT competition, I got access to four 50 customers worldwide, 150 in the us. And when I spoke to them, they basically told me we don’t want to water it and I don’t have a green thumb either.
So, using science, I basically created a living environment within our design. It’s hidden by our design and in that design is a proprietary and patent pending multi layered formulation that I created that works the most and keeps it alive in our product. But it also provides nutrients, including water for the moss.
And another thing that we’re doing is that we’re working hand in hand with the moss. So usually when you have air purifying plants, um, they take like maybe like 20 years. So, like. Purify only 2. 2 percent of your space. They will purify it, but a very small amount and it will take forever. And if you ever sense your product out to like, a lab, like an air quality lab, like, it would never pass results air quality results.
I didn’t want to just. Use the natural purifying capabilities of live moth. I actually wanted to create a product that it improves your air quality and being an environmental engineer and being in that compliance space. I knew whenever you create an air filter, by the way, you have to send it out to a lab to get tested for air quality.
You can’t just say I have an air filter. That’s false marketing. So, I knew that I was going to perfect my design and my science and then I was going to go to lab and I was going to get. The passing results. And that’s what I was going to share. And then I would be able to say, Hey, it improves air quality.
And that’s exactly what I did. So basically, the moss one we create a living environment for it. We add nutrients to it, but also, we work with it using science to basically use bad chemicals in the air as its food and nutrient source. So not only is it taking the bad chemicals as its food and nutrient source, it’s in turn Filtering out your air and living off of that, you know, those pollutants.
So I got this tested at a certified laboratory. It showed that every square foot of mass pure within 2 minutes purifies 30 percent of CO2 and millions of pollutant particles, including dust allergens. Vocs, which are toxic gases, metals, bacteria and viruses. I targeted wasp here for those contaminants, especially allergens, because I have severe allergies.
And so do my family members, but it actually does a number of different pollutants. So that’s just what it is. But the other thing, too, is it’s also a stretch leaf device, and it’s really hard to make artwork out of a living product. You know, preserving moss is much more easier to make artwork out of because it’s no longer a living.
So you can just attach it. But we’re actually working and manipulating a live. Plants, but it actually really likes our design. It’s an eco-friendly design that we’re creating around it. I literally built my science to make our most happy and make our most living and it’s they’re beautiful pieces. I think they are, but it’s great to get good feedback from customers of people worldwide because as an engineer, I didn’t create this for myself.
I took customers feedback and tested my design with customers and got the feedback, and I actually tested the product scientifically with customers. I did prototype testing, alpha and beta testing, and they were my customers were the ones that confirmed. It didn’t need watering. I actually thought I had it down to once-a-week spray missing and my customers, half of them forgot to water.
I also forgot to water my own prototypes and the most lived for. Forever indefinitely for years, so that’s how I figured out. It actually didn’t need watering. I knew I got it down, you know, before it needed before with live moths any type of products that had live moths in it. You needed to water it daily and I thought I had it down to once a week and it actually turned out that my engineering and science worked that you don’t have to water it. The product itself takes care of the moths.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. Love you unpacking all the benefits, especially the health ones. As you know, a lot of people seems more and more people are getting some new sort of allergy strain. And we just love the fact that you’ve. Found the problem, came up with the solution, and now it’s going to actually help everybody, including the environment.
So, thank you. And Jamie, last question of the day. We are a tech platform, tech podcast. We just like to ask you if you’re leveraging any new or emerging tech in your business, and it’s okay if you’re not, but maybe you found a cool tool or app you might share with us.
Jamie Mitri: I do actually use a lot of tech, you know, I think before I mentioned to you that, you know, maybe I don’t use a lot of tech, but I am a nerd and I do use a lot of tech, especially in my business.
And it really has to do with getting feedback from my customers and bringing my messaging across to our customers. I’m a very data driven person. So I look at data, I look to see what my customers like, what they don’t like. And I just react to that. And 1 of the big things is that, you know, I is huge, right?
I is huge right now, but I will tell you, I don’t use for our content because our content is just really like. Original because I’m explaining my whole entire design to my audience and usually marketing execs and marketing companies will tell you if you have a scientific product, don’t put a lot of text on a page.
Customers won’t pay attention to it. But I have found the opposite. My customers love when I speak about the science. You know, I do a lot of Instagram lives. Anytime I’m speaking about the product, customers love it for some reason, and they react to it and they want more of it. So, I give them more information.
Every week I do a live on Instagram. I gather questions from my audience and a lot of the questions I get surprised because I didn’t think anyone would ask about it. But it actually really reveals how much science I actually put into the product and how much I actually designed and formulated certain products within the actual design for Moss Pure and customers have just been amazed with this.
And just technology has really helped me reach other audiences that I wouldn’t normally get, you know, if you weren’t in this day and age. I mean, the MIT competition itself was in zoom because we were because we were, you know, in quarantine under covid because of that technology. I was able to. To take on this competition during that time and I was able to launch this business.
So, technology has been a huge part of my business and of my life, especially with creating my product.
Brian Thomas: Thank you so much for sharing what you utilize as far as technology. And of course, technology was employed during your competition. And subsequently now you have a successful business. So, thank you again, Jamie, for the wonderful time this evening.
And I really look forward to speaking with you again, real soon.
Jamie Mitri: Thank you. I had a great time.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Jamie Mitri Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
