St. Louis Inno

Nov 06, 2023

Jon Schmuke jokes that his wife calls him a serial hobbyist.

"I have a lot of hobbies," said Schmuke, president of St. Louis-based agriculture technology startup Aferna Bio.

They include an interest in reef aquariums and a pair of 1967 Plymouth Belvedere cars he's fixing up in his garage. There's also candy, which has become Schmuke's biggest passion project in recent years. The hobby started about a decade ago when Schmuke and his son watched the television show "Treehouse Masters" and saw a treehouse built for a family that made candy canes.

"My son says, ‘Dad, let's make candy canes’ and so I started learning how to do this. I found it fascinating," Schmuke said.

Today, Schmuke continues to make candy. It continues to be a hobby, rather than a business venture, with a focus on helping others, through candy making demonstrations, learn more about the craft.

By day, Schmuke is president of Aferna Bio, an 11-person startup focused on developing molecular tools to improve plant growth. He previously worked for now-defunct startup Adarza Biosciences and spent 30 years with Monsanto.

What made you decide to go into a career in the life sciences? When I came back from college and came here to St. Louis, I had four years experience of running a theater. I got a job working in the theater at Mizzou, setting up lights, sound and equipment, and I had offers to go on tours with folks to do that kind of work. But I had a four-year degree in biochemistry and I said, 'You know what? I got this degree. I'm going to go figure it out.' And I really like it. The thing I like about science, and life science in general, is there's just still so much we don't know. That intrigues me and it's borne out. It fascinates me that when I started this career, there were no fluorescent proteins, there was no RNAi, there was no CRISPR. All these things are groundbreaking and they weren't even around when I started, so there's still so much to do and learn in life sciences in general, especially in plants.

You spent 30 years at Monsanto. What made you stay for so long? What made me stick around is at the time there wasn't as much opportunity in St. Louis for that kind of work. You worked at Sigma-Aldrich or you worked at Monsanto if you wanted to be in the life sciences industry and you wanted to stay in St. Louis. It sounds corny, but I tell people I went to the University of Monsanto in a lot of ways because all the best plant scientists, plant biologists, a lot of them were at Monsanto. We recruited the really, really good talent and they love to teach you things if you ask. I moved around to different groups and I learned a lot of different techniques and you’ve sort of got to be self-motivated to do that, but I loved it there.

You joined a startup, Adarza Biosciences, in 2017 and now work at another startup. What led you to that career shift? I missed the laboratory bench, honestly. I can actually do some hands-on work myself and still have the other pieces that I like, which is the people interactions and the business strategy piece of it. I like to keep my hands in there too. (My former Monsanto colleague) Bryan Witherbee actually was the one who talked to me about it and said, 'Hey, you know, here's a new opportunity for you. You've done your time in Monsanto. Let's have some fun and do a startup and get involved at the bench and at all different levels.' I like this mix that we have going now. I like the environment that's being created. It's growing as a startup community here. And it's not just me. A lot of my old colleagues are doing the same thing.

What kind of candy do you make? I make hard candy — lollipops, candy canes, ribbon candy. Anything that you can make out of hard candy, I make. I've really started to try to do techniques that aren't around anymore. We call them opera curls or upper twist and things that you used to be able to get in the 1920s, but you can't get anymore. No one makes them because they don't really work well in high throughput or in a manufacturing setting. I like to do different flavors and things you wouldn't find every other day at your candy store order. People tell me all the time you should start a business with this. I'm like 'Well, that's not why I do it.' I do it because I enjoy doing it and I'm interacting with people. I don't want to lose that aspect of it. It's just sort of a side hobby and passion project.

How long is the process to make candy? It takes about an hour. I do things that I call small batch. They may only be five or six cups of sugar and you can do them in your pot in your kitchen. It takes about 30 to 40 minutes to bring it to the right temperature. Then you're on the clock. It cools down as soon as you start turning the heat off and then you're going to cool it, form it and potentially run it through a machine to get the shape you want. That whole process takes me an hour. That's one thing I also like about it. It's quick. For example, when I do demonstrations at one of the candy shops, I'll do like six batches in an afternoon because every hour I do another one. It's fun. I let the kids pick the colors and the flavors, and we make something.

More about Jon Schmuke

Title: President, Aferna Bio

Age: 57

Family: Wife, Maryanne Dersch, and three adopted children

Education: Bachelor of science in agriculture from the University of Missouri-Columbia