S2E15: Eddy Badrina - Creating Exponential Positive Change

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available. Get your copy today at

igrownews.com/precision. I remember

distinctly H.W. Bush, who's since passed away,

but I had a chance to sit down with him and he said to me,

I love that you're interested in public service, but I would really encourage you

to establish a career for yourself and make

that mark, and then either in tandem or after

the fact, uh, go into public service, because then you're not

necessarily beholden to a salary from

that service.

Welcome to the Vertical Farming Podcast, weekly conversations

with fascinating CEOs, founders, and agtech

visionaries. Join us every week as we dive deep into the

world of vertical farming with your host, Harry Duran.

Vertical Farming Podcast, Season 2. Welcome back. If this is your first

time listening, I'm positive you're in the right place, as this is the show where

we interview fascinating CEOs and founders of some of the leading vertical farming

companies from around the world. I'm your host, Harry Duran. In case

you missed last week's episode, I had a great conversation with Tobias Peggs.

He's the CEO of Square Roots. Tobias is such an engaging personality

and we really had a great time, and I couldn't think of a better way

to kick off the season. If you haven't listened to it already, I highly recommend

you check it out. I couldn't be more excited to announce our partnership

with Ceres as a sponsor for this episode and several

of our episodes this season. Ceres combines smart

greenhouse design with customized climate control technology to build

sustainable grow environments for year-round production. They work with their

customers and clients every step of the way, from helping to secure funding

to providing growing data Whether you're a commercial entrepreneur, an

educator, or someone looking for a rewarding hobby, visit

ceresgreenhousesolutions.com, and that's spelled out

C-E-R-E-S greenhouse solutions dot com,

and get started today on your greenhouse goals. This week, another

great conversation. I get to speak with Eddie Badrina. He's the CEO of Eden

Green. It's a vertical farming technology company dedicated to changing the way

we farm food and feed our communities. Eddie and I

discuss his entrepreneurial journey, his experience working in

politics, how he launched his own startup, and the path

to becoming CEO of Eden Green, including the story of the founders of the

company itself. Eddie's got a strong background in digital marketing, and

he shares his thoughts on risk-taking and his longtime personal and professional goal

of creating exponential positive social and cultural

change. You'll hear Eddie talk repeatedly about this idea of

product-market fit, and I think it's really appropriate that he comes from a different

industry and applying that knowledge to Eden Green. As a reminder,

if you're enjoying this episode or past episodes, I'd love it if you leave a

rating and a review at ratethispodcast.com/vfp.

As promised, here's a couple of recent reviews that came in. I may

have read these off last season. I had them marked as open.

So in case you're hearing this again, apologies.

A new podcast addressing a rising industry, a nice

balance of facts and people. Mark-Andre M says,

what a unique opportunity to listen to all these CEOs and inventors. It

is almost only possible because the market is still small but will grow

rapidly in the coming years. Thank you, Harry and the team, for all of this

useful information that we cannot find anywhere else. Keep up the

good work. Thank you so much. And lastly, Bound

to Cover Ground writes, leveraging science and

scale, Harry provides great content and interviews with industry leaders. His

podcasts introduce the necessary tough questions for vertical farming

as an emerging market and desperately needed scaling to meet demand.

Thank you all for the reviews. I really, really take those to heart.

It's a sign that the podcast is resonating with you, and I

appreciate the time you take to write them. Okay, I'm really excited about this conversation

with Eddie, so let's get into it. So Eddie Badrina, CEO

of Eden Green, thank you so much for joining us on the Vertical Farming

Podcast. Thanks for having me. Pleasure to be here. Likewise.

I'm a little groggy-eyed. Date stamping this, it's November

4th, 2020. I went to sleep at 2:00 AM, so— You and me

both. You and me both. We're just fine. Been a long night and I'm sure

it might be another couple of those before we figure out who the new

leader of the free world is. The good thing is

the history of this country says we'll get it solved. We'll get it figured out.

Either way, one way or another. In doing a bit of research on your background,

Eddie, it seems like you've had what I would call

the entrepreneurial bug or the bug to work

on a bunch of different businesses. I'm wondering if you can recall

the earliest memory of you making a dollar.

Oh, man. I can absolutely recall that. So I grew up

as the son of Filipino immigrants. So my parents came over in

1969 and they just instilled in me

a really hard work ethic, both me and my older sister. But

one of the things was we had to earn our

allowance. And if we wanted to buy anything, we had to

buy it on our own. So I would say my first official

job was mowing the lawn. Yeah. And then that was

quickly followed by understanding just, man, that

it's hot in Houston. So I was born and raised in Houston and it's really

hot. And there are younger kids all around me. So I said, well,

what if I babysat for the summer? So I ended up running— no joke—

I ended up running like a little daycare. for 3 other

kids. I don't remember how old I was. I couldn't have been

more than 7th grade. And so I ran that for the whole summer. It was

pretty, it was pretty fun. All I did was play with the other little kiddos.

And now that I think back on it, Harry, I'm unsure about

why the parents even trusted me to do that. There are

other Filipino immigrant parents, so they had to work. So I guess it was like,

hey, Yeah. I know him. I saw him in diapers. He's a

responsible kid. I'm just going to foist my kids over to him.

And so it was pretty fun, but I earned my keep that way. And then

had a chance to just everywhere, even in college,

university, and then in grad school, I worked. So I wasn't a

stranger to the entrepreneurial bug.

And then when you got out of college, you're a Texas

A&M grad. And so when you came out, was the

initial thought that seed had been planted for you from an

entrepreneurial perspective? Or did you think, okay, I need the

9 to 5. I need the security. I should go looking for that?

So I've not had a traditional career per se.

So after undergrad, I went to grad school at the Bush

School, got a degree, a grad degree in

international affairs, public administration and international affairs, and then just

had a chance to go up to Washington, D.C. and enter

into the policy world. So November 4th, this is very

familiar to me because I was, for 4 years, I was an

analyst at the State Department in the Middle East. Wow. And then

for 2 years, I was President Bush's Asian American spokesperson.

So I was involved in the, I guess it

was the '04 elections pretty heavily. So you're

getting all sorts of like reminders and

flashbacks. What I'm getting is PTSD is what I'm getting. That's true.

Yeah. Yeah. So I'm glad, very thankful for— I'm

actually very thankful for the staff and the workers in both

parties to make this thing possible and just to make voting

possible. So anyway, that was my first

6 years of my career was in

international politics policy and then in the domestic

arena. After that, in '06, I just found

myself really jaded with politics. Wasn't great for me, wasn't great for my

marriage. And so we decided to move back from

D.C., back to Texas. And I spent some

time with a bank, and then I jumped off and joined a

telecom startup. So that was my reintroduction

into the entrepreneurial lifestyle. I was the director of

comms for a telecom startup here in town in Dallas,

and really learned how to run a business that way. So it was a year

and a half in that startup. didn't end well, but it

was a paid— basically, it was the MBA of hard knocks

for me. And I got paid to learn how to run a business,

like all aspects of it: operations, finance, sales, investor

relations, the whole deal, as well as product-market fit.

So after that, I hung my own shingle and said, man, I can

do this. I can consult on strategy and marketing and communications.

And then I paired up with my business partner, of one of my companies

called BuzzShift, paired up with them, with him, and started

BuzzShift in 2010. We built that up from

scratch, bootstrapped it, and then actually sold it in 2016.

And so have the— I've been there, done that, gotten the M&A t-shirt.

And then we had the opportunity 11 months later to buy it back. Wow! So

yeah, we actually bought it back. And it was up and running

after about a year after that. It was up and running, and we had created

a leadership team so well that I was able to take a step back.

And look and see, OK, what do I want to do

for the second half of my career that— 3 things that stuck out to me.

One, I really wanted to do hardware/software. I had done professional

services, and it was great, but I wanted a new challenge. Again, that

entrepreneurial bug, right? Yeah, yeah. The second is, I

wanted to leave a social and cultural impact that was

a multiple of my level of effort. So if, for one,

unit of energy or effort that I was giving out, I wanted it

to produce through a company 10 or 12x

of that unit, but have it as social and cultural capital. Can I pause you

there for a second? Because that's really fascinating. Where

was the thought that that was important to you? Where's the

seed for that planted? So it's really planted in my faith,

honestly. So as I had just grown up,

Having a faith and growing up in church, it was always— and then

honestly, the Bush family had a huge impact on my life

of really emphasizing public service. Hmm.

And that public service is a noble calling. And

I remember distinctly H.W. Bush, who's since

passed away, but I had a chance to sit down with him. And he

said to me, hey, I love that you're interested in public

service, but I would really encourage you to establish a career

for yourself. and make that mark and

then either in tandem or after the fact

go into public service because then you're not necessarily beholden

to a salary from that, you know, from that

service, right? Yeah. You've made your mark. You've made a

financial— made yourself and your family financially stable

and you're able to act with much more freedom when you want to go and

serve the public. So that's really what the seed was.

And then, you know, just through the years, seeing other people do it, thinking, man,

is there a way I can combine that? Right? And so that

was really crystallized; that thought was really crystallized.

There's some folks out of New York City called Praxis Labs, and

they really emphasize what's called a Redemptive Framework for

organizations. Mm-hmm. And that's where, in contrast

to exploitative companies, which treat their

employees poorly. The leaders eat first; they're always at the

head of the line. And they're a net negative to the community

around them. Mm-hmm. In contrast to that, you have ethical

companies, which they treat their employees fairly; the leaders

eat alongside them; and they are a net neutral to the

community around them, or slightly positive.

Praxis emphasizes a 3rd way, which is the Redemptive

Framework, which is The leaders eat last. They're sacrificial,

right? They bless their employees generously.

And then they're a net positive to the community around them.

So that's what I really wanted to— that's what I was looking for

in the next business that I wanted to help create or join.

I was looking for that Redemptive Framework. So— Did you know

that's what you were looking for when you set out on that journey?

Or did it sort of appear and then you said, oh,

this is what I've been looking for? That's a great question. So it actually,

I identified those 3 things that I had talked about before,

the hardware/software, the cultural and

social impact, and then the third one was just a unique culture,

identifying and building a unique company culture. I had

identified those 3 things as well as had been

exposed to the Redemptive Framework before I even came

across Eden Green. Yeah, it was sort of set in my

mind, and I was just, you know, I was running BuzzShift, and

I wanted to be excellent with that, right? My parents and

what they had taught me in just work and in faith is in

everything, do it with excellence. So I wanted to be

excellent with working with BuzzShift, but I also knew That

I had the, I think I had the skill set and the drive to be

excellent in something else additionally. So I was

looking for that, and I was patient, and to wait for that

to come along. I had, I had talked about it with some

friends and close colleagues, just about my desire to

do something different, to take a step back from

Buzzshift. We had created a great leadership team, and Buzzshift is

doing great. Honestly, I think it's doing better without me. I had kind of worked

myself out of a job, which is what every leader ought to do, right? Should

rise, hire people who are better than yourself, who are smarter

than yourself. Don't be ashamed or don't be threatened

by those folks. And then, and then see how they perform. And

they'll usually raise the level of the entire organization,

which then allows you to focus on the highest and best

use of your time. And so the highest and best use of my time

was a little bit of time there, but really it opened me up to saying,

okay, what's the higher and best use of my time? And that was trying

to find and trying to run a company with those

3 pieces and with that redemptive framework. When

did this concept of

locally grown food, the challenges we

have with the food supply chain, vertical farming,

agtech, when did these things start to appear on your

radar? So the locally grown food had

appeared quite a while ago. When I was, even when I was in

Washington, D.C., my wife and I made it a

regular point to go to the farmer's market. And as our kids have grown

up, they have always enjoyed going to farmer's markets, whether it's in

Virginia or here in Dallas. Yeah. The problem was for me

was it was a qualitative thing. It was a great Saturday

morning jaunt with our kiddos. But

if you wanted to get something on the regular besides eggs

and some meat, but if you wanted to get produce on the

regular, you just couldn't do it. And it wasn't consistent.

And really, honestly, I looked around me and there was a lot of folks that

not necessarily looked like me but were in the same socioeconomic

status. And so it wasn't accessible just to the normal

everyday person who maybe couldn't get out on a Saturday because they're working.

Yeah, yeah. So I saw gaps in

that locally grown space,

and that's where it just first dawned on me that

there's a market gap there for locally grown food.

Now, COVID, as you know, didn't

necessarily trigger any trends. It just accelerated all

the trends that were all preexisting. That's a good point, yeah. And

so one of the trends that it accelerated, that it

amplified, was this trend of locally grown food. So

all of a sudden, it became from qualitative and

optional, if you will, to post-COVID with the

bottlenecks in the supply chains and the fragility in the supply chain.

All of a sudden, locally grown meant a very, very

different value proposition. And so that's what we're

trying to do, and that's what I identified for Eden Green is one of our

goals is to to redefine locally grown. And for us,

locally grown doesn't mean farmers markets. It doesn't mean it's not

qualitative, but it's very rigorous in one,

providing consistent greens. So

year-round, season-agnostic, basic

foodstuffs that people need to survive. And that could be

butterhead lettuce, it could be arugula, spinach, kale, peppers,

strawberry, things like that, right? Herbs that

you don't— all of a sudden you don't want to be

dependent on the Salinas Valley in California,

right? That it's great and it grows volumes of it, but right now we're seeing

a lettuce shortage sheerly because of warmer weather and because of a virus,

right? Hmm. So you don't want to be dependent on the

Salinas Valley, and then you don't want to be dependent on East

Coast weather patterns and they're more susceptible to snow and cold,

right? So there's the consistency. And the second thing we want

to redefine for locally grown is accessibility. We want

everyone to be able to have nutritious leafy

greens and fruits and vegetables. So

I would say the big thing with that is, with accessibility, is

we're seeing a rise in population. So there's a rise in demand.

We're seeing a rise in demand overall for

year-round leafy greens. We're seeing

a rise in vegetable demand, whether it be through

straight salads or through your plant-based

protein, right? So you're seeing a rise not just in

fresh produce, but in consumer packaged goods that

use produce. And then the last thing is you're seeing

a diminished supply due to supply chain due

to just overall weather patterns, due to volatility. So when you

see a rise in demand and a drop in supply, basic

economics tell you you're going to see a rise in price. Well, then the rise

in price doesn't make it accessible to everyone, right?

But with vertical farming and with what we're doing, we think we can

level that price out to make it accessible to everyone and even lower

the price as the technology becomes more just

optimized, right, and matures. And then the last thing

besides consistency and accessibility is just safety.

It's food safety. Yeah. I think we've all seen a rise

in E. coli and salmonella outbreaks and these

viruses that are in Salinas Valley that are affecting the lettuce.

And it's because either because of weather patterns, unforeseen external

factors, or it's because we're cutting corners in the supply chain

and we're trying to get more out quicker because of those bottlenecks,

and we're just stuffing those bottlenecks with produce. But

you've seen it. The, the byproduct of that is a lot of it

goes to waste because you can't get it through all the bottleneck, right? Yeah. Or

it gets through so quickly, and we've cut corners that it comes out to the

consumer and it's older, it's more prone to disease, and

they're more susceptible to seeing, uh, to seeing

the manifestations of that. And that's not being consumer-centric. That's

being supply chain-centric. Hmm. And we don't want to be,

as coming from a marketing world, right, with a

marketing company, consumer-centric is everything,

everything for a brand and for a supplier.

So we have this dual thing in Eden Green of being

plant-centric. Our greenhouses are plant-centric. But our

business is consumer-centric. That's an important

distinction. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit for those that

don't know the origin story of Eden Green, how it was founded?

Yeah, it's an amazing story. So 2 brothers,

Jacques and Eugene Van Buren, were in South Africa, and this

was probably 8 to 10 years ago. And the

story is a poignant one. They were passing out food in their

community, and they're passing out candy, actually. They had sort of bounce houses and all

this food. and they're passing out

candy. And this little kid came up to them. He was probably only 6,

5. And they gave him candy, and he stuffed it in his pocket.

And they said, well, why did you stuff it in your pocket? You can have

some. And he said, well, it's not my day to eat. My

sister's back home, and I have to bring it to her because it's her day

to eat. Wow! And for them, I mean, they were structural

mechanical engineers, but it struck such a chord in their heart. They said,

man, we have to figure out a way to where

No kid has to say, it's not my day to eat. And

so that triggered in them just this journey of developing

this vertical farming technology and these towers. So we

have these— the patents of the technology are actually these

18-foot towers. We can actually build them taller, but they're 18-foot

towers that grow plants and produce very, very

efficiently. That, to me,

is the heart of the company, and I didn't want to lose that. As

fast as we grow and as big as we scale,

at the end of the day, we're just trying to change the way we farm

so that we can change the way we feed people. That's the genesis of Eden

Green, and my vision is that we continue through

to wherever this takes us. How

did you meet the brothers? So I met them through a

mutual friend. They had created a great technology.

They were just having trouble with the business model, right? And,

you know, every— there's

no invalid business model if you can make money.

But the business model of the Plenties, the business model of

the Bowerys just wasn't working for them.

And I think that's probably a big difference. When you're making something from

scratch in South Africa, you have to be efficient from the

get-go. There's not a lot of money being thrown at you.

And so you have to be scrappy and resourceful. Well, the

byproduct of that is an entrepreneur's dream. That means

you're working from a base, a foundation of profitability.

Yeah. Right? And so as they develop this,

they were trying to, I think, you know, the previous management

were doing their best to try to emulate some of these bigger companies.

But at the end of the day, you know, I took a look at it

and I just told them like, hey guys, this is a fantastic

technology company that happens to grow produce.

I come from a, from a technology, a mar-tech background.

Yeah. And what, what I see is you could potentially make

this, and this is where we're going, is we want to be the

intel inside. We want to be the Salesforce of produce, right?

Oh, that's nice. I will build the platform. We have a great

platform. We will help you construct. We will help you hire,

manage, and train the staff, and then we'll license you the technology.

But like Salesforce and Benioff, he doesn't care what you do with it,

right? He just wants you using that platform, and then he's going to create

an ecosystem, and he has created an ecosystem where other

vendors, contractors, entrepreneurs, businesses can

plug into that platform, API into that platform,

and produce whole businesses off of that. Yeah. It's the same thing that we want

to do, right? We want to empower

entrepreneur-led investor groups. We want to empower philanthropies,

nonprofits, nation-states, regional authorities,

universities, corporate research arms. We want to empower them to

use this platform of this patented technology,

grow what they want to grow. We'll help them figure out the

profitability, even if they, for universities and for

nonprofits, they don't want it to be profitable. They just want it to be

sustainable economically, right? Break-even. We'll help

you do that. But then, man, you go off to the races, and we want

to train you to do that. And man, if you can create

analytics packages off of it, BI, predictive consumer

analytics, you know, growing analytics and growing

predictions, by all means, plug it in,

right? Interesting. And, and go for it. But that's what we want. We

have no interest in having our own

retail brand, per se, like Aplenty, right? And

kudos to them. They have gobs of money to produce that

retail brand. But you and I both know it's hard to grow. Yeah.

It's hard to distribute, and it's hard to run a retail brand. You want

to do all 3? You need a ton of money and a ton

of time. And again, our foundation is

scrappy. Our foundation is entrepreneurial.

And so we want— the way that we are now positioned,

the shift, the pivot, if you will, is these greenhouses are

economic units unto themselves. And we just

want to provide folks with the opportunity to use them. to

their benefit. And I would love to see

100 greenhouses all around the world that are all mesh

networked together and that are learning, that have their own ecosystem, right? Their

business ecosystem. They're all learning from each other. Maybe they

specialize, right? Maybe they— maybe, you know, in a

tri-state area, in a 400-mile radius,

you've got one greenhouse that just wants to specialize in arugula,

another one that just wants to specialize in lettuce, and another one that

just wants to specialize in Herbs, right?

They may all be owned by different entities, but they're all working

together and saying, hey, I've got this customer that wants this. I've got this

offtake agreement that's looking for this. Let's mesh network together

and distribute that as a group, right? And we can all benefit from

that even though we're all running our own separate

P&Ls. Yeah. It's just really fascinating because

what you brought to Eden Green has been that

whole experience. Obviously talking about mesh networks, talking

about lettuce as a service or vegetables as a

service. Those are concepts that I think if people don't

come from that background, they come from the traditional agriculture route,

it's not something that they're thinking of. They're not thinking of how can I be

more efficient? They're just focused on the growth and how to make the best

vegetables, tastiest vegetables possible. Yeah. And I think in order

to succeed in this environment, having that experience from

that you have specifically in the work you've done at Buzzshift? I'm sure

you probably have seen examples of projects you've tried,

of initiatives that with a little bit of creativity, you then

can apply to this world. Absolutely. I've

seen hundreds of companies and business models come through

our doors, right? Because our job was to market them, right?

And the first thing that we look at Now, and the first thing that I

looked at when I got here was product-market fit. Okay, so

what's the product? What's the market? And does it— is it

valuable to that market at a rate, at a scale that

makes it profitable from an enterprise value and that makes it

profitable and valuable from like an enterprise

valuation, right? So, and then some business models

are just geared towards market share. they're not really worried about

profitability. They just want market share because their end goal is to then

sell to a, you know, a bigger entity. Yeah. Right? That just

wants either the top-line revenue or they want the technology or they just want,

right, the volume. This was not built for that. So I

had to find a product-market fit for this particular

type of technology. And

fortunately, I mean, it came very, very easily to me. It was as

clear as day what the business model ought to be. So now

we've perfected the technology. We're about to break ground on

our first commercial facility. And then it's, and it's off to the

races now. Like we've gotten so much interest. COVID, again, has

accelerated the trend. So while it, while

it has slowed for a lot of other businesses, it's actually, it's heightened

the awareness for folks like us. Yeah.

Who, from a capital perspective,

the capital is starting to thaw and they're

looking to deploy that capital in undervalued ways.

And right now, I think as a whole, the vertical farming industry

has had its fits and starts, but it's

undervalued. The technology and the

industry itself is very nascent. It's very young and it's

undervalued. And so we're seeing a lot of capital interest because of that.

What was it about, or what did you see

specifically in the brothers, um, that,

you know, made you decide that this is a

partnership that was important for you in terms of the next journey in,

in your career? I think what I saw in them was, one,

first of all, passion, right? They weren't doing it

to, uh, you know, to make a buck per se.

Obviously they're business people, But their passion was really

feeding people. And so that spoke to me volumes, because I knew,

when things got tough, their ability to solve

problems was based on that inner passion. Right? I

think that another thing that was attractive was

that the technology wasn't vaporware. Like, it

actually existed. They had proven it out. Yeah. And it just

needed a business model to be wrapped around it. So if I

had come into something where they had this idea or this

concept and it had— they had never, you know, they had

never run it through trials, they had never

used it in, you know, extensively,

it would have been a much harder sell for me to come on board.

So the probability of success was increased

sheerly because they had done the heavy lifting of creating

the first R&D facility, have it up and running, working

out all the kinks, right? So that was huge.

So now fast forward to present day, can you talk a little bit about the

current offerings and where you've set your

sights on in terms of like your target market, what

areas you want to play in, you know, which specific technologies

you want to make a, you know, you want to make a name for yourself

in? Yeah, so our current offerings are our

acre-and-a-half greenhouses. And like I said before, we'll

build, we'll construct them. We have

partnerships with great engineering firms that we've

developed things that the mechanical engineering and plumbing,

and of course the towers, the lights, the greenhouse

module itself, the shell, we can package everything

up in shipping containers and send them over. So

it's made to be shipped and stood up.

in a very quick fashion. So the

acre-and-a-half modules are really our core product.

We've developed smaller ones. Obviously, when you get smaller, your economies of

scale go down and you get to a size where they're not

profitable. Maybe they're break-even at a certain size. But,

you know, for a nonprofit who can afford that,

maybe they want that capital investment. They're able to find a couple of donors who

are willing willing to donate that CapEx to put one of these,

call it 10,000 square feet or 20,000 square feet down, and

that'll produce 100,000 pounds a year

of produce. Mm-hmm. So that's a— I mean, that

makes a serious dent in your local

population's dietary needs. So

then if we can have those modules, those smaller modules, as well

as the big 1.5-acre greenhouses, then what?

Who's the audience, right? Yeah. So the audience is,

I think I mentioned it before, is retailers, wholesalers who want to—

their value proposition or their problem that they're trying to solve is they

want to integrate their supply chain. They want to vertically integrate their

supply chain. Maybe they want to— they're both

diversifying their supply chain as well as

backstopping it in in the case

of supply chain breaks from a distributor or from

a supplier perspective. Some of them may want to

use these to power their own private labels,

right? And they want something special that can

power their private labels. It may be a distributor who

wants to just become a little more diversified and not depend so

much on the processors or the growers. You know, so that could be

a— and then you can have wholesalers as well, specialty wholesalers who

specify, you know, specialize in one particular product.

So that's the first one. The second one is universities and research

arms, and their value prop is consistency.

Everything in our greenhouse, in our system, is trackable.

So we've developed a tracking— we can track it from seed to

harvest. And we can track every

variable that you need. I mean, you're familiar with it,

with vertical farming. Every variable that is needed to

grow, we can track and we can control, even down to

water temperature. Hmm. So that's something that's very appealing to

pharma research arms, right? Biotech,

universities who want to both enable

professors who are tenured as well as research professors

And then the third one is nation-states and municipal authorities.

Could be cities who are looking for city resiliency,

could be regional authorities that are looking for different ways to

subsidize serving their underserved

populations, and it could be nation-states that are looking for global

food independence. Do you find that the offerings are

appealing to each of those individual sectors because of the

decision to not have it be a solution that's 100%

indoors, because yours is, it's almost like a hybrid because it's

greenhouse married with vertical farming. And I'm wondering,

was that vision always there originally, or is that something that's been

sort of evolving? Yeah, so that vision has always been there. So

again, it goes back to the foundation of scrappiness.

When you go full CEA, right? controlled

environment ag. When you go full CEA, you cut off all the

sunlight. You do that, what's the why? The why behind that is

because you want to control the light spectrum. Well,

control requires cost. So at what cost are you

controlling? You're doing it at the cost of electricity and power,

right? So all of a sudden, when you cut that off,

guess what? It's not economically sustainable.

at scale. You may could do it on a small level,

but when you start to scale up, the electricity needs of these CEA

modules, even with LED lights, partial spectrum LED lights,

the electricity needs are gargantuan, right?

So there's no amount of lettuce that you're selling at $2 a pound

that's going to make up for that electricity cost. I'm sorry, there's just not, right?

Yeah. And you're not going to be able to sell that at a premium at

$5, because, you know, a pound, because

the market, the price elasticity isn't there.

And, and again, a lot of the folks who are creating these are not, are

they scientists? They're not business people. And they don't have an

understanding of market dynamics. So,

you know, when you're trying to make a profit, you, you try to be

efficient where possible. So, you know, for Jacques and

Eugene, It was a question of why would we cut out

sunlight when it's free energy,

right? It just doesn't make sense to us. Yeah. Again, they're in South Africa, right?

So let's see if we can use sunlight to our

advantage, but then also realize if we want consistency

from a commercial scale that we have to control the other aspects. So

we have complementary LED lights, but our electricity

usage is like 1/14th of a CEA, a normal CEA.

Greenhouse, right? So that's the— I think

that is the key to economic viability is

we're using so much less electricity and power than

your normal CEA. And then compared to a normal greenhouse, because

we're vertical, we've got the density per square foot that a normal

greenhouse can't do, right? Mm-hmm. So, you know, good luck trying to

find 5 acres in the middle of a city We don't need 5 acres, we

need an acre and a half, right? For the same amount of produce.

So all of a sudden, the feasibility of locally

grown, because we're that dense and because we're

using a greenhouse, all of a sudden becomes very, very attainable.

Yeah. And then the last piece is water. Yeah.

And that's where we compete really well against traditional farming.

1.5 acres of ours is equal to 33 traditional farming

acres. Wow. And you think about what 33 traditional farming

acres, flat traditional, requires in terms of water

as well as energy, right? Diesel. And labor. Harvesting and

labor, right? 862,000 gallons of

water for 33 farming acres trying to grow butter

lettuce. We use 90,000 gallons of water. Wow.

And just for perspective, my household alone

Family of 5, average American household uses 45,000

gallons of water a year. Wow. So we're able to

grow 800,000 to 900,000 pounds of leafy greens in an

acre and a half using the equivalent of 2 households of water.

That's a game changer. Yeah. Right? Very cool. So

that's really, really compelling. It's a compelling

argument to these for whomever, but especially for the

folks who want to do urban agriculture. And then the last piece is

because our other economics are so low, it allows us

to pull the lever of labor.

Most people, because their other

economic line items are so high, they have to put

additional CapEx into automation because your

CapEx skyrockets, but at least your yearly OpEx is down because you're

not employing all the labor, right? Yeah. There's— it's a give and take,

but that stinks because their CapEx is then

6, 7 times higher than ours. Yeah. For the

same size of greenhouse. But because we're able to use

sunlight and because we're so efficient in all the other areas, guess what? We

don't have to pull that labor of autonomy. We can,

but we don't have to. And so we can employ 30 full-time people,

and 30 full-time people Not minimum wage, living

day's wage with full benefits

year-round. And if it's in an urban

area, guess what? That's where people need the jobs the most.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Right? So you put

one of these, you know, where all of a sudden they're able to walk to

work, they're growing greens, they're in an industry that you and

I know is going to grow by leaps and bounds, right?

Anywhere from $25 to $50 billion in 10 years market

cap on the— on CEA. And

they're doing it, so they're not doing it— it's not a dead-end job. It's a

full-time job in an industry that's growing. It could be

next door to their house. And they're also, you know, we've

got a model to where the greenhouse can subsidize a portion

of their greens to say like a 1 or 2 or

3-mile radius around them. So every resident

in a 1-mile radius gets a pound of greens a week

for a dollar, right? Wow. If you think about

800,000 to 900,000 pounds of produce,

giving it to 1,000 residents around is a drop in the bucket.

It's so funny because it feels like it just— the conversation has now come

full circle when you talked about why

you're in this and this idea of redemptive framework

and giving back and being a company that's going to give something

back to the community, educating these employees, because I'm sure some of them

have never even experienced a job like this ever before. Yeah.

I've talked to a lot of my African American friends. One of my friends said,

hey, listen, I'm only a generation or two away

from being out in the fields. So like my grandparents

farmed all their life. And then they moved to, you know, then my parents moved

to Dallas. And then here I am, right, in a professional industry.

But he said, man, our community, in specific, he was

referring to the African American community, but, but the Black community

is very much in touch or just one

generation removed from agriculture. Yeah. So

he's excited about it because, and he's very, very

influential here in Dallas, but he's excited about it because it's

reopening this idea of agriculture, but in a 21st century

way that honestly is

not foreign, it's not unfamiliar to

his community. They can very quickly adapt to it, identify with it,

and make real inroads into a 21st century technology.

How important is it for you, given your experience with your past companies

and the type of leader you've decided that you want to be,

to build an organization, to grow an organization

where it seems like what you're doing on this

end of it sounds like you're creating a family, right, of people

that take pride in what they do, take pride in giving back to the community,

and then you in turn as the CEO, like, That fills you with a

sense of purpose because of the opportunities you're giving these

folks and setting the model for what's possible. Yeah, that's

really, really important to me. It's one of my primary goals, right?

Back to this thing that was set in my heart even before I found Eden

Green was I wanted to make a huge social and cultural

impact that was exponential to my own level of effort.

We can't do it alone. Right? We just can't. I can't do it alone.

I may be a great leader, but if I got no one to lead, then

what's the point, right? Yeah. You're not a leader unless you have someone, people who

are following you, right? So really, for me, it

was saying, OK, what is, what am I really good at?

And then what's on my heart? And naturally,

with my skill sets of being an entrepreneur, it's like, how can we make money?

How can we monetize this? And how can Not just to make money,

but because when we make it a profitable

organization, we can employ more people, right?

And we can provide them with a sense of

value, a sense of purpose. We can provide them with

career paths. That to me is very, very, very

important. And I wouldn't be in this role if I didn't think

what we were building could enable that. Trying to figure out all the different

paths I didn't want to go, but just— Oh yeah, we can go a lot

of different places. I want to go touch a little bit on the marketing because

of your experience and expertise, you know, with your digital marketing agency.

I, I feel like you sort of have a leg up on some— with some

of these other companies in the vertical farming industry just because, like,

that's your, that's your jam. Like, you know digital marketing,

and I'm wondering How you've been beginning to think about, to the extent that

you can share it, ideas that you have for doing something different

from a marketing perspective? Well, I think,

and it's one of the reasons that the brothers

and the investors were really keen on bringing me on

board, was because I've had experience, one, with bringing

my own company to market, identifying

product-market fit for my own company and then bringing it, going to

market and producing a strategy and Executing on it, but also

able to look at other organizations, both nonprofit and

for-profit, and bringing them to market, or at least enhancing their

market position. Right? So taking, and then, then

taking ownership of this and saying, OK, how would I bring

this to market? It was just, you're right. I mean, I

do have a leg up because it's not just one company that I've brought to

market. It's literally 100

through my 10 years of owning BuzzShift. Yeah. And so

that, yeah, that is, I would say that is definitely a

competitive advantage that we have, right? And it's one of the first

things that I addressed when I got here was product-market fit. So I

think, you know, in terms of innovation,

maybe it seems sort of just normal for me

or de rigueur for me, but it may seem really, really

innovative for the space. But I think the first thing,

and I'm, I mean, I'm an open book, but I would say the first thing

for a lot of these other vertical farming

companies and organizations is what's your product-market fit and

what's your end goal? I always, you know, I told clients and I tell

myself, I tell our staff this, what's the end in mind? Begin with the end

in mind and then reverse engineer it, right? If your

goal is to sell you know, container farms,

right, to folks, is it going to cost

$200,000, $300,000? Okay. So where are they getting

that money? And do they want to recoup that money? Well, if they want to

recoup that money, there are certain, only certain crops that they

can grow, right? You have to think in your customers

at the end, the end in mind for your customers. And if you're

audience-centric, you'll understand very quickly Do they want to

make a profit, or are they doing this for philanthropic

purposes? As soon as you figure that out, then you can

back-engineer and say, well, I'm only going to focus on the philanthropic

part. They're not worried about profitability. They only want break-evenness,

right? Or they're willing to go to their donors every

year and ask for $250,000 a year

to keep this thing going. OK, so then I'm going to arm

them so that they can go back year after year and say, hey,

this is how much produce we gave out. This is how many, you know,

people that we're employing. This is how many people are interning. This is how

many people we're educating, right? So

I'm always thinking about, and I encourage, you know,

folks who are running businesses and organizations to think about, hey,

what's the end in mind for your audience? What do they really want? What's

the end in mind for you as a company? And then what are those— how

do you know you're successful? Yeah, what gets measured gets managed,

right? Right. You can't manage what you can't measure, right? And so

I think that's— a lot of people miss that because they are— maybe they're

engineers, maybe they've got a great idea, but they have this whole Field

of Dreams mentality of like, if you build it, they will come.

And I've seen— I mean, I have seen so many businesses

whose founders are just, I mean, they are, they are

so passionate about this thing. And they're like, man, if

we build it, I know we'll get customers. Like, really? You

really think that? Let's take a step back through it, right?

Unfortunately, they test that theory after they've already built the product,

right? And they've spent a ton of money building a prototype or a

full-on product going to market, and they don't even really know their

audience or not able to test out So that, I

think, you know, is the biggest sort of leg up that we have in

terms of marketing. It's not actually like digital marketing or social or

anything else. Yeah. It's really honing product-market fit

that has set us apart and I think has set us up for success. We

know where we want to go. We know the valuations that we're looking

for. We know the specifically, like, we were

built to be economic units. So then how do we sell those economic

units in a way to people that they in turn—

everyone wants to use an economic unit to generate more units. So

how do you do that, right? And that's Business 101,

that's Economics 101. How has your relationship been with other

folks in the vertical farming industry, agtech? You know,

obviously there's no industry conferences, right, for a while now, so

there's no hobnobbing in the hallways, right? So I'm wondering

what's been your experience as someone new to the So

I've had limited experience with the

other vertical farming companies, and I think it's just

because we haven't been to a lot of events, right? Yeah.

I would like to think if I interacted with them, they would

welcome us with open arms because it is a very young industry and we're all

trying to make a name for ourselves, right? Yeah. I would say in

some of the ancillary and complementary industries,

whether it's supply chain management, or whether

it's the value chain of produce from

growers all the way to retailers, they have been very,

very, one, welcoming, and then two, open

to talking. Yeah. I had, you know, I've had great

conversations with Sam Eater down at Big

Wheelbarrow and folks at you know, all across from

Walmart to folks at 80 Acres and, you know,

all across because, you know, honestly, at the end of the day, I tell

people like, there's not going to be one winner in this. Yeah, of course.

The demand is too great. It's too, too great.

And vertical farming is not a silver bullet.

Like, we don't want to grow rice. It just doesn't

make sense for us, right? We're not growing hops, right?

We're not doing, you know, we can't grow a lot

of types of berries because they have very woody stems. That's just not our deal.

And then, you know, for some flat tray greenhouses, they

may be just the economies of scale that may lend themselves

to cheaper, you know, like an iceberg lettuce or something

on the lower end of that. Yeah. We're not going to touch that. That just

doesn't make sense for our economics. So I think there's a place for a lot

of different types of vertical farming and a lot of different CEA.

players. But I've been collaborative all of my life. I like to say

that, that we play well in the sandbox with others.

We also want to win, right? Whatever game we're playing, we want to win.

I'm fully aware that there's not just going to be one winner, though. So there's,

there's a, there's a comfort in that, knowing like, hey, there's probably going to

be 3 or 4 or 5 or half a dozen of us. And it's having

that, that abundance mindset as well, too, right? Oh yeah.

Again, population is growing, right?

Demand is increasing. Supply is diminishing. There is

room at the table for all of us. Yes.

What's a hard question you've had to ask yourself recently? Hard question

that I've had to ask myself. I think,

you know, I think honestly is when we're

expanding the team, Do I have the right

people on the bus in the right seats?

So to me, the company is the

people, right? You can— products come and go,

but the company is what— the people are what make the company. And so

to make this company successful, I've got to have one,

the bus going in the right direction. I'm the bus driver, right?

But 2, I've got to have the right people on the bus. And then

3, I have to have them in the right seats. Sometimes I've

got the wrong people in the bus, and I'm just like, man, we got to

part ways, right? We're headed this direction and you're going this direction.

And by the way, it happens all the time. You know,

old-school bus routes, people get on and off because they're going in

different directions. Right. But for that time period, And we're all

going in the same direction. So jump on the bus, get in the seat.

Right? So I think there's the right people on the

bus. And then sometimes you have the right people on the bus; they're just in

the wrong seats. Yeah, yeah. And so that is a

lot of what I'm, I'm questioning about, a hard question of like,

do I have the right people on the bus? And do I have them in

the right seats? I think by, by far and large, I

ask my question, I ask that question myself a lot. And then I ask

that question of myself. Yeah. Right? What is the highest and

best use of my time? I tell a lot of entrepreneurs and

just people who want to be, you know, just people who are climbing up the

professional ladder is I tell them like, one of the things you

have to do is you have to rank from top down

what's most important to you and what's least important to you.

And then on the second column, you have to rank What's

most essential that you have to do versus

what is least essential that you have to do. Yeah. You match those

up; you find the things that are most

important and the most essential. That's the highest and

best use of your time. And then you stack-rank both of those

columns. And then you start hiring out or

delegating from the bottom all the way up. Totally

agree. But in order for you to do that, you have to ask yourself the

hard question of, what do I want to do versus what do I

need to do? And then what's a really good use of

my time versus what's a bad use of

my time? So for instance, when you're starting a business,

for me, accounting is essential, but I hate

it, right? I would much rather be out, you know.

Same here. Much rather be out building the business, talking to people,

making sales, all that. At the beginning, you got to do

accounting. But guess what? Because it's so bottom of the list on what's

most important to you versus what's— but it's highest on the

list of essential, that's the first thing you hire out for.

Hmm, good point. Yeah. So I'm constantly asking

myself and asking my team,

what's the highest and best use of your time right now? And what do we

need to do to get to a place where we either— you can delegate that

out or hire it out, or you just

need to suck it up for 6 months? Yeah. Right? Till we get more

revenue, and then we'll— and then, but that'll be, that'll be in my

priority, my queue of what are the next

resources that I need to, need to fulfill. So that, that's a

very hard question. I ask myself that all the time. Highest and best use of

time. Yeah, great answer. Thank you for sharing that. So

as we wrap up, Eddy, given the uncertainty of what we're

about to head into, not only from an election standpoint,

but also from an environment standpoint, COVID,

it's a lot of unknowns out there. How are you thinking

about 2021? I'm actually very optimistic

about 2021. I think from a

pandemic level, they're going to find a vaccine. But I

also know that something else will come up, right? It just will. Yeah.

Again, growing population, high rate of mobility, high rate of

globalization, something else will come up. So

all I can— the knowns are there will continue to be

chaos. I'm not worried about mitigating the chaos.

And on the economic side, I think

that's the greatness of living in the United States is we

just are— I do believe in American

exceptionalism. And I do believe that we've got

an economy that can survive huge

tumultuous political events like this because

of democracy. And so I

think the markets will survive. And what I'm seeing right now from a trend

perspective is I'm seeing

investment loosen up. I'm seeing there's

distressed real estate. So that's opportunity for me, right?

Oh yeah. As you think

about the plays of a cash-flowing business on

top of distressed real estate, man,

sky's the limit. Opportunities. Opportunities all over

the place, right? I want us to be able to

thrive on volatility. Hmm. Right?

Most people thrive on stability. I'm training our

staff. I've, I've, uh, I've focused our

team, our company, and honestly, I train my

kids, uh, to thrive in

chaos. When you can thrive in instability and

you can thrive in chaos, then you're going to

stand, stand out above the rest. And then when things are

calm, You'll be so much better positioned than

anyone else. Absolutely. Right? So

a lot of that is contrary thinking. So for instance, with marketing, you go— I

was just thinking about this from a marketing innovation. We

have the ability because of just great

capital partners, when everyone else is getting

softer, we were getting louder.

Interesting. Right? When everyone else was dialing back their marketing dollars.

And as a business owner, I can tell you, and as a, you know, an

agency owner, I can tell you, the best time to up your

marketing spend is when everyone else is dialing theirs back.

Yeah. It's a hard decision to make. It is, yeah. Scary one

too. It's a scary one too. But if you know your KPIs,

if you know your key performance indicators, and you have metrics for success,

Then it's a risk, but it's not risky. Right? There's a

difference. My, my dad taught me a long time ago, there's a difference between risk

and risky. Take risks; just don't be risky.

So that is from a marketing innovation; that's what we're trying to do.

But when I look at the, when I look at the markets in general, when

I look at trends, when I look at where the company's headed and how I'm

handling, going to be handling 2021, We're getting

louder. Awesome. That's all we're going to do is we're going to get louder. We're

going to beat the drum. We have our value props. We are focused on

our audiences, you know, our target clients. We've got a

team that's ready to rumble, you know, and we've got a technology that I

think, and I really believe, is a game changer. Some

technology is evolutionary. I think vertical

farming and what we're doing is revolutionary. I agree.

And so that to me is— it gets me excited

and just fired up for 2021 because we want to thrive on

instability. And in fact, vertical farming is the answer

for instability. It's a stable,

controllable environment amidst

economic, environmental, community

instability, and it can provide that stability, especially for that

community. It can provide that stability of food supply.

Reminds me of the book Antifragile. Have you read that, Nicholas? Yes.

Yeah. It's kind of that mindset as well. Yes, exactly.

So yeah, so Eddie, the, the hour flew by.

Um, thank you so much. There's lots of wisdom here, and I love

the insight that you bring from your experience having grown and

had success with your previous companies. And so you've— you're creating this

interesting hybrid And I think your answer on what

you're looking forward to in 2021 speaks to that

exactly because you have this optimism, this energy, this enthusiasm

that is contagious. And I think is exactly what's needed for business

owners who actually want to position themselves to succeed

in the upcoming year. So thanks for sharing that perspective. Absolutely. Thanks for having

me. I really appreciate it. Yeah. So where's the best place for folks to—

if they wanted to connect with you personally or learn more about Eden Green? Sure.

It's just edengreen.com. E-D-E-N, like Garden

of Eden, green.com. And then for me,

people can reach out to me at eddyb@edengreen.com.

Okay. And we'll make sure we put all those links in the show notes for

this episode as well. But thanks again for your time. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks again for

having me. Thanks again to Eddie for that wide-ranging

conversation. I think I say that all the time about my podcast episodes, but you

never know where they're going to lead. But I was really impressed with his past

experience working for George W. Bush, starting his own

digital marketing agency, having a keen eye for what works in

marketing. It was really a lot of fun. Don't forget, if you're enjoying this

podcast, leave us a rating and a review at ratethispodcast.com/vfp.

As you heard at the beginning of the show, we'll be sure to read them

out on future episodes. Special thanks to our episode

sponsors, Ceres Greenhouse Solutions. Find out more

at ceresgs.com. That's C-E-R-E-S-G-S

dot com. Until we meet again, here's to your health. Thanks for

listening. To read the full show notes for this episode, which includes

any links mentioned in the episode, as well as a full show transcription,

visit verticalfarmingpodcast.com. There, you

can sign up for our email list to be notified when new episodes are released.

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