S10E126 Alex Babich / Nuravine - Cultivating the Future: From Startup Entrepreneur to AI-Driven CEA Innovator

0:00:00 - Harry Duran

So, alex Babich, ceo and founder of Neurovine, thank you so much for joining me on the vertical farming podcast.

0:00:07 - Alex Babich

Thanks for having me, Harry.

0:00:09 - Harry Duran

I always like to place the listener in a geographically so where's home for you?

0:00:15 - Alex Babich

So home is New York City. I'm working right now out of my apartment and this is where we started the company, and our main office is in Woodstock, new York, so I'm there at least like once or twice a month.

0:00:27 - Harry Duran

Okay, I grew up in Yonkers so I'm very familiar and I've lived in New York City, brooklyn and Lower East Side, so I think I'll always consider myself a New Yorker at heart. I'm currently in many app businesses you could probably tell by some of this wood-tanneling behind me but I think when I did see your apartment, my initial thought was maybe New York City, because I was like this looks like a familiar New York City apartment. So were you born and raised there?

0:00:51 - Alex Babich

That's an interesting question and it's always like what does it mean if you're born and raised so I was actually born in New York until I was about like one or one and a half, then my parents decided you know I shouldn't be picking cigarettes off the street, and so then we moved to upstate New York.

It's Carmel which is like about an hour north, and so that's where you must know a little bit. It's a little bit further out than Yonkers, but that's where my brother was born, and then I grew up there until I was 18 years of age, and then that's when I went to college and sort of departed from there.

0:01:21 - Harry Duran

A fun fact for the listener is at one point, clint Eastwood was the mayor of Carmel. Isn't that correct, or no? No, I'm thinking of California, carmel, right?

0:01:30 - Alex Babich

Yeah yeah no, I think I would have known that.

0:01:36 - Harry Duran

It's funny because I've been to Carmel in California because I was like, wait, is that the Carmel? And I'm like, no, that's the Carmel. Sorry, but you did mention that your headquarters is in Woodstock and a bit of history with that part of the country as well from that music festival.

0:01:50 - Alex Babich

Yeah, I mean it's actually. It's a world famous location because of that and, funny enough, like the music festival was in Bethel. New York which is maybe like 40 minutes away, but they liked the name Woodstock, so they wanted to name it that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it just worked out from a market angle. What was?

0:02:06 - Harry Duran

life like growing up there.

0:02:08 - Alex Babich

Carmel. It was interesting I guess it wasn't like super eventful. So basically I went to Carmel kindergarten like public school and it wasn't really like great for me because I guess I'm just a little bit different. I guess I got put into that like ADHD kid sort of category.

So when I was in kindergarten, like the teacher didn't think I was like able to like work in that classroom and so then they had me like tested and it turned out like I had like a high IQ. So someone said like, oh, you actually need to go to a different school. So then I ended up going to private school for about seven years, okay, and was there. I think it was, you know, good experience for me. And then after a while it didn't seem like it was as useful. So then I went back to Carmel for the last year of middle school and then graduated there from high school and then I went off to college in Florida from there and that's a whole story. But that's Carmel in a certain sense.

0:03:07 - Harry Duran

I think just the phrase college in Florida is probably kind of songless. You know just that one phrase people imagining spring break, it's on a beach and all that sort of stuff.

0:03:16 - Alex Babich

Yeah, I always loved Florida, Like when I was even in high school like, or middle school, we would travel there, my grandmother lived there, and so I just enjoyed like the weather, yeah, the amusement park, like that kind of stuff, and it was just, you know, it's definitely kind of like a dream for a kid in Carmel. It's like, oh, I'd love to like go to school there. And so I went there, you know, and I had definitely interesting experience, like I'm sure we could get into it, because I have somewhat of a non traditional like story, but my dad thinks like going there wasn't good. But I disagree. I think it was like a really like pivotal moment for me and my development.

0:03:50 - Harry Duran

Is there one story that you can share?

0:03:53 - Alex Babich

Yeah, I mean there's a lot I'd say like kind of the real change that I had between like high school. College is like in high school I never was that interested in school Like, and so I did okay. And then I did well enough to get into a couple of schools. I got into a public school in Florida and a couple other schools and I chose that one and when I started of course I was like really interested in the social life Like I joined a fraternity.

I had like a whole entire new like social experience that I've ever had like loads of friends and was going to the beach just partying, you know, having a great time, and I did go in as an engineer but I was like undecided. And then I think it was like maybe my second year is when I really started to like just find math really interesting.

Like it was something that I've always kind of like been good at, but like I never really put a lot of effort into it. And then I started to realize like, oh, I love learning math, like I want to understand it all, and I started to have these kind of like, this vision of like oh, I really want to know math because I want to like look outside and I want to see equations, like I want to see the world like in a mathematical way, and I started also like educating myself online. Like that was when, like the Khan Academy was like starting off, which it's become like a really big and important thing.

And I was like, well, why am I like going to these classes?

Like and you know a lot of the students they weren't like, they didn't care as much, which I understand, but people, like a lot of people, go to college, they want to, like get a job.

They're like, oh, I don't want to go to class, this is hard, I want to get done with this. And so I just was like, well, why do I have to pay money to learn something I could learn online with people that, like, are passionate about it, and so that was like one of the things that was kind of pivotal. And then, like another thing I found out about and this is in, I think, 2010, I found out about the Venus Project, which is basically this guy's idea for, like, future cities that are self sustaining, and he's from Florida, and so kind of what ended up happening in this whole tale is that I ended up actually deciding to drop out of the school and get picked up and, like, on the way, go visit this person and go to his like compound, which has, like his models and his ideas and stuff, and it was a real great experience, because he actually is dead now, but he died like 101 years old.

And so I'm grateful to have had the experience when he was maybe like 95 or something, and just see, and like the whole idea behind his concept is that it's actually based on like a resource based economy. So it was like not based on the amount of money that there was, but more. It's like well, what is the resources that are available? And he thought that like, essentially, there are enough resources on earth for everyone to have like a very high standard of living and in a certain sense, like the monetary system can kind of like get in the way of that, right. And if you think about it like, if you extrapolate it, it's like imagine that there's so much of everything, like you know, it's everything's free, right, like we don't have to pay to breathe air, right, and so like, if you know, there was like water, everyone had water, food. It was just like there's too much of it. Then the monetary system like almost doesn't make sense. So, of course, like that's been a while I'm kind of living in the real world where that's still a part but like definitely like the concept of it, like it does make sense and it does seem like, as we're moving into like the future, where things abundance is theoretically on the horizon, like. That concept, I think still like holds a lot of weight.

0:07:22 - Harry Duran

Do you think it was that experience and meeting him that kind of brought these, this topic like to the forefront, this idea of, like you know, having enough energy supply to do what we need to do in a way that's not destructive and, you know, just moving towards this idea of essentially what people would call a utopia?

0:07:41 - Alex Babich

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think this is definitely like a part of it. I mean it's definitely hard to say, like, if I didn't see this like what I have become like would I be doing what I'm doing today or would I be a different person. I think there is a lot of like kind of like who you are, and then there's like the information that you receive, and I sort of believe there's maybe like a path that's somewhat kind of figured out for people, and then it's just about like the different like moments where you like realize, oh yeah, like this is the direction that, like you know, I want to go in.

But in terms of like getting into vertical farming and thinking about these future cities, like that was definitely something that was like really important, and like I was first thinking about like, oh, like the whole city, and then I was thinking like, okay, this is a city, this is a automated system, this is completely run by robots, and so, like, how do you run a self sustaining city?

Well, you obviously need like food, and so obviously there's going to be like farms which are probably like indoors and like vertical and automated, and so I wanted to go into that and I guess this is like kind of a separate thing, but you know, I kind of have just like a very like kind of quite an imagination, I would say, and so like there was a time where I ended up just kind of thinking about this like a building, like a skyscraper in New York City that was like a completely automated robotic farm.

That was like growing every single food you could imagine and had this whole system where basically, like it was, robots were like putting all the food in, like cars, and the cars were like driving themselves and distributing food throughout the city and even like preparing smoothies and people could like get them from apps and stuff like that. So it's just like the extrapolation of like all this, like automation and robotics, and that was kind of the idea. Obviously we didn't quite get to that, but you know, in a certain sense like having these kind of out there ideas, and then it's like, okay, well, what can I reasonably do? And then is that going into that direction? And then also, you know the direction. It doesn't necessarily need to be that. I mean, at the end of the day, the most important thing is that you're providing value to people, you're making the world a better place and there's definitely different avenues you could take to do that.

0:09:49 - Harry Duran

That picture you paint reminds me of Dixon Despamier's book, because it's literally what led me down like the rabbit hole, because the initial impulse was Peter Demondis's book Abundance, and then that obviously led me to Dixon Despamier's book and there's that vision of let's try Scraper.

I think the challenge in a place like New York City is obviously the cost of real estate Probably make a project like that very cost prohibitive, but it is very utopian vision. But I think there's so many things happening and or with automation and robotics and efficiencies, I could see a feature or something like that would be possible and it's definitely important to be able to have a big vision and to dream big. I think sometimes, especially when we're dealing with, like these new technologies, because someone's got to have the vision or the idea of what it could be, and it helps to move forward and I think, not having that limitation and I don't know if this is something that's inherent in you and your nature I know that you've got an engineering background as well and so I wonder if the computer engineers, I wonder if this is all just the way you think, like in terms of like what's possible.

0:10:51 - Alex Babich

Yeah, certainly, definitely, having the vision makes the incredibly like difficult startup journey like more bearable.

I would say Like I didn't really have like a lot of like real jobs, but I did work as an intern at Con Edison and I remember like thinking about, like you know, people are looking to be an interns and they get into the system and then work their way up the corporate ladder and it was a very like there was like, oh, there's like the one L, the one H, the two L, like it's just so funny how you can go up these steps.

And so I was like, wow, if I would like work here, I like see my future like right here, and in a sense, like I'm, I feel like, oh, that's like a ceiling and it almost feels like, imagine you have this vision and it's like, okay, I'm gonna put this over here so you can't see it anymore. Like that's kind of how I felt in a certain sense and you know and I think not to say anything that's wrong with it like I think it's some people really enjoy having careers like that. But you know, for me it wasn't really what brought joy into my mind and so I decided that I did want to do something else, and so definitely that's another reason like why I'm doing what I'm doing.

0:11:58 - Harry Duran

So let's rewind the clock a little bit and, for the benefit of the listener, a little maybe theater of the mind. If you could paint the picture of where you were. You said looks like you started Nervine in January 2017, so where were you in 2016 at this idea? You were sounds like you're still at ConEd and this is not something where you've got experience. You've done multiple stars before or you've been in corporate for like 20 plus years, like I was but so enabled and having that experience, or maybe not having that experience open you up to possibilities of what's possible. But I'm just curious. Origin stories always fascinate me, so how was this idea percolating for you for Nervine?

0:12:38 - Alex Babich

Yeah, absolutely so. Florida was earlier and then, like I said, I dropped out. But then I decided I did want to go back to school and so, you know, I sort of I don't even hear it, right, I only hear it maybe when I'm on a call or podcast, but anyway, yeah, so, kind of getting back into the chronological story, so I ended up going to City College too. I was like you know what I do want to resume my education definitely came into it in like a way better place where I was obviously had that motivation of you know, really being passionate about learning. So like that made school like really interesting.

Because, and like the reason like I decided to go with computer engineering is because I thought that, you know, I wanted to learn everything like physics, math, computer science, electrical engineering, like all these things, and they actually don't let people do double majors in City College.

So I figured computer engineering is a great compromise on all those things and I definitely don't regret it.

I think it was the best major for me and so, like another thing about me is like I'm very like observant about like people and so whenever I was in classes, like I would always like find people really interesting, especially like smart people, and I would always like befriend them and just work with them and learn from them.

And not that this was like a real venture, but right before, like before Nervine, I actually met some like really smart students who want to computer science classes, and so we decided we're going to build a physics simulator in virtual reality. This was when, like, the Oculus came out, and so you know, another thing that I'm passionate about is like education, and so I thought that like, oh, I imagine you could, instead of like I guess this is kind of the math visualization thing that I was talking about before it's like you could be in a world where you can see stuff, but you could actually see the equations, like on the, the ball, the arrow and stuff, you could throw it and you know we could make it like as advanced as possible.

I mean, obviously at that time I think technology would make it extremely difficult. But got into that and then at that also time I started working in like a computer vision lab so I was like trying to do the sign language detection system, where the computer could like detect sign languages, and it basically just became like just too much for me and I just decided I'm not going to work on the virtual reality thing right now, I'm just going to focus on the computer vision, and then I just did that for a while and then basically I think it was the last year, like 2016.

That's when I was in a pretty challenging class called communication theory, which is really interesting. It's the science, it's the math of like waves that travel through the world. So if you want to know, like how like wi-fi works and yeah all these signals like how does it work?

it's like that's the class. And I ended up linking up with the well, now, my business partner, adrian, and at the time, like we just we're kind of we've seen each other around, we talked a little bit, but we weren't really that close. And so I just remember that like one time I was like kind of studying my on my own in the library and I was like, oh my god, this is like too dense. And then I'm like let me just call Adrian, let's work together. And so he was really into it. And then once we started like working together, we realized that we had such chemistry in terms of just the way that our brains worked, because, like he is like extremely good at a lot of stuff, like he's very practical, has like a really deep understanding of like engineering, and then I have this kind of like futuristic, like vision and also like a strong background in math, and so just basically, us like putting our heads together made us really understand it better and just made it like fun. And so we were working in the library for like hours, like for the whole day, and it was fun. And so I just remember, you know, obviously I kept him in mind a lot.

And then there's this startup incubator at my school called the Zahn incubator, and so a lot of colleges have something like that and they basically have like a competition where you could either win 25,000 or 50,000 dollars. And I went to him and I asked. I was like, yeah, do you want to start a business together? And he's like, oh yeah, what do you think? And he's like, do you have any ideas? And then I told him, like oh, I have this idea for like a book club app where, like, you could have an app and you could like read with your friends. And he's like, oh, that's a good idea, but, like, I want to do something that's like more like hardware related and so I was he's like you have any like crazy ideas.

And then I told him about, like you know, the skyscraper idea. And then he was like, well, you know what? There's actually this MIT project called the MIT Open Ag food computer and they have like a blueprint and so we could like build that and kind of try to sell it as like a farm in a box for your home. And basically we were like, okay, that's our idea. And we just went to the Zahn Center where you were like, hey, we want, we're computer engineers, we want to have a computer grow a plant, and that's pretty much it. And so they basically accepted us and then we went on that journey and that was pretty much like where Neurovine began.

0:17:32 - Harry Duran

That's an amazing story, I think it's just. It shows the power of unrestricted being and being able to think outside the box and just running ideas and also, you know, synchronistically like having the right people around you to sort of bounce these ideas around. Because I imagine if you had tried to do something yourself, you would be limited by what was in your line of thinking and the fact that he knew about this project. And it's almost like the one plus one equals three equation here, because you got to really put your heads together. And so was that your first kind of like other than hypothetically thinking about this idea of the skyscraper, but that was, as that, real really weren't like sort of like kind of what the metaphor is about, hitting the pavement, but just like really like figuring out what and learning what you need to know about the world of vertical farming, and just kind of deep diving and starting to be acquainted with what had happened previously, what people were doing. And so was it just like a sort of like trial by fire at that point.

0:18:31 - Alex Babich

Yeah, exactly. So everything before that was just all like in my imagination, right. And then I mean, with Adrian, we get into the program and like one of the great things is we like they push us right. It's a startup incubator, right. So they're going to make you do things, they're going to make you do customer interviews, they're going to teach you about investing and all sorts of things. And actually one thing that was pretty interesting is we ended up getting connected with this guy, dan Nelson, who he started his own company a little bit ago as well. But like initially we were working together and he was like a entrepreneur already and he had been like understanding like kind of the game of entrepreneurship where you got to go to like a lot of networking events and like just reach out to people on LinkedIn and like do that sort of thing.

So he was really helpful for us in the beginning and we ended up just like signing up for trying to remember, like what the groups I know, like Agri-texture, had like some meetups. We definitely did some of those. And then we also got into cannabis. Like there was this thing called a canna gather and so basically we went to that and we're actually like mostly in the cannabis industry now, funny enough. But that was definitely like the beginning of that experience and so I think, like the reason we are I mean, it's just incredible like where we are today. It's just completely all created from like these one off interactions and then going deeper into them, and so it's quite a journey.

0:19:55 - Harry Duran

So if you look at the, when you say you started it, this goes back to pre COVID and so I imagine there's been a lot that's happened. So can you talk a little bit about the journey company and anything you had to do with the pivots or shifts to kind of get you to present day?

0:20:12 - Alex Babich

Yeah, that's a good question. So let's see, so 2017 was like when we were in the Zon Center, so like in the school. They had an incubator there. Actually, that was like my last year of school at Adrian had like another year, so we ended up sort of staying in the Zon Center for about like, let's say like a year or year and a half and then we ended up like having to move out and we ended up like moving into my apartment, which is where we are right now.

So I mean, it's a decent size apartment. It's not huge, but you know, it was me, adrian lived here. We had all our stuff. We had a nice grow tent where we were growing stuff. So it was pretty tight but we were keeping it pretty lean. And, yeah, we were doing like a lot of customer discovery and we got into a couple of like I core programs from the National Science Foundation. So like I mean essentially like being in the Zon program was definitely like a springboard because we had a chance to like pitch all the time and then, of course, sometimes the people listening to the pitches the I guess the investors were. They had connections and stuff, and so that's how we got like from Zon into these like I core programs which, if you're not familiar, they're basically like you have to do 100 customer interviews in eight weeks and you get money to do that, and so we actually did that twice.

We did one that was $3,000, which is like you know, you're supposed to kind of do it in your region. And then there was another one that was like 50,000, which is like you should be flying all over the country and going to places. And so we were lucky to do both of those and we kind of had the idea already for what we were going to do in like, I'd say, in like 2017, we had the idea that we were going to do like a nutrient dosing system. Like that was kind of like we're like we're building the farm in the box, the MIT food computer. There was the startup competition, like we won the competition because we built that. But we also said this thing costs like so much money and the technology is good, but it could do a lot more and it's like a lot of components right, because a food computer is essentially just like a mini farm and like you need all those same things on a larger scale. And so we were like, okay, well, we're gonna focus on the nutrient dosing system component of it.

0:22:23 - Harry Duran

Yeah, curious just about your thought process, because obviously those folks on all stages of the journey listening entrepreneurs and people getting started in this industry as well but what was it that moved you from from in a box to a dosing system? I'm just curious about the conversations you were having and how you made that decision.

0:22:40 - Alex Babich

Yeah, that's pretty funny. So I mean, like during the startup competition, like you know, of course we're taking it all seriously and stuff. And we're just like, oh my God, like we're building this thing, like what is it going to do? Like how can we sell it? Like because we're learning about the five x multiple and it's like all those things costing us like thousands of dollars to make. And then like, oh, what are we going to sell it for? Like 15,000 for someone's home. And you know, we're just like we weren't really sure what to do exactly. And so then we were like you know what, let's just build like a really great pitch deck and like, just build the computer so people can see that, like we can do something. And that was like what allowed us to win the competition. And then in the pitch deck we kind of were like, instead of having all the components like in a box, it's like we're going to build like the modular system, like an IOT system. So it's like you're going to have a light system, environmental sensors, like nutrient controllers, like all those things. We're going to build that. And so we had kind of that in mind.

And then, like, funny enough, we ended up like there was like a summer accelerator as part of the same program. So we did that. And there was like one day where we had this like full day event where it's like, oh, we're going to all like figure out exactly what we're doing. And there was this guy came and he's like oh, we got to like write all these ideas and then put them on post-its and then like organize them in like order of like importance on the wall and, like you know, at the end you have like one thing left.

And it was like for us it was like build a farm and city college, like that was like the thing that I guess we were ended up on. And so we left and we actually went to like Brian Park and we're just sitting around and we're just like we're not going to do that, right, and he's like, no, like we're not doing that. And then Adrian, like just out of nowhere, I just remember him like oh, like what about? Just like we focus on the water and I was just like, yeah, the water.

And so that was kind of like the beginning of that.

And then we kind of started to like talk to some of our like people that we had met that could be potential customers, and like our first idea like, funny enough, was this like almost like it kind of looked like a vacuum cleaner idea, where you have that vacuum cleaner with the thing you pull around.

We're basically it was like you have like a tube and like inside the tube you have a bunch of smaller tubes and like each of those smaller tubes is like an individual nutrient and then you also have this two sensors in there, so you could have a nutrient sensor and then the pH sensor so you can put the nutrient sensor in the pH sensor into a bucket and it'll know like what nutrient and pH levels it should be and it'll like add the nutrients and pH to the bucket and you could like go around the farm and like do that and like the vacuum cleaner aspect was like you had all the nutrients in there and so, like you know, that was kind of the crazy idea. And then we kind of realized like we should be more going towards like a more standard thing which is, like you know, like a paraseltic pump dosing system, which there already are some of them, but we were, like you know, I think we could do one. That's like a lot better and so what's a distinction there?

0:25:37 - Harry Duran

for those that are not as familiar with, maybe, the pump systems or any, however you know, if that's considered hydraulics. But how do you make the decision, and are there benefits of deciding, of the decision you made to pick one system over the other?

0:25:50 - Alex Babich

Well, I guess it like how did we choose it initially? I mean, the food computer had paraseltic pumps like those are just very basic pumps, so it's just a motor and the motor turns and like inside the motor like there's like a tube and like there's like this roll, these rollers, and you can kind of imagine it's like a toothpaste squeezing kind of machine.

It's like squeezing stuff and so like the motor turns on and it squeezes the stuff in through, and so it's kind of simple and like cheap. But there's benefits, like they're like high precision, they're like affordable, they're used in a lot of different applications, like even like in medical applications and stuff. And so we just decided to like work with that one of the like, as we've like gone into the industry more and gotten. Now we're competing against like all these other like big companies right, we're literally competing against the top companies in our industry at this point.

And there's mechanical pumps that are kind of more like using like the water pressure. It's like all the amount of water that goes through it just it will manually dose based on the amount of water that's going through. Or there's some that are like diaphragm pumps, where they're just kind of like jamming it into to align, and so a certain benefits of those are that you can inject into like higher pressures, but they're a lot more expensive, and so what we've actually figured out is that with some clever fluid dynamics, you can use the parasolid pumps to solve just about any problem, and so, like that's more, the direction we're going in is that we have this pump system. We're focusing on like utilizing this system and like maximizing the benefits so that we could solve any problem for like as little as possible.

0:27:25 - Harry Duran

Sounds like you have to become a pump expert Pretty quickly. Yeah, yeah all sorts of things.

0:27:30 - Alex Babich

You definitely learn a lot of really great stuff in entrepreneurship that you might not necessarily learn in your classes. So you know, even like in school, like we didn't really learn a lot about like PCB design or you know 3d printing and stuff like that. So I definitely think that, like if you're interested like an engineering, like doing a startup, even if you're not wanting to do that just gives you like a really great like skill set. That's very practical.

0:27:55 - Harry Duran

So I kind of interrupted a couple of times that you were walking me through the timeline. So if you want to just pick up where you left off, yeah, yeah I know there's gonna be a lot of tangents.

0:28:04 - Alex Babich

So, anyway, I guess it's just kind of like hard for me to remember the entire like timeline back then, but essentially there was like multiple like customer discovery trips. So we learned a lot about what people are looking for. We met a lot of really cool people and it was especially fun for us to because we actually did get like a lot into the cannabis industry with the cannabis industry, which is like it's kind of like really it's like a fun industry right. So it really like checked a lot of boxes for us because we were meeting interesting, we were meeting fun people. We were meeting people that were really interested in like plant science. You know, there was also like a ton of money in it back then is now it's getting a little bit more tight, just like vertical farming and all farming is, but people are just really excited about new technology, automation and just the plant itself. Like I think that, like cannabis farmers are particularly passionate about the plant just because it's like one crop but there's just so many different things that you can do with it and people are just thinking like so deeply into all the different nutrients, all the different recipes, controlling the environment. There's just a time there. So it was a great experience with that and we sort of through this process. We're like building our product and going through like multiple iterations and like we were still like in the apartment like this whole time, just kind of in and out and trying to remember exactly like the chronology. But essentially there was a point where we were like, okay, we're now building like pretty solid versions of the system. We're trying to like get them out to some like early adopters. So I'd say this is around like 2019, say, we were getting a couple of versions of systems out to early adopters.

And then kind of what happened was that Adrian he really is passionate about like real estate and like wanting to like buy a house and like own it and like fix it up and so kind of between the transition of 2019 and 2020. Like he got a house and he got it for like $70,000 was really cheap, but like a big house that you could turn into like a multifamily home. And so he got that and I helped him a bit, like you know, working on it and kind of the plan was that I was going to stay in the city like part time and then go up there part time because I was also doing some like tutoring that's like been my side job for a while and so we ended up like moving out all our stuff and moving it into one of the apartments in that house, and so I was going like back and forth for a while and then when COVID hit in early 2020. I basically just decided that there's not a good reason for me to be in the city anymore, so pretty much I moved in there and so during that time it actually was it worked out really well for us, because we weren't that into the market yet. We were still like building our product, and so essentially, just him and I spent like months just programming and building pretty much the version of the system that we have today, like an early version of it.

Now that I'm kind of going back. Like one of the issues that we had from before is we used to like hire people to do stuff and like, for example, like with our web application, we hired like some web development agencies to do stuff and like we heard that like we found out they're like oh, they're using like Java for the back end and we're like why are you using such an old back end and they're like, oh, we always use this. And so we ended up having to essentially like we tried these different things and we kind of like threw out all of it. And you know, we just tried and threw it out. Tried and threw it out and so, like 2020 was the year we're like okay, we're really like not throwing this out, and I mean we have kind of moved on to another version again after that.

Funny enough, but that version that we were building in 2020 was like the first version that we actually ever like sold commercially and we are launch of, like our official product, like the one you could kind of see behind me. That was March 2021. So that was when we like we launched and I guess like another thing. Just, you know, hopefully the story doesn't get too complicated, but like between me living in that house and then us selling the product, we ended up like we started renting like this property that Adrian was like managing for someone else, like there was like a whole, there's like an upstairs, like apartment, and there was like a downstairs, like office and like no one was using it.

So we got like a really good deal on it. I was like between maybe like 2,533,000 square feet, and so then we just we moved all our stuff in there and that's where we like really started to sprawl out and that's where we were building the system for like a while until we launched it in March 2021.

0:32:43 - Harry Duran

What was that pick up like during COVID? I'm just curious. I mean I would just kudos to anyone who's kind of as a business owner by self. Just kind of so many ups and downs and challenges and disruptions, you know. And just wondering and just curious actually just how you guys handle that or if that had any impact on what you were doing at the time.

0:33:02 - Alex Babich

Yeah, I mean, I think like some people got lucky, some people didn't, unfortunately, and like I think we were kind of in like the luckier position because we didn't really have a lot of expenses and we didn't have like a product that was being like sold. So Ham and I we just woke up every day and like worked on the product. We were either writing software, working on the PCB, working on like the enclosure, just building and just kind of like being really focused, like not having like fun thing, Like you didn't have to have the guilt of like not going out or having fun years.

0:33:35 - Harry Duran

Like oh, we're supposed to like do like this.

0:33:37 - Alex Babich

So you know, I think we were really lucky that we had something to do that was like really important. So you know, we got lucky with that. And then during like once we released it, I think things started people started to realize, like, oh, it's not as like big as we thought it was. I mean, in a certain sense it is, but in a certain sense people got used to it. And so then, yeah, I think from there, I think it just kind of like worked out pretty well for us. Could it have gone better in some alternate reality, like possibly, but you never, you don't have an opportunity.

0:34:08 - Harry Duran

Well, I appreciate you taking the time to take us through that journey. I think it just paints a great picture. It's inspiring for other people into space and it also reminds people that there's no, it's not a direct path, it's never like a straight line, and we did this and we ended up here. There's so many different things that are happening that some of it are synchronicities, some of it is just kind of timing luck. You know a little bit. I think everyone needs a little bit of luck every now and then, but just also having that vision of where you want it to be. So for the listener and the viewer who may not be familiar with Neurovine, I got a little overview of it when we connected. I think it was at Indoor Adcon, which seems like such a long time ago because the next one is coming up in March. But can you give an overview of who is an ideal customer for Neurovine and sort of like what pain points you're solving?

0:34:53 - Alex Babich

Yeah. So our main customers are people that are doing, let's say, like small to medium sized indoor farms, and what we've really focused on is recirculating hydroponics, because there's essentially like two camps when it comes to farming. There's like people that are recirculating the system, the water, and then there's people that are doing drain to waste, and so drain to waste is kind of what you call indoors, but if you think about like an outdoor field, you're just watering the plants but you're not like recapturing the water. So essentially, what our system does is it measures the components of the water and it will add the nutrients, it will adjust the pH, it's very flexible in the way that it can dose, because you don't want the plants to get like too much or too little. So kind of like the sweet spot we hit was people that were doing like these recirculating systems needed a system that was really advanced, really reliable, that could handle like all their needs, and so that we've kind of become like a little bit of like a monopoly. In that sense it's like someone's like oh, I need like a dosing system for this type of application. We're definitely the ones to go for. But one of the things that we also learned is that most of our clients, especially like in the cannabis industry, are doing drain to waste systems, and so the type of doster that we have wasn't initially like.

I guess the programming wasn't designed for drain to waste, but there's just so many people that needed it. So what we did was we actually built another module, because when you're doing like like a drip or drain to waste, it's kind of like the same thing, it's just two different ways of saying it. There's like multiple stages, right, because one of the simple things about a recirculating system is it's just like okay, here's a body of water. That body of water is just there for like a while, so you're just monitoring it, making sure it's fine. But when it comes to like a drip system, there's just multiple stages. You have to take the water through. So, like the first stage is you're taking the water, you're putting it into a container like a tank. The second stage is you're going to be adding the nutrients, you're going to be adjusting the pH, adding whatever you need, making sure it's correct, and then, like the third stage is, you're actually like watering the plants.

So what we did is this new module, which we call the flux. It basically had all the different things that were needed to do that right. And so what, that is like valve control and additional sensors. So like the valve control you can use like solenoid valves or ball valves, and essentially we also have like a flow meter. So it's the open up a valve until, like, the flow meter reads like a certain amount of water, then that's done.

And then you use the dosing system to do the dosing, which is kind of the same thing, like now you've got the water, now the doser is like and it's like sweet spot, and then, once that's done, then you ask the flux again hey, can you like send the water out to the plants? And it involves like another pump which we don't make, but we've made the system to be really flexible to use with a lot of different pumps. So kind of essentially what we did was like the version one of the system, which we don't sell exactly this anymore, but it was like for like a year. It was like a very like you've got EC and pH monitoring and it's like if the EC goes out of range, you add nutrients. If your pH goes out of range, you add pH solution.

And then like that's pretty much it. And so what we were doing was we were like if people wanted to do this batch feeding, which is for a drip, like, you would have to kind of like hack the system a little bit, like you'd have to kind of make sure that like the readings would go out. We'd go out of range at the time you wanted to, whereas now, because we have this complete system, we're in full control of it and so that. And then kind of just learning from like all the customers and stuff throughout the years and just hearing everything that everyone wanted. Of course we put something out there. You hear everything it doesn't do. So we built like a very flexible, like logic system. So it's kind of somewhere in between like a programming language and like a user interface, where kind of the idea was like everyone's got all your different problems right, everyone's got their own unique thing. So we're like what we want to do is we want to be able to go into a farm and like solve someone's problem with this system that we'd ever thought of. So, like, because you think about it like in a certain sort of like a programming language, like what do you got? You got a bunch of different like tools that you could use, right and like a lot of these programming languages, and you just put them together in a certain way. A lot of them are complete languages, which means you could build virtually anything you could think of from them. And so we're not quite there yet.

But you think about you have sensors, you have pumps, you have valves, and it's like, if I want to like actuate some sequence of pumps and valves and some order at some time and have I want to orchestrate all these different like automations, is that possible?

And so what we've done is we built this thing called the automation core which has these rules which basically have a trigger and an action. So you're like okay, here's a rule, has nothing in it right now, but then the trigger is if this is true, then do something. So the end you could have multiple triggers. You could say, if this is the time of day and the sensor reading is this, then you would do actions and you can do like has many actions as you want. So you could have like a sequence of actions. So if you think about, like the batch dosing system, it's like first action fill the tank. Second action like dose the tank. Third action feed from the tank, and so, yeah, that's kind of the idea behind the system and of course, we plan to add a lot more features. Of course, there's still things that doesn't do, but that's currently the framework that we're working with.

0:40:28 - Harry Duran

I love the approach you take and obviously it comes from your engineering background thinking outside the box and just looking at what some may think is something as simple as a dosing system, but applying like programming methodologies to it in a way that is proactive, and it sounds like there's a lot going on. And they look really nice when they're the pictures you have on the website as well. So it sounds like that you've put a lot of thought to the form and function of it as well. What's been the feedback from these early installations or the current installations with clients?

0:40:58 - Alex Babich

There's definitely like a whole range of feedback, but I mean a lot of people it completely like changed their lives Because, like one of the things that with dosing, it's like say, even if you're like a person that has to deal with it on their own on a relatively small scale, this is like an activity that you need to do every day, right? So imagine, like every day, or even like twice a day, like you have this interruption in your day where you're like have to go out and you have to like check the water and you have to make sure that it has the correct nutrients and pH, and then, okay, you have to like put it in and like wait for the system to circulate and and then, okay, that's good, and you know you could do that twice a day. But then imagine you like, oh, you get this machine and then it does it continuously, and so it's not only do you get that freedom, which is because once you have like the dosing taken care of, it's like okay, well, why do I have to go in there? In a certain sense, like obviously, like there's the trimming, there's harvesting, but you can definitely spend. Instead of going every day, you could go every week or every two weeks. So there's that.

And then we've also seen like a lot of improvements in yield. And I don't want to say like the system is entirely responsible for that, but it definitely allows that, right, because, like, say you have like a recipe, say you have like an idea for oh, this is a recipe that like I think would be really good. Like, if you have a machine like this, it's able to like replicate that like day after day and then also say, your job like is to like do this work, or sometimes it takes you like hours a day. You're now not having to do that work anymore and so you could spend your time instead of just doing manual labor. You can start to do research and you can start to learn stuff. So it's like, now you can like learn more stuff and you have a machine that can like carry those things out, and so, like through those iterative processes, like we've had customers say they've gotten like 15% increases in their yields.

0:42:49 - Harry Duran

That's great, and I noticed that you have different. Is it nutrients that you're applying or introducing into the mix? Is that proprietary blends or these things that you're working with? Could you plug in, like nutrients from other vendors as well, to the system?

0:43:04 - Alex Babich

Yeah, absolutely so. We're definitely. We're not like a nutrient manufacturing company where we focus on like our goal really is to be able to be in every farm, right.

We want to make something that, like everyone would be like oh, this is a no brainer. So we built like a system that can handle like any nutrients that are, I would say, like the only nutrients that I think you couldn't really like realistically use would be a powder nutrient which you could not keep in a solution for very long, but essentially a lot of companies that have liquid nutrients. So you can connect the liquid nutrient in a bottle connected to the pump and then the pump will disperse that nutrient. The really cool thing like another one of the benefits of the parasaltic pumps is it's like the nutrient liquid never interfaces with the actual pump mechanism, it's just being kind of squeezed through a tube. So that means that there's going to be a lot less like potential for like clogging.

And then a lot of other clients, because it is more cost effective, will buy like big bags of nutrient salts, and so what they have to do is they take the salt, they have to put it into water, create a solution, but a lot of these salts are stable in a liquid for multiple weeks. So you could essentially just use that connected to the pump. But in addition to that you can use like thick, viscous nutrients, like sometimes we'll go to trade shows and go to like the nutrient companies. They're like oh yeah, you can't use this nutrient in a doser. And then I'm like, let me see it, let me see your like most disgusting nutrient. And then you know, we'll connect it to the machine and it works. And they're like oh okay, well, I guess you can recommend us now.

0:44:36 - Harry Duran

Yeah, that's good to know. Yeah, that was really helpful. Thank you for kind of in that picture, because I think it's helpful for the server of the viewer to just figure out how this could be a fit for what they're doing and what pain points are solving. So that's helpful and I definitely encourage folks to visit the site. What's been the experience and the feedback? I know we did connect that indoor icon. Have you continued to attend conferences? Do you see that as something that's helpful for you to get more feedback from some prospects and customers about what you're working on?

0:45:03 - Alex Babich

Yeah, so we did a lot of conferences in the past I'd say like throughout our entire career, and I think it was maybe like 2020, where we started actually or not 2020, but like 2021, where we started attending, and I think we did where we started, like showcasing our products, and I actually think we did a little bit in 2019 as well, if I remember. But, yeah, it's been enormously helpful because, like, one of the things that we think about because of our like I core training of this customer discovery process is like the opportunity to talk to a customer is like way more valuable than like just the money that they could potentially give you. It's like the insight that you get and like when you get to go to a show and you get to talk to people and you get to ask them what they're interested in or what are they doing, and capture all that information that really helps you or at least to help us, with that mindset, like know where to go. So we feel like we're always kind of doing research, in a sense, on our product development throughout going to trade shows, obviously any type of like internet marketing things that we do, which is mainly just social media when we have the chance to talk to customers, do like sales calls, anything there is like that's all these ideas, all these features that I'm telling you about this whole like complex system that we've developed. It's all because of like all the people that like we've talked to, and so there's obviously like the data aspect of it, and then there's also just like the connections, of course, and you definitely get a chance to meet a lot of really interesting people that could potentially be customers, and some of them do become that.

So we've done a lot of it and actually we did take a little bit of a break in the past like few months, because we did a lot of shows last year and we realized that we needed to work on some of our internal systems more so. For example, like our website it's, you know, our website it's like really nice, but we don't have, like it's not really designed for like marketing and like SEO and that sort of thing. And so the thing about like the trade shows is you get like a lot of leads and you have all these opportunities, but if you don't have like this really great like internal system to manage everyone better, then it almost you lose. You'll leave a lot of money on the table, and so we've decided that we're going to be working on a couple of our internal systems, make sure that our online presence is better, and I think that'll be like several months and then, once we feel really good on that, then we'll start going back to shows with our new perspective.

So, in terms of like indoor adcon, I think we're gonna we're gonna pass on it this year, but we'll probably do it next year, and then I foresee like quite a renaissance for us in like going to like a ton of shows and getting out there, especially to other parts of the world. I mean you definitely as much as you think you know, or at least as much as I think I know like I also realized that I may be in a bubble in a certain sense, because of course, we've gone into like the cannabis industry a lot and I find myself like going to like Michigan very often because we have a lot of customers there and it feels like there's a lot of opportunities there.

But part of it may be that, because I already have so many opportunities there that I know like about them, you know, I know like, oh, what's available, to have a lot of connections, like you could just put me in Michigan and like I'd be able to survive off of like networking for a month or something like that. So I think that opportunity is probably like in a lot of other places in the world and, you know, maybe even more so and so I think going to the shows really gives you that chance to like see a new area, connect with new people and then, like, start to, like you know, expand your network and learn new things.

0:48:32 - Harry Duran

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

I've had the privilege of attending Agra, Me in Dubai in 2022 and Vertifarm in Germany and thanks to the support from my sponsors, but it was just again to your point, eyeopening about what's happening in other parts of the world.

You know, you see the MENA region in the Middle East and 95% of their food gets imported and so, like, this is top of mind for them and they have different challenges and you get to see like people who are raising and growing fodder for camels indoors, which is a big need. When you look at that part of the world and get to hear stories about like these sheiks with like thousands and thousands of camels and they're stable and just your learning is just eyeopening. You think about problems to solve, but you look at it from a different perspective when you see some of the other challenges that people in other parts of the country face. So I think, as you start to expand that and do see some of these other conferences abroad, I think it'll be pretty eyeopening and probably opening up some whole bunch of new avenues for you as a company as well. Where are you guys in terms of like? Are you looking to fundraise? Are you growing? I'm just curious where you're at in your in the company's journey.

0:49:33 - Alex Babich

Yeah. So I mean, that's like something that we've been like. I guess it's always been something we've thought about, but we've always been like pretty like focused on just like building the company like organically in a sense. So you know, we built, we created a lot of value and we sold the product and we use the sales to hire people and to continue iterating on the system and develop that, and so we're always like you know, because at this point, like one of the issues I would say is that like we're not moving fast enough, right, like you know, we have, of course, we have like a dosing system.

That's like awesome and people love it. And people are asking us like we have a list of all these other things that like we could do, and I think the reason that we can't do them is because we are like financially restricted, and so I definitely would like money and I think if there's someone that could like see value in it, and I guess, like, in a certain sense, what would I be doing right now? I'd say I'm doing like a passive fundraise, so I'm just saying hey, if anyone's interested, we're definitely open to having that discussion, but I'm not if I'm going to think about my time and I'm like should I be working on like my pitch deck and like reaching out to investors?

or should I be working with my employees or like working with my customers? I just work on my business. That's kind of where we're at. But no, I do foresee like doing a fundraise like pretty soon.

And just because I mean the system, like, if you think about like what it is and like what it can be, I mean it's quite an exponential thing in terms of like I mean, if you think about the type of system that we have, like it's just like a dosing system and there's a lot more that we could do with just that. But then there's also like the environmental control, and that's definitely something that customers are like oh, like, do you do environmental's? And then you know we say no. And if you did have an environmental control system combined with a dosing system, it's definitely like a lot nicer. And then, obviously, like, as you know, your software becomes like more advanced and like more intelligent you're able to utilize. Not just the environment may just make you make a decision on how you want to dose the plants right, and so, like, having like that complete picture of the environment and the water would allow the system to make decisions that are more optimal.

0:51:36 - Harry Duran

Yeah, seems like there's a lot on your roadmap and there's a lot of ideas about where it can go. So what is a tough question you've had to ask yourself recently.

0:51:44 - Alex Babich

I mean, I feel like I kind of answered it in a sense before. I'm just like. You know, if every day I'm like it is, should I be raising money? Should?

0:51:51 - Harry Duran

I be focused on raising money. Or should I?

0:51:53 - Alex Babich

be do it? Working with what I have. I'd say like one of the issues is when you're dealing with when you have less money, you have to try to like work with, like less and like sometimes having a smaller budget means you have to like you know you can't work with like the people maybe that you would really like, and I think that, because I kind of imagine that I'm sure this is true to an extent it's like if you have people that are really fantastic like, you don't have to like think too much about what they're doing. Like you have to be like oh, you know this person I'm like go make us more business, like somewhere you know or something like say they're a really great like marketer or sales person. You know you can really just let them do their job and like figure stuff out, whereas if someone's like less experienced and lower budget, you feel that you need to be more involved in it and like then that it takes a lot of time.

And then there's almost the question is like should I just do it like myself or should I like? Sometimes, like you have to realize like maybe it's worth it just to do something yourself than to hire someone that you need to help like so much, and so I think that really being able to have an expanded team, just a better team, I think that would be really great. And you know, it's definitely something that I kind of miss, in a certain sense of being like in. Like in school even, like you know, I was saying how I love to like smart people, like seeing the opportunity to like be with smart people and then like see them and like befriend them, and like now I have like my friend and business partner, adrienne, like we got to meet there and like now I'm not like feeling like I'm really in the same like position. I feel like I'm just kind of like isolated. I'm like we're just working, we're building the business, we're selling it, but I think there's a lot more out there.

So I definitely would be very much open to like kind of expanding that journey and finding the people that you know want to work on this technology, because, I mean, honestly, there's just so many incredible things I mean we're excited about like going to, like outer space and like you know, actually building like massive farms that are like really disrupting the conventional agriculture industry, like actually solving that problem, even doing like reforestation and stuff, because you know it's all like a big equation really, and if you think about the amount of land that we're using for conventional farming, it's so much that if we could redo the way that we're growing food, we would have a lot of that land left over till maybe turn back into like a forest and like maybe use some of the same technology that we are using to grow food inside, to like regrow the forest a lot faster and then hopefully like restore our environment and hopefully like slow down climate change and make the world back into like a beautiful utopia that we can all enjoy.

0:54:27 - Harry Duran

I love how you just kind of brought everything back full circle to that. So who's nice way that's. I kind of put a ribbon on the entire conversations. I appreciate that I've been leaving a couple of minutes at the conversations for any messages, any thoughts you have for the vertical farming industry, because you know, obviously there's a lot of leaders in the space listen to the show and so I always like to kind of keep the conversation going. So any thoughts you have for the CEA or inter farming community?

0:54:53 - Alex Babich

Yeah, I would say that I mean, I think that like a huge change that's like coming, is like artificial intelligence, and I think that like because, like vertical farming, there's like a lot of challenges and it's just a big factory really. It's like you have like this factory and you have inputs. They have certain costs, and then you have like outputs, which is like your product, and obviously it's a lot more complicated than that. But you know, the reason that farms have like such issues is because it's hard to like manage like all these like variables and like all these things that are happening and stuff. And so, you know, with artificial intelligence, of course, like the systems, the farms will become more intelligent. I mean, that's something that, like, we're really excited about is like kind of building out this platform. I'm not saying we're going to build like the AIs themselves, but we're building like the platform for the AIs to like live on and then help to like make those decisions and kind of like what I was saying before is that if our system was able to like all work together and like if it all you could control these little variables and all these knobs, if you had something that was like really smart doing that then, and it knows what it's trying to optimize for. Then it continued to like, create, like better yields and save time and save resources and all those things. So it really like intelligence is the thing that solves like all the problems. In a certain sense, it's like all these atoms being arranged in a better way and like of course there's like a lot of atoms and stuff, but you can obviously break those things into like higher level concepts and they become less. But the thing with machines is they can do such an incredible amount of processing that there's no way we can really conceive of that. And the difficulty with the machines is getting them to like understand, like what they're doing. And so now they're really starting to understand and, like you know, we're only a few short leaps away from the machines like really understanding. And so I really think that like that's really going to be the future where, like you know, robots are like really controlling the farms, like, and right now it's like. Okay, the robots are a lot on like the software side, but like there's also like the hardware side too. And we're talking about like, because if you think about like, say like chat, you can assemble like bits in a way that like is useful, right, it's assembled these bits in a way oh, now, this thing wrote me like a nice essay or something. But it's like, okay, well, what about in the future, when the robots can assemble like atoms in a certain way, can it start to like build things? So imagine that like the cost of like building things was like a lot less right, and so all these things can be optimized a lot with greater intelligence and like more intelligence, living in these systems is going to allow them to be more optimal. So I think that really is the future.

It's not. In a certain sense, it's kind of scary. I think people are I'm not sure how everyone feels about it Like I think it's quite a existential question in a certain sense, like the meaning of our existence, but it there's definitely like a lot of really great challenges in the world Us doing everything we can. We've done a lot of great things, but we've also we're also struggling in a lot of ways and I think the overall outcome of having the machines be more intelligent will end up making people overall happier and like less suffering and the world would be in a better place. And from my like perspective on like the machines themselves, like there's not like evidence of them, like wanting to like be like evil.

0:58:20 - Harry Duran

Yeah.

0:58:21 - Alex Babich

It's only like people using them for evil right, that's true, yeah.

Because you would think that like, oh, if a machine was going to be evil, we'd start seeing these evil machines that are like kind of dumb but evil, and it's like we haven't seen like the dumb evil machine. So it's like, well, what makes you think that they're going to be like evil, like when they get smart? So I think that, like, they're going to be good, and I think what actually is really important is that we harness the technology for good, and so that's kind of why it's something that I'm really passionate about, and I'm, like you know, it's now become like part of my vision of like, okay, make sure we have like a really great platform that the machines can utilize to optimize systems and make sure that these are working on problems that are like going to have like a really great benefit to humanity and the rest of the world.

0:59:05 - Harry Duran

I love that vision and I think it's very inspiring and it's very motivating for people that are entering the space to see what's possible and not be limited by what's been done before and just kind of having this blue ocean mindset, when you know, in terms of thinking through and solving these problems. So I'm very glad we got to meet. It's been probably a year since we actually like had a brief interaction at the booth, but I held onto your card and I wanted to connect with you, and so I'm glad we got everything scheduled and I'm really happy to have a chat with you and just to kind of learn what's happening. So I appreciate you taking the time to come on.

0:59:37 - Alex Babich

Yeah, and I really appreciate you having me. I do remember when we met at the show and I was always hoping that you would reach out. I listened to a lot of the episodes and a lot of people that I knew in the space were on it.

0:59:47 - Harry Duran

And.

0:59:48 - Alex Babich

I think you did a really good job. I remember that even during this podcast I was like all these things are getting out of the way. But I think you did a really good job of like organizing and getting all the things out of the conversation.

0:59:58 - Harry Duran

Yeah, you kind of see a lot of threads happening and just in my mind I'm just kind of pulling, trying to remember all just dropped something on a post that, no, I got to pull that back in and I think you helped kind of coordinate that and weave that back into just a really great story. So thanks again. If folks want to connect with Neurovine, where's the best place to send them?

1:00:15 - Alex Babich

Well, if you want to just check stuff out, I'd say Neurovinecom, or follow us on Instagram. If you send us a message on Instagram, we'll totally get back to you and Neurovine N-U-R-A-V-I-N-E.

1:00:27 - Harry Duran

Sounds good. Thanks again for your time, Alex. I really appreciate it.

1:00:30 - Alex Babich

Thank you too, Harry. Thanks for your time today.