S10E141 Scott Massey/Anu - How Anu is Transforming Health Through Homegrown Produce

Harry Duran

0:00 - 0:08

So, Scott Massey, back for round two, CEO and co founder of Anew. Thank you so much for coming back and returning to the vertical forming podcast.

Scott Massey

0:09 - 0:11Ignore this for outputs

Thank you for having me, Harry. It's an honor.

Harry Duran

0:12 - 0:15

So I guess you had a great experience the first time you're back.

Scott Massey

0:16 - 0:39

Yeah, you know, I even relistened to that a couple times. Just really go back and hear everything I said. I think I like that this conversations are relatively unstructured and unscripted and just wanted to make sure everything I was going to be saying now at least had some consistency and continuity with what I said before. And I don't know, I just, I really enjoy the candid conversations that you have here. You do a fantastic job.

Harry Duran

0:39 - 0:58

So we got to reconnect at indoor Agtech in Chicago. Shout out to the rethink team. They always put on a solid event. Really, the caliber of the conversations and the experiences there, I think are top notch. And after a couple of years in New York, I think it's a testament to what a tight ship they run for further events.

Scott Massey

0:59 - 1:00

Absolutely.

Harry Duran

1:00 - 1:05

Had you been to, you've been to previous indoor ag techs, there's indoor Agcon.

Scott Massey

1:05 - 1:38

And then indoor Agtech Summit, and I always, unfortunately, confuse them at times. I went to one in New York years ago, pre Covid, and I want to say that was indoor Agtech summit. And then I went to indoor ad con, which we also saw each other in January earlier this year as well, too. To be honest, I haven't gone to those as much as I should have. I think I've been almost on the periphery of the industry, given our focus has been residential for so long, almost instead prioritizing food and electronics trade show rather than commercial vertical farming shows.

Harry Duran

1:38 - 2:13

What's your experience when you're at these events? Do you feel like it's worth your investment? And obviously when it comes to any type of events, and I've experienced that firsthand, coming from the podcasting side, it's making the time, even though it's a two day conference, has to usually involves three days of travel, you know, all in. And then the expense for the travel, the hotel, like, you know, the logistics and then the disruption to your normal schedule. And the end of the day, you have to figure out if all that makes sense and is worth the time. So I'm wondering how you think about these events and if you're finding that the interactions you have there are valuable in the end.

Scott Massey

2:13 - 3:24

Yeah, I think like anything, it's a culmination of startup resourcefulness and also just that return on investment calculation. I'm very fortunate to be from Indiana and having family members throughout the midwest, so when the trade show was in Chicago, I could stay with family members in the region that were just incredibly kind and if anything, a really rewarding experience to connect with distant family members. And it's obviously economical to stay with people, you know, and not having to buy a hotel. In the case of Las Vegas, that's further off the family tree for me, but really fortunate to be from Indiana, where the IEDC, the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, has a lot of sponsorship for startups in Indiana. That helps mitigate some of those costs. I think you get out of it what you put into it. If you put in a lot of effort and you really prep the show and you have meetings set up before you get there, you can find it to be extremely advantageous because it's really difficult sometimes for a startup to break that wall that almost like a glass wall, that kind of separates a lot of corporate industry players or larger entities from the smaller players who have the agility to innovate, perhaps at a faster rate than what a corporate environment may naturally be conducive to.

Harry Duran

3:24 - 3:55

Yeah, totally. I'm wondering if you could just for the. We're going to direct people back to that first episode because we don't want to just, you know, we don't want to rehash everything we talked about. But I was looking back at how far back that was, and, you know, it goes back all the way back to 2020, which is when I started the show. And so we'll redirect people there. I think it was episode ten, which is crazy to even think about. So for the purposes of the new folks who are discovering new for the first time, and we'll get into some of the new stuff that's happening, how would you describe what it is that a new formerly growpod does?

Scott Massey

3:56 - 5:14

Yeah. Anu is a health and wellness brand that seeks to empower individuals and communities to become self sufficient in the production of pure produce. I think we have done a good job tightening our messaging more clearly, articulating our mission of what it is we do. Exactly. I'm somebody that had came from academia. I started the business at 21 years of age, and prior to that had a great experience working for Doctor Mitchell of Purdue, doing highly technical work through NASA funding, optimizing the yield, density, energy efficiency, and overall maintenance and system performance of a growing system to collect research to influence the design of cultivation chambers to be used in planetary colonization missions, which is really exciting, but also left me, a 21 year old, deeply curious and fascinated about what this market opportunity could be. Could we have this level of fidelity, of automated growing at even a household residential basis? And kind of through those series of questions, and I think just a very realistic analysis of where the industry was then in 2020, and then even in 2016 when I had started the company, what could a young person realistically achieve with extremely limited resources and opportunities when the market opportunity was entirely commercial, large scale, centralized operations at the time?

Harry Duran

5:15 - 5:42

And then obviously you did a rebrand in that time since we spoke. And so I can sense that you've done a lot of work on the branding, on the messaging, because just that description of what it is you do is really concise. It's really to the point, and it really drives the message home. So talk about what that experience is like in terms of the rebranding, the decision behind that, and even the renaming in terms of what that meant for you, in terms of the direction you want to move in to.

Scott Massey

5:42 - 9:52

Early on, we were so fixated on optimizing three primary things, yield, density, power efficiency, and labor efficiency on these systems. Everything that would more or less dictate capex, opex and operation. But I would say even beyond that, making it so accessible and decentralized that a consumer could grow with no expertise, maybe had some financial constraints, but just wanted better quality food above all else. We called this concept the grow pod, an environment that would grow and produce food, and did so in a contained, controlled environment. Kind of the pod. It was kind of the conjunction of those two words. We had this really product decided brand that we called the grow pod. And I can have my camera view, even show you what this physically looks like here in our conference room. A physical appliance. It looks almost like a refrigerator, but something that grows food the way we might associate with a greenhouse or an indoor vertical farm. But we realized that the problems that we solved weren't just a residential problem. Residential consumers have very tight volume constraints of where they can grow. This is sometimes the case for consumers. But if it's a money loser, if the energy bill is greater than the grocery bill equivalent of what it's producing, then it's the net loser product. And then lastly is maintenance, which is probably even more prevalent at a consumer environment than it is a commercial. Obviously, maintenance and labor directly contributes to opex. Not questioning that at all, but consumers value their free time. I mean, we know what our professional hourly rate is. Most people are keenly, keenly aware of what that rate is. But then your free time is probably worth even more than that, because you're working those professional hours to afford yourself what you do in your free life. So if you have to spend arduous amounts of time doing something, that becomes a chore, you've probably created a less viable system for adoption than something even in the commercial environment, if that makes sense. Consumers just have a very limited bandwidth of focus, and they don't want more chores, they want more amenities, more experiences. And Chirag did that really well. They turned what was previously a five minute exercise of a slow drip coffee set up, making experience to a five second exercise pot in, cup of coffee out. And we developed a system that supported that experience, kind of emulating this Keurig equivalent experience at the consumer level. But as we created exactly that, we achieved our objective of delivering this experience. It then caused us to take a step back and ask ourselves, well, what are we now? Are we a product or are we a brand? Are we a platform and a movement that people can really get behind? And I find that, at least personally, I'm sure there's other instances of this, of companies brand discovery, but asking themselves what they are. And I think as crazy as this sounds, when you start with somebody who's just so fascinated with the technology and then supporting the experience, the experiences come to you. You don't come to the experiences. You kind of create an environment where the experiences could be had. But you learn all these unforeseen insights where individuals approach you and say, I have some form of diabetes or a health condition, maybe it's a gastrointestinal sensitivity disorder. And they're very sensitive about the quality, quality of food that they're eating. So there's the types. They want vegetables, but they want locally grown, very flavorful, and they want it to be free of any sort of unnatural residues that could otherwise diminish the flavor and quality. And you start hearing this narrative of food, is medicine or health being a key driver? And for us, just listening to why people were using and adopting these types of systems, that allowed us to take a step back and ask, we are not just a box that grows food and does so profitably and efficiently. We are a machine that makes health accessible through food that is produced. And it's funny, because we are not a food brand. That is a very different thing. We are a health and wellness brand. And anew. The celtic goddess of good harvest and fertility, we believe, is a great representation of what that brand mission values are, empowering communities to sustainably grow pure, produce better for the people and better for the planet, and that could be in a residential or a commercial application. We can support that entire spectrum with our technology.

Harry Duran

9:53 - 10:43

So how much work goes into that thought process? I'm just kind of thinking as, you know, as there's other founders that are listening that might be struggling with their branding and their mission and figuring out, like, you know, exactly what it is that they stand for and exactly what they want to present to the outside world. And like you said, we're not just a box that grows lettuce. You know, it's. You've clearly defined something that goes beyond that. Maybe just taking a peek behind the curtain there. What do these conversations look like with your team? Do you start, do you need to bring in outside experts? Or do you just kind of lock yourselves in a room and saying, hey, we need to figure out, and I'm curious also about that thought process, about why you wanted to differentiate yourselves as opposed to just being a box that grows lettuce and why that's important for you in terms of the bigger vision you have for what you want to do.

Scott Massey

10:44 - 13:56

Absolutely. My advice would be not to stress it, and I know that maybe sounds over simplistic, but I think people have a tendency to overcomplicate this, to really put the car ahead of the horse. If we had tried to write in stone what our brand was early on, I mean, we might have been stuck with something that was merely a product name we think of, like Apple. Sometimes you even hear, like, Apple computers. It's not Apple phones, that's not the brand. It's this platform. And it's very seamless, intuitive experience. And I think it's something that has to come very naturally. I mean, even the story of how Apple came to be a name is a fascinating one. If you've ever read the biography of Steve Jobs. It wasn't this carefully calculated thing. They were literally driving to the courthouse to file the paperwork, and Jobs had worked on an apple orchard for a period of time and just loved fruit, and they just kind of arbitrarily grabbed it and they didn't really have a reason to change it after that. That, to me, is a really interesting example of just the startup founders journey of this kind of just natural process that you learn along the way. We wouldn't be able to hear these consumer testimonial experiences unless we had hardware that would support it. So my advice is to not overcomplicate it and be very pragmatic and be very realistic about what it is you're actually hoping to achieve. Solve if you want a company that's truly scalable, which I'm not saying all scalable businesses require investments, but if you are creating a business that does require an investment, and historically, this industry does require significant investments, we have hardware, we have growing processes that it's not something that's an immediate pass fail. It's something that you need to demonstrate success and repeated success if it's going to be replicatable in the market. You need to focus on solving those core issues. And at least for us early on, those core issues was yield density, power efficiency, and labor efficiency inside the system, and be very pragmatic about how you're even going to go about doing that. You may think that I need to hire all these engineers. I need to hire this team of individuals that have these skill sets. Well, we're people. We have this innate ability to learn a lot of the skill sets that you think you need to hire. You may be able to teach yourself and you may not be top tier talent, but you can learn some semblance of skill sets to ideally achieve those goals sooner rather than later. So when the time comes that you do have the resources to hire a top tier talent, you will be that much more efficient at leading and guiding your team and doing so. I think for us, starting out early as a 21 year old with $5,000 to my name, nobody, nobody was going to fund a commercial vertical farming facility. Nobody would have even funded a shipping container, would have been just wildly, way too expensive to have gone through that learning process. But an appliance, something that was small enough to fit on a tabletop, as I've shown you here, that was very simple for us by comparison to what the other would have been. It was very capital efficient by comparison to the rate at which we could learn and rapidly test a control, invariable experiment and rapidly accelerate our learning to then create a solution that was scalable and rapidly deployable.

Harry Duran

13:58 - 14:25

Let's bring us up to speed now, since we've talked, it's been a while, like we said, chatted looks like way back in 2020, and a lot has happened since then. We got to chat a little bit about it at the conferences, and I got to see the unit firsthand. You were kind enough to kind of walk me through the specifics of how you've been innovating and enhancing the product over time. I'm not sure what version number you would consider yourselves at now, but talk a little bit about the enhancements you've made to AnU since then.

Scott Massey

14:26 - 18:08

Yeah, I mean, we did talk in 2020, and so much changed in the world. I think we were talking to each other both in a Covid mandated isolation periods. It was a good time to get that social interaction. The market has changed and we have changed. Interest rates have gone up, energy rates have obviously gone up, labor rates have all gone up in cost. And thats made it really difficult for a lot of indoor farmers to exist in a market where theres a critical dependence on all three things. And in an industry thats historically low margin farming, the selling of perishable food items, which has accelerated the need, the importance of non obvious inventions and innovations that can address and improve those three things specifically. And I think whenever you kind of have these extinction level events happening, these evolutionary advantages that are not obvious become obvious very quickly when you have fewer people standing in the room, if that makes sense. So, as we've developed a really robust consumer growing platform, and something that effectively has the body of a wine cooler that can fit under the counter grill, we found that we also solved a lot of commercial dilemmas as well. We've been able to enhance yield, density, power efficiencies, and labor for commercial growing systems. And we've now announced one of our first commercialization licensing partnerships, which is extremely exciting to talk about what we're doing with ecosolutions. They are a very innovative company that upcycles shipping containers into various modular building needs, and have been working for some time to develop a modular growing system. And they came to the same conclusion that we did. As a business, it's really hard, and you have to make decisions early on of what you are. And this kind of comes down to the brand. It's not just a logo and kind of a visual brand language. It's actually the decisions you as an organization make. Are we going to invest our capital on physical hardware systems, or are we going to focus more on operating systems that the hardware relies upon? And for ecosolutions, we were the perfect marriage of the respective core competencies. Whereas Eco has a manufacturing facility, has extremely talented and skilled, robust leadership teams that can develop high fidelity mechanical systems, and was looking for a company such as ANU that leverage our core technology of rotary aerobonics and our seed bods to create a rapidly deployable system. Kind of circling back to the market challenges. And what's changed in 2020 and 2020? There was a home boom build. I mean, capital was nearly free. There was zero interest rates. That is over. That is over. Over. And the inflation rate is only creating the self perpetuating cycle where labor rates are rising to then pay for cost of living, food especially, and we're kind of in the cyclic moment. I'm optimistic about the future. I think we may be at the peak of this, hopefully. I don't know. But this does create the need for modular, rapidly deployable systems, because the construction industry is hurting right now. And the time it takes to permit, plan and build a centralized vertical farm, that could take years. That could be a really long process. And that same amount of time, we could have delivered a container, plugged it in in a matter of hours, planted within the day, been harvesting within the month, and potentially even achieved an ROI in the same amount of time it would take to plan and build a centralized vertical farm before it even grew its first plan. So I think the need for modularity has become all the more obvious in this time. And I think thats a comment on the market as a whole and that us as a business always focusing on these modular solutions and how much of.

Harry Duran

18:08 - 18:14

What you're doing with that team. Is it a subsidiary of land betterment or is that.

Scott Massey

18:14 - 19:06

Yes. Yeah, so just really fortunate with all the amazing leadership that they have at the land better team, everybody from Peter Rodriguez on the eco side, but part of land betterment, the parent company, which is a certified b corporation, in the leadership of Kirk Taylor, Mark Jensen, Tom Suave and Amanda. I mean, it's just phenomenal, the insight and intuitive they have of focusing on food as a core investment thesis as an organization finding sustainable yet scalable technology solutions that can enhance the accessibility of food and communities that need it most. Ecosolutions is that subsidiary of land Betterment, and was originally focused on more affordable modular housing options. But developing a modular house is a very near step to now a modular vertical farm as you've got power, water, a lot of the same environmental control requirements needed for growing, and how much.

Harry Duran

19:06 - 19:14

Of what you had available and existing in terms of the new technology was plug and play or did you have to create custom solutions for what their needs were?

Scott Massey

19:15 - 22:01

So there's kind of two pieces to this. One is the physical hardware. And this is something that makes me really glad we started as a consumer product company, because we think through even the less sexy elements of it cleaning. It's very critical that the system is easy to maintain, a hygienic environment clean. We developed a tower design that's proprietary, with a pretty robust IP portfolio wrapped around it, but is literally removable from the system so that everything that more or less contacts a nutrient solution can be dishwashed. It can go in your dishwasher, very small, easily designed, which also lends itself to mass manufacturing. You create something that can be rapidly injection molded. In just a matter of seconds, you could be producing enough parts for a single farm. So for us to have the core hardware already tooled and made, just directly pulled from the appliance and put it into a container, that was like virtually no investment, like that was something we readily had the solution for, and just made a slightly taller version of what we already knew were. But then, thinking back to the user experience, is it easy to use? Hydroponics has the dilemma. It has the benefit of not using soil, which is great if you're in a climate that doesn't have the soil, where the soil is contaminated. But as the downside of now needing to recreate the nutrient profile that the plants need to grow, that soil has and just water would lack on its own. And we did a lot of learning with consumers, and learned that if you piecemeal this out, if you separate the nutrients from the seeds, from the capsules that hold the seeds, you create an experience that's now very laborious. It looks a lot more like a slow drip coffee experience, and you severely limit the addressable market size. But if you consolidate, if you develop a unified consumable that has all of that contained within, then you have a highly scalable, simple, easy to use solution, much like a K cup that turns a five minute exercise into a five second exercise. But that comes with some development cost. For us, it's very critical that we have a robust chemical protocol maintaining nutrient solutions and reservoir quantities. All of these variables then need to be very precisely calculated to determined, so it's easily accessible for even a non expert user at a commercial level. So the chemistry profile of 300 plants versus 60 plants and a nutrient solution, again, sounds like a trivial detail, but can have a really profound impact if you want to have that same scalable solution. It was something that we were able to work through. It was just really a matter of internal growth trials, of just figuring out these critical dependencies to ensure that good yield consistency. And that was something that we were able to work through, kind of our partnership consideration stage now moving into full official partnership with ecosolutions. So more internal labor than anything, but less of a capital investment on hardware.

Harry Duran

22:01 - 22:18

Is that the future of anew, just more partnerships along these lines? Is that sort of what you're looking at? Or just would be something that you just be another branch of another revenue stream for a new? Or is it still too early to figure out if this is something that's viable for you to pursue at a.

Scott Massey

22:18 - 23:58

Broader scale, you know, I don't really believe in master plans because I think they fail to take into account new realities. And all the way from the point when we founded the company, it was just immediate goals of, here's a pitch competition that we can maybe win some funding back. I never anticipated myself founding a company, let alone leading it to this many people, and to be at the point that we're at today. So I like to navigate new environments with the flexibility to equally consider each and every opportunity. Could we ever make hardware, maybe? Is that a primary focus for me, at least on the short term? No, because there is so much labor and time investment that needs to happen into the perfection of growing internally to create a solution. That's easy. We do the hard work, so it's easy for someone else to do that. That is more than enough of a job in itself. And now that we're so fortunate to have had the funding of the National Science foundation since we last spoke to develop computer vision, artificial intelligent algorithms to serve as the operating system, enhancing that consistency at scale. We're busy. We have more than enough roles internally growing and harvesting and ensuring that yield consistent, high efficiency output that we just want to make that experience accessible to everybody. So we are a highly collaborative organization. I do anticipate us having a far greater partnership model in the future, both kind of downstream and upstream of us as a company working with the technology providers that we integrate into a cohesive platform that we then work with manufacturers to bring to market.

Harry Duran

23:59 - 24:29

I think what was interesting for me, when we had the chance to have you give me a walkthrough of the system on site. You think about a system like this, and you look at it from the outside, you figure it's just, you put the pods in, you turn the lights on, and then you're pretty much good to go. But you reference an operating system, and there's some intelligence behind monitoring what's happening on a day to day basis in here. Can you talk a little bit about the work that you've done, some of the developments you've created in house to make this process better for the crops and for the consumer?

Scott Massey

24:30 - 25:59

Yeah, I have to say the best technology is the one that the operator does not even know exist, that it's so seamless into the user experience, it's non obvious, and it becomes something that it leverages an intuitive behavioral pattern of the individual. We can provide dashboards, we can provide data. We're absolutely collecting it, especially at a commercial level. But we treated it almost as more of a nice to have than a need to have, because in my honest opinion, if you are relying upon an operator to now become a farmer and regularly check these data points, you have failed on what the whole premise decision making process was for the product in the first place, and that was to have an automated farm, not a more laborious farm. That if youre now requiring them to be a chemist or a programmer or a project worksheet, a project manager of people, and now a team of laborers, having to oversee that, that becomes very, very problematic. We really want this to be so turnkey that we can actually help you fulfill your goals, whether youre a restaurant owner. And your goal was to have a vertically integrated supply chain of perhaps even a quality or type of food that may not even have been available in your market, allowing you to focus on what you do best. So turning non farmers into farmers, happy to support farmers, we're absolutely happy to do that. We can help them as well. But expanding what we even think of as a farmer, that's what's anew. That's what's really exciting about what we're doing.

Harry Duran

25:59 - 26:25

Trey, so you mentioned in terms of the conferences you're attending, it's a mix of some of the indoor farming, which you haven't been as present at, but obviously more visibility in terms of the electronics conferences. I think you mentioned ces. What's been the reception? Because typically when people go there and the attendees go there, they're focused more on the tech, and the last thing they expect to see is a head of lettuce when you're at a tech conference. So I'm curious what the reception has been.

Scott Massey

26:26 - 27:56

To me, contrast is one of the most beautiful things, something that can show a harmonious relationship between nature and technology working at the same time. And I never view these things as being separate from one another. I view them as kind of being complementary of one another and almost a yin yang relationship. So I had great times at the commercial farming shows, but I think there was a lot of skepticism about how productive could a consumer appliance actually be doing what's done occupationally at a commercial scale. And I could understand the commercial perspective of wondering what a decentralized, collective, growing base could really amount to as a whole. And I think it was very prudent for us to start at the shows that had yet to develop a viable, growing appliance. We were by no means the only growing device at CES, the consumer electronics show, or any of the more consumer tech or just pure tech shows. If anything, we stood out as an anomaly, as uniquely being able to incorporate a high fidelity commercial outcome. But in a consumer explicitly designed system, were now beginning to show a lot more of the commercial environment, since we can demonstrate commercial capabilities as well, in addition to residential. I hope that answers your question, but I think it was deciding early on that if we want to have a different outcome, we need to do something different than what the markets, majority of the markets, focusing on.

Harry Duran

27:56 - 28:36

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, because I'm always curious how people are thinking about this and who the ideal customer is. When you think about people who are envisioning something like this in their homes, is this really people who are working with new home builders? To really think about that from the inception phase, and I'm wondering if there's been a change in the mix of people who can. Is there a place for people to go if they just want to implement this in their current homes? Or is it really more targeted to people because of your relationships with these home builders and figuring out where this is going to fit in their environment? And if you think about things like.

Scott Massey

28:36 - 32:40

That, yeah, and that is a fantastic question. Speaking in general terms, there are home builders and building builders in a commercial environment as well that see an emphasis on nature being integrated into a dwelling to provide psychological relief. There's a lot of evidence to support that. Green just as a color, but foliage has a very therapeutic, calming, tranquil effect on an individual. You know, I think we related to that when you talked to me about kind of living out now inside of the city and being closer to nature and just kind of having that connection to nature. And it's a really beautiful thing to see, but architecturally can be a difficult thing to integrate. So new home builders and building designers are fantastic partners in that, that they can actually design it around what this is. And a lot of ways we've gotten feedback that this is like a fireplace, that this is almost like the antithesis of a fireplace, because that's something that's an energy emitter. It's burning, but it provides warmth, it provides light. It's something that draws people, and it becomes a focal point, the home. In a lot of ways, this is the same thing. The lights give this warmth and light and welcoming aspect to it that I hear more often than not becomes the talking point of dinner parties. And even in the case of the not new home builders, a garage discussion. It's funny that we think of the garage as kind of this industrial space. But for a lot of guys, like, you know, I may have hung out with my friends in their garage, working on bikes as a kid, or maybe their dad and their friends, it's kind of the shop talk, hanging out in the garage. Being in the garage is also, I found a very social gathering space, because for homes that already exist, where they place the appliance can be a challenge. Some people put it in the kitchen. I'm fortunate enough that in the kitchen I'm in today, I have a room that I'm able to put it there, and it effectively serves as an extension of the countertop. And I can have that visual cue of what's growing. And knowing that those green onions are perfect for this fried rice, to top it as the perfect relish, where I'm going to be harvesting some of this mizuna and my stir fry, just having that connection. But garages can work as well, too. So we try not to be over prescriptive, a placement location. Homes, we try to be very accommodating, if anything. Like we do not require a drain line. A lot of growing systems require reverse osmosis, a very high degree of water purity. But that also means you need a drain line. And you think about a dishwasher, another product that has a drain line. You're severely limited on where you could put a dishwasher, for example, really only homes are really only designed to put that in the kitchen and maybe, maybe next to the laundry machine. That's kind of typically what the homes have. Not needing a drain line gives us incredible flexibility. Location that this begins to look more like a refrigerator, which oftentimes have water line connection points for water dispensers or ice makers. So I would say everywhere a refrigerator goes and we see refrigerators and garages and basements, but more often not in the kitchen. I would say the appliance follows the same. And I think it also kind of comes down to the motivations. Some people like it from an architectural style point. Other people have read or become influenced, maybe by an influencer or a thought leader regarding health and the health benefits associated with certain styles of diets, and they want to become more inclined to that. And that could have just been a voluntary decision that they made on their own, or perhaps they even had a health scare from themselves or a family member. And they want to be more proactive rather than reactive to these types of things. So it's really hard to segment why someone chooses to have this, because it really is a spectrum. We're starting to see kind of verticals emerge where there is definable categories as to why people have it. One user, for example, is a master gardener and she wanted pesticide freeways to get seedlings. She was previously going to local nurseries and hardware stores, but more often not that would come with pests. And that was a major problem for her. And this woman was consuming so many ponds, we had to create a new tier for her of quantity because she wasnt even growing them for 30 days. It was even shorter durations and then transplanting it to flower pots in our outdoor garden.

Harry Duran

32:40 - 32:59

Oh, wow. Yeah. I'm curious if you've created or allowed an ability for the users to congregate. Is there a community? Because I imagine there's a lot of feedback, there's a lot of people using them in interesting ways, as you just explained, and also just to kind of share maybe recipes like you were alluding to as well.

Scott Massey

33:00 - 33:25

Yeah, I think there's a lot of interest in doing so. But one thing, just as a startup, you have to be so, so judicial about how you deploy your capital. I think we can create the environments where these things can kind of happen naturally on social media, but I try not to ever over invest in infrastructure for something that just needs to happen naturally. And a community is one of the most natural things you can really have.

Harry Duran

33:26 - 33:45

Talk a little bit about the growth that you've had to manage from the time we first spoke and you know, how the team has grown. Your responsibilities as a leader has grown, obviously with a bigger team and how you've been able personally to sort of manage that and steward that and grow the team to where it is now.

Scott Massey

33:45 - 35:55

You know, I'm a first time founder, so I'm not going to pretend that I had a ton of leadership experience before I founded this company. I think it's very much been a learning experience myself, but I think I really good leaders lead by example. I think they hold themselves to a very high standard and that establishes the culture and an organization, not just by talking about it, I mean, actually demonstrating at talks pretty cheap. But you do inevitably start to grow. You become kind of a product of that success that if you do start attracting people, you can't be everywhere at once. And I think a really great leader is able to lead from multiple fronts. I think a good leader leads from the front, they're practicing what they're preaching, they're leading by example, but a great leader leads from multiple fronts. They're able to find teams of almost, we're talking like in a militaristic structure. You essentially assign lieutenants or corporals who have individuals that can oversee entire divisions of people, focused on whether it's plant science or AI development or mechanical design, and also understanding how certain tasks need to be done in parallel, other paths have to be done in series, and how at times you have to allocate resources accordingly across all these different groups. And always ensuring that you as a leader have the ability to maintain a vision that keeps a cohesive view moving forward because it's very easy for one focus to outfocus the others when in reality the market is commanding a different focus than what you may have perceived. So always just having I think. Im not sure if humility is the right word, but the ability to separate kind of detach yourself from an ego on what you think or may want to be the right answer. And really just assessing what the market is telling you is the right answer. Does that make sense? Its more than anything the ability to differentiate and respond to a situation as it comes. Not having a predetermined plan that is rigid and unable to respond to changes in market trends. That makes sense.

Harry Duran

35:55 - 36:02

Who do you look to for inspiration when it comes to leadership with this being your first experience as a CEO?

Scott Massey

36:02 - 37:56

I think a lot of sources, I think just reading a lot of books, particularly about really good leadership examples, it's astonishing the accessibility of podcasts and the ability to hear the very intimate thoughts and processes of an individual. I think the founder of Patagonia had just a fantastic mission driven organization and I've really enjoyed listening and learning about him. Some of these people, I have not met any of these people, which is funny to say, but the founder of Butcherbox, Mike Salgaro, never had the privilege to meet that individual. But listening to his story about having had past startup challenges and how he was able to really differentiate between buy versus build and knowing how to understand what it was he was really providing at the end of the day and just the most minimum viable product of value provided to the individual and then building a solution around that, I find it just be really, really profound. But I think also the investor base. Ive been fortunate to attract individuals who have themselves created wealth through founding and growing businesses. And yes, they provided capital, but that is small in comparison to the insights and advisory support that theyve lent us as a business and be able to just have open, candid conversations with them because its not easy. They know its not easy. They know exactly what sort of level they take. And I keep on hearing it's not really what they invest in, but more so who? And I think just being able to have the transparency to come talk to them when you have a problem and ask how would you handle the situation? And you find out that more often than not, your problems aren't that special. They've probably encountered it to some extent or know somebody that has and can tell you what they did right, what they wish they did sooner, and to recognize problems before they become more significant.

Harry Duran

37:56 - 38:01

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Standing on the shoulders of giants, if you will.

Scott Massey

38:01 - 38:04

Yes, absolutely, absolutely.

Harry Duran

38:04 - 38:25

Speaking to the visibility you've been getting as well, I noticed that you had recently won the hunger tech innovation challenge. And so can you talk about, you know, how important it is for you to have that visibility, to participate in these challenges in terms of the visibility gives you and obviously sometimes additional funds that come with it and what that experience has been like?

Scott Massey

38:26 - 43:41

Yeah, this is something that I think is going to just profoundly change the industry of indoor agriculture as a whole, because we have these value propositions of being more sustainable, less water usage. If you can develop a very energy efficient system, you can have kind of this immediacy of production. If it's very labor efficient, you can make production at consumption. So you can effectively eliminate the supply chain, much like how refrigerators replaced ice factories. I think thats a very profound thing. But what are these value propositions really? Its more flavorful. Flavonoids degrade in supply chains. Its more nutritious for a lot of the soft body and leafy green vegetables that vertical farming grows. These things dont typically freeze well, which means its shipped in a perishable format and you see a degradation of nutrients and food safety. When you take an outdoor, uncontrolled environment where any past bird cattle could have some sort of interaction with the field, that poses an undeniable food safety concern. And when you grow it in a controlled environment, you can never eliminate, but you can mitigate those risk factors that oftentimes contribute towards the safety kind of the source of those food safety concerns. What's really exciting now, and it's unfortunate, it's taken us as a society as a pandemic to recognize this. And it's ancient wisdom, let food be thy medicine. But this understanding that the quality of food that we eat is going to directly impact and dictate the outcome of our health going into the future. And now insurance companies, the health industry has awakened to this. I mean, this is obvious knowledge, but I think now the data is evident that people who eat healthier vegetables that are locally grown have the ability to have a lower health risk into the future. Don't you think your health insurance provider should incentivize you to do so, or at least reward you for doing so? The same way they give you a premium discount if you don't smoke cigarettes, and they may even pay for your gym membership. So this food is medicine movement is so fascinating. And there's visionary leaders like Doctor Kofi Essel at Elevance Health, who's the director of food is medicine, and he was partnered with Agranovis, Indiana, which is a fantastic organization, also led through very visionary leaders like Mitch Frazier, Libby Fritz, and Jeff Zents, who created together with elevance, this hunger tech challenge, looking at solutions to communities and becoming increasingly focused on food as medicine. And there's a great interview I highly recommend anybody to listen to with Mitch Frazier and Doctor Essel, where they talk about what food as medicine needs, at least for elevance health. And elevance is the second largest health insurance provider in America. And they break it down into three categories. They view food security as critical. Do you have enough food to meet your nutritional intakes and then nutrition security? Are you meeting the right foods to meet your lifestyle goals? And then lastly, looking at the impact on diet related illnesses, which affects 50% of America. Nearly half of our country is afflicted by diabetes, high blood pressure, gastrointestinal sensitivity disorders, as a direct correlation of the quality of the food that we have. So when we look at the true cost on society of what nutrition insecurity is, I mean, it's a tragedy, really. Not only are we spending $2 trillion trillion with a tache annually on healthcare expenses, as national healthcare expenses, combating these diet related illnesses that doesn't even take in count the lost worker productivity, think how much more productive as a nation we could be if people were more healthy, more able bodied to twin to work and the responsibilities they have for themselves and their family. I truly believe that this is a rising tide that would lift all ships, but we have geographic and seasonal limitations hindering our ability to give food to the communities that need it. The food industry has done a lot of good work to address it, but unfortunately, when you have production in one part of the country and consumption on another, you have to make choices to maximize preservation in the supply chain, and sometimes at the cost of nutrition. And what's exciting about indoor ag is that we can turn that around. We can create more food safe, highly nutritious food options at the point of consumption. So if we think of the perspective of a patient that's leading a long term care health incident, and they're coming home and they're getting kind of contradictory advice. Do eat the most healthy vegetables you can to maximize your immune system and your recovery period for what you need to consume. But do be careful to avoid at times, leafy, green raw vegetables, which, in spite of having some of the best nutritional profiles, do also have a lot of food safety concerns historically. And an immunocompromised person needs to be very mindful of that. But you can have some relief or some assurance of knowing that this is less of a risk factor when it's grown in these clean, pure environments. So we're just at the infancy of what this can really become. But I think it's extremely exciting to think about the possibilities of food prescriptions and what it really means to have food as medicine.

Harry Duran

43:41 - 43:58

And so when you look at these types of events or applying for these grants or these contests, is that something that's a because of the unique nature of your offering, something that the team is actively looking for opportunities to sort of share the news and the innovations that are happening within Anu?

Scott Massey

43:59 - 44:58

Yeah. I'm so happy about the diversity of thought and background of our team members that some people's specialty may be on artificial intelligence, computer vision, and they are looking at highly technical research funding opportunities to develop a platform that enhances a food accessibility experience for somebody in the community that lacks that food nutrition experience or accessibility in other instances. I'm thinking about it from a business case. What is this investment opportunity as a company, and how do I convey that return on investment opportunity in a shark tank like environment? Or in the case of the hunger tech challenge with Agranovis, something that's really focusing on accessibility of nutrition in a community directly. It's funny to think that these technology efforts have been historically kind of compartmentalized, but now we're seeing this convergence and this opportunity of these modern technologies to really fulfill this modern food as medicine movement.

Harry Duran

44:59 - 45:04

So this probably changed from the last time we spoke. What's a tough question you've had to ask yourself recently?

Scott Massey

45:06 - 46:04

Tough question to ask myself recently. I think there's an african proverb I really like, and it's when you want to go fast, go alone, and when you want to go far, go together. And I think when you're in these early infancy stages of a startup, you need to just be laser focused on the exact challenge you're working on. And you probably need to keep that as internal as possible to really develop a defensible market solution that has a measurable difference over existing solutions and then knowing when it is time to go together. Because now that you've developed this solution, you can emerge from stealth mode. You can create something that can really go far together and maximize its reach far more than what an individual or a single team of individuals is able to achieve. Recognizing that when you need outside support and a team to support those efforts.

Harry Duran

46:05 - 46:14

Trey, and how do you think about those decisions and when to go forward together as opposed to going fast alone?

Scott Massey

46:14 - 47:06

I think it kind of becomes obvious. I think if you try and go together too soon, this will come at an obvious cost. And then the question of, well, where is this capital? Where is this resource going to come that's going to support this? Whereas if you wait until the need arises, but maybe cultivated to maintain some relationships up to that point, just keeping people ready for the opportunity, having good relationships where you communicate what you think future aspirations are going to be, then you can kind of anticipate it, and you'll find that each other's core competencies together solves what the need is at that time without trying to make it all be done under one roof, if that makes sense. I think each case is very specific on its own, but I think a really good example of that is us in our partnership with ecosolution, creating this modular, rapidly deployable, growing method.

Harry Duran

47:06 - 47:26

So what's next for you and the team? Scott, if you think about the roadmap, obviously it's challenging to plan, sometimes even three years out, much less five or beyond, but it sounds like you've got a pretty solid roadmap in place. And so if you think about what's coming up for anew, is there anything you excited to share or talk about?

Scott Massey

47:27 - 48:29

There's a lot to talk about. There's only so much I can share. I would say that we're going to see a highly diversified base of growing in institutions and organizations that we may not view as being sources of food and part of the food supply chain beginning to play a very instrumental role in localizing that supply chain. And it could be a school, it could be an elementary school, it could be a high school, it could be a collegiate university. It could be a faith based organization. It could be a government entity or agency. It could be a corporate entity that perhaps wants to have vertically integrated supply chains of better quality food for the corporate cafeteria, but also wants to access renewable energy means. And we find that turning these entities into food producing ventures opens up a whole host of possibilities. And I think it's going to be very, very exciting to share these individual case studies in the future.

Harry Duran

48:30 - 48:32

So the short answer is, stay tuned. More to come?

Scott Massey

48:33 - 48:35

Absolutely, absolutely.

Harry Duran

48:35 - 48:58

So, been leaving some space at the end of these conversations for any messages you might have for the indoor farming CEA space colleagues, your fellow leaders in this space who listen to this show as well, you know, given how things may have changed since we last spoke, and what you're seeing from the outside, from attending the conferences, from conversations with your peers in the space, what comes to mind for you?

Scott Massey

48:59 - 50:12

I would say view the industry through a holistic capex and Opex approach. And I hate to jump into just financial metrics, but ultimately that is whats decisive of the viability of these farming models. I think when we look at Opex and capex of these systems, we need to be very open minded about what is possible and what can be achieved. And in the case of a system such as ours, the densities in which we can grow plants is very different than what has been done historically from a mechanical perspective. And from that came a lot of development on operational and consumable support systems to make that viable and replicatable at scale. But we've now reached that point, I would say, view it through a holistic sense of what a community member could do and where we create this level of intuitiveness such as consumable on par with Keurig. Is that even an operator or is that more of a food procurer, which is a very different role in an organization and dramatically changes the addressable market potential?

Harry Duran

50:13 - 50:52

Yeah, that's an interesting way to think about it, and definitely some food for thought. Well, I'm really glad every time we get to connect, it's just all the more reason to attend the conferences, because as much as I have these, this platform to connect with folks in this space like yourself, I think it's really nothing beats the face to face, you know, the shaking hands in person and meeting and getting to see, because obviously it was obvious that there's a lot has happened since we last spoke. So I'm really glad and all the more reason for me to get out to more of these events and throughout the year. So I really appreciate you coming back on Scott, and it's exciting to see how much growth has happened in such a short amount of time.

Scott Massey

50:53 - 51:41

Absolutely. Thank you. And to anybody listening to this, we are looking for pilot organizations to be a part of the trials and case studies that will come with the initial application of these containerized systems. And we as an organization at ANU, will have an increasing rate of employment opportunities for people that have some experience or more than anything, passionate in this space. And this is everything from material science, plant science, nutrition, to artificial intelligence, computer vision, software development. We have opportunities, but more than anything, look for the right people. So if listening to this interview makes you as excited as it is for me to talk about it, please, by all means, reach out to us. We are grow anew G r O W A N U on essentially all social media platforms.

Harry Duran

51:41 - 51:58

Well, thanks for that. And there is a history of people having listened to the show and reaching out to the founders and actually getting a job. So that has happened. So I wouldn't be surprised if that happened as well. Thanks again for your time, Scott. And hopefully we don't have to wait four years for the follow up. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of innovation happening pretty soon for you guys.

Scott Massey

51:59 - 52:01

I think it'll be sooner, but thank you so much.