The ZBiotics Founding Story

 

The story of ZBiotics starts long ago, at a science camp in Sacramento, CA. Nine-year-old Zack Abbott was sitting in a classroom at Mira Loma High School, and somewhere between experiments and curiosity, the first seed of what would eventually become ZBiotics was planted.  

Beginnings 

Like most good origin stories, Zack's path from science camp to microbiologist-inventor was anything but straight. Though he studied molecular and cell biology at UC Berkeley, his first jobs out of school were decidedly non-scientific. He bartended. He played international rugby for Team USA in the Maccabi Games. He built houses for a nonprofit on Indian reservations across Idaho, Oregon, and Nevada. 

It wasn't until 2006, when he landed a job at an analytical chemistry lab back in Berkeley, that his scientific career began in earnest. From there, he worked his way back to biology—first joining a lab at UC Davis studying HIV treatments and vaccines, then eventually making his way to graduate school at the University of Michigan.

There, Zack studied under Professor Michele Swanson, former President of the American Society of Microbiology. Over six years working with Dr. Swanson, he became an expert in bacteria and microbial genetics, developing a deep fluency in modern genetic engineering. In 2015, he earned his PhD in Microbiology & Immunology.

Invention

During his PhD training, Zack discovered something that captivated him: microbes could be genetically engineered to change their behavior or perform entirely new functions. Since the 1970s, scientists had been engineering microbes to produce medicines, chemicals, and ingredients—turning them into miniature factories that today benefit people all over the world. The breadth of the technology was staggering, and Zack threw himself into mastering it.

But he had a new idea—one that hadn't been tried before. What if you engineered probiotic microbes to do something useful inside the human body? Combining the tools of genetic engineering with naturally occurring good-for-you microbes, he wanted to create something genuinely novel: a microbe “trained” to help people live healthier, happier lives.

So in 2016, Zack started ZBiotics. He rented lab space in Berkeley, just down the road from UC Berkeley, and spent every waking moment of the next twelve months in the lab. He was living in Sacramento at the time, a 90-minute drive away on a good day. To keep his experiments running around the clock, Zack started sleeping on the floor beside his lab bench.

The original vision was broad. Now it needed to become a product. Zack made a list of dozens of ideas and shared them with friends and family, curious what would resonate, and the response was surprising and consistent. Of everything he pitched, one idea generated the most excitement by far: a microbe engineered to break down acetaldehyde, a byproduct of alcohol metabolism, to help you feel better the morning after drinking.

Zack got to work to make that idea a reality. Twelve months later, in April 2017, he walked out of his Berkeley lab with what would become the world's first genetically engineered probiotic.

Building ZBiotics

Though the invention process had been a success, Zack knew that research and development was only part of the puzzle.

To get his product to market, Zack needed a team. In May 2017, he partnered with Stephen Lamb, a grad student finishing a dual JD/MBA at the University of Pennsylvania. Together, Zack and Stephen started building the company from the ground up.

Their first challenge was a fundamental one: would anyone actually buy this? They believed deeply that people would embrace a transparently genetically engineered product—but in an era when every food brand was plastering "non-GMO" on its packaging, that was far from obvious. They had to prove it.

So they got to work. They moved the lab from Berkeley to a larger space in San Francisco. Working around the clock, Zack could make 200 samples every 36 hours. Three days a week, he and Stephen would load up on fresh vials and carpool down the 101 into the heart of the San Francisco peninsula, hand-delivering samples to friends, prospects, and potential investors. The response was immediate. Word spread, and soon they were getting inbound requests for samples every hour. ZBiotics was in business.

In January 2018, they joined Y Combinator, the startup accelerator behind companies like Airbnb, Dropbox, and Instacart. They raised funding. They hired a team. Over the next two years, they ran safety trials, built a supply chain, designed a brand, validated the product with experts around the world, ran a crowdfunding campaign, and filed patents.

Launch

In August 2019—three years after Zack first rented that Berkeley lab—ZBiotics Pre-Alcohol launched to the world. It was the first genetically engineered probiotic ever brought to market, and that distinction is something we remain proud of today.

Since then, ZBiotics has grown. We've expanded our team, enlarged our lab, launched our second product, Sugar-to-Fiber, entered the retail and hospitality space, and put our products in the hands of hundreds of thousands of customers across the US.

But as proud as we are of that first product, it was never the finish line. Zack's original vision— engineering microbes to help people live healthier, happier lives—remains the reason the science never stops here. We're currently working on what products come next.