Episode Summary

Join Harry Duran, host of Vertical Farming Podcast, as he welcomes to the show, CEO and co-founder of Fifth Season, Austin Webb. Fifth Season is a consumer tech company and indoor farming pioneer with Carnegie Mellon University roots that is creating a new era of fresh foods. Its commercial-scale indoor vertical farms use proprietary robotics, AI, and smart operations technology to grow leafy greens and herbs at affordable prices year-round. Today, Harry and Austin talk about the origin story of Fifth Season, the relationship he has with the city of Braddock and how Austin initially got involved in vertical farming. Austin expounds on the concepts of smart manufacturing and pest pressure and speaks to the learning curve he’s experienced as a first-time CEO. Finally, Austin speaks to the mission of Fifth Season and what excites him most about his future endeavors.

Episode Sponsor

CULTIVATD

Key Takeaways

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• 03:14 – Harry welcomes to the show Austin Webb, who trends he’s noticed post-pandemic, his relationship with Carnegie Mellon University and the origin story of Fifth Season
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• 08:53 – Austin speaks to when he first got involved in vertical farming
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• 11:50 – How Fifth Season is applying robotics to the vertical farming industry
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• 16:27 – Austin reflects on some of the memorable challenges and obstacles Fifth Season overcame throughout its journey
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• 20:18 – Austin talks about Fifth Season’s accomplishment of achieving a 100% Food Safety Audit ranking
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• 25:32 – Austin explains what ‘pest pressure’ means
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• 28:21 – Austin talks about the relationship Fifth Season has with the city of Braddock and the impact they have had on the community
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• 34:44 – Austin speaks to the learning curve he’s experienced as a first-time CEO
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• 37:41 – A tough question Austin has had to ask himself recently
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• 38:07 – Harry thanks Austin for joining the show and let’s listeners know where they can learn more about Fifth Season and connect with Austin
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Tweetable Quotes

“We wanted to create this whole new platform to really change the way we think about vertical farming, to therefore make it an economic reality today instead of just a pipe dream for the future.” (08:43) (Austin)

“We don’t really consider ourselves a vertical farming company. We’re a new food system pioneer that’s creating a whole new era of fresh foods and we started that journey with vertical farming.” (19:18) (Austin)

“The first Carnegie Library was in Braddock. So when you think of how we’re changing the way that we think about growing food and then creating this whole new consumer experience around changing the definition of what fresh food should taste like and making it fun again. And then creating this joy and delight around eating healthy because again you’re just creating this whole new category of fresh food and making it more ubiquitous and making it easier to eat healthier.” (29:37) (Austin)

“It [the CEO role] is just a very hard job. And, you just think about your team, your key responsibilities that are both internal and external, and you just have to learn to manage the time. And decision making has to be at the forefront because you don’t help your team if you’ve gotten yourself into a position of decision fatigue.” (35:51) (Austin)

Links Mentioned

Austin’s LinkedIn

Fifth Season Fresh Website

Fifth Season LinkedIn

Fifth Season Twitter

Fifth Season Instagram

Fifth Season Facebook

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Mentioned in this episode:

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So when you put these together, and then we think of how we're re-changing

the way that we think about growing food and then creating this whole new consumer

experience around changing the definition of what fresh food

should taste like and making it fun again and joy and

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more easier to eat

healthier.

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. Hey, hey,

listeners, Harry Duran here, host of the Vertical Farming Podcast.

If you are listening for the first time, you are definitely in the right place,

as this is the show where we interview fascinating CEOs and founders of the leading

vertical farming companies from around the world. And I've been

honored to have some really interesting, eye-opening, enlightening

conversations as I journey with you to learn more

about this growing industry. In case you missed last week, we had a really insightful

conversation with Mark Oshima. He's the co-founder and chief marketing officer

at AeroFarms. Make sure you check that out. This week,

we wrap up season 3 with Austin Webb. He's the CEO and

co-founder of Fifth Season. Fifth Season is an indoor farming

pioneer with Carnegie Mellon University roots, and it's creating a new era of

fresh foods. Its commercial-scale indoor vertical farms use

proprietary robotics, AI, and smart operations technology to

grow leafy greens and herbs at affordable prices year-round.

In this episode, Austin and I talk about the origin story of Fifth Season, the

relationship he has with the city of Braddock, and how Austin initially got

involved in vertical farming. Austin shares what he's learned

on his journey, the concepts of smart manufacturing and pest

pressure, and speaks to the learning curve he's experienced as a first-time

CEO. Finally, Austin also talks about the mission of Fifth Season

and what excites him most about his future endeavors. Thanks to

our episode sponsor Indoor AgCon. Whether you're starting up or scaling up,

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and save an additional $100 off registration with our promo code

VFP0D2021. Make

sure you tell at least one friend about the Vertical Farming Podcast, and you can

listen to it wherever you listen to your podcasts. Don't forget to

leave us a rating and a review at ratethispodcast.com/vfp. I'd

love to read yours out. on a future episode. Okay, without

further ado, let's get into this conversation with Austin. So Austin Webb,

CEO and co-founder at Fifth Season, thank you for joining me on the

Vertical Farming Podcast. Thank you as well, Harry. It's great to be here.

So where's home for you now? Pittsburgh,

Pittsburgh, PA. Originally from North Carolina, lived in DC for a number of years,

and now have spread my roots here in Pittsburgh. We

have a lot of connections to Carnegie Mellon and Sure, I'll say more about that

in terms of how I ended up here, how we ended up here,

but we have a strong relationship with CMU and Pittsburgh's the

number one school, or Pittsburgh is one of the robotics capitals of the world.

So it makes a lot of sense that we can continue to be here and

call it home. What's the best kept secret about Pittsburgh? I

think it's the very interesting tapestry that is

this new tech transformation that's occurring now with the

increase in the food scene over the last decade. And now it tends to be

some of the top 10, you know, food and foodie cities, and then just

the art as well. And Carnegie Mellon is such a great

microcosm of that because you have number one school of computer science in the world.

You have one of the top-ranked drama schools. You have one of the top-ranked business

schools, and you just bring all those folks with really great international

diversity and inclusion all onto the same campus. And I think the city can

be very similar, and a lot of folks moving here from the coast

for all those same reasons. And there is a lot of

migration happening out of some of these interesting cities. Apparently

Miami is the new Silicon Valley, Silicon

Beach I guess it's going to be now. But, and then all the, I mean,

I grew up in New York City, I'm in Minneapolis now, but, and I've lived

in California, but it's funny to see even just home prices,

right? People just like, probably now is the worst time to buy a home because

everyone's leaving some of the bigger cities. Have you noticed anything

in terms of trends and how people are moving in and out of the cities

where you're at? Yes, absolutely. I mean, you're seeing the

Midwest as well, where you're seeing a bit of manufacturing come back.

You're seeing huge tech transformations in these cities that

weren't traditionally considered either the Bay Area/Silicon Valley or

New York, exactly to your point. And you're seeing

that cost of living and that difference also be an

attractive element. And certainly,

post the pandemic, there is also

a change as well in terms of

urban centers and then sort of just outside of urban centers

and the life that is work and the life that is outside of work. And

there's been some changes there, but you continue to just see more and more

growth in urban cities and urban, you know, MSAs. But you're also

seeing certain things become more distributed and change a bit. So

it's very interesting. So we're big fans of origin stories on the show.

So just circling back to, you know, how you got connected to the city

and Carnegie Mellon story as well, we'd love to hear that. Yeah. So, I grew

up in North Carolina. I played competitive tennis growing up. That was my life.

And, you know, went and ended up playing one year in school,

but went to school, Watford College down in South Carolina,

and inevitably became a financial analyst and investment banker and did

that for a number of years and actually lived in D.C. as opposed to New

York during that time. But during that stint, especially when I was

in investment banking at FBR Capital Markets, which has since been

acquired by B. Riley, but really, was middle market

focused. A lot of my clients, right? So IPOs,

144 equity deals, debt capital, M&A, all of these

clients, right? They were the CEOs, COOs, CFOs of these companies. They were

also the co-founders, right? I started really getting this entrepreneurial fever

from them, got bit by the bug for sure. And one of them really pushed

me over the edge in a good way. And I felt as wonderful as this

experience is and the amount that I learned, I'd really like to now take this

and go build something from the ground up, try and make a positive impact in

the world and solve some hard problems through entrepreneurship. And I

decided to get my MBA while I would do this, you know, a bit of

downside protection, but really as an excuse to go out and meet

people smarter than me. And I went to Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh for

exactly that reason. And as I mentioned earlier, number one school in computer science

and robotics. I believe robotics will positively disrupt every industry in

the world. So went to Carnegie Mellon and really set out

to, to start a company. And month one, I met a tall, lanky

a guy, and he says, hey, my name's Austin. Do you know much about vertical

farming? And I said, hey, my name's Austin too. And yes, I do. I believe

it can be this wonderful solution to solve some huge problems

around, you know, right, water use, less land use,

food health, food access, no harmful chemicals on a product,

less food waste, be able to really change the food distribution system.

And we both said, but that can't happen if it's not economically sustainable.

And we really saw what we felt has been this industry-wide struggle to make the

economics work, because I think the way folks approach this space. It's

very difficult, and we'll— I'm sure we'll get into it, but we really look at

it as smart manufacturing. And as such, we built a smart manufacturing

platform, and it really just sort of took off. And what's funny about that is

we added in our 3rd co-founder because we realized it wasn't just one or 2

robotic systems, me and the other Austin. And we felt, well, we're

not sure how we can do anything more than that, right? We wouldn't know how

to build. And I said, well, fortunately, I know the perfect person happens to be

my brother. And so we brought on Brack as our third co-founder.

And from there, that's when Fifth Season was really born, originally called Robotany,

robot and botany combined. That was the extent of my creativity at that time.

But that's when it was really born, which was we're gonna create this whole new

platform to really change the way we think about vertical farming, to

therefore make it an economic reality today instead of just a pipe dream for the

future. And it's been exciting ever since. When and how did

vertical farming, controlled environment agriculture, like, when did that come on your radar?

I don't know if that happened when you were in finance or you just

started reading articles about it. So how did those worlds start to collide? Yeah, well,

because I was focused a lot on tech media and telecom in

my banking days, I'd come across, you know, this idea of vertical

farming. It had really started to grow, right? You know, you had a few different

catalysts, right? One being a book by Dickson Despommiers, sort

of this inspiration of what vertical farming can be. And certainly you just started to

see a lot more conversation around both greenhouse and vertical farming,

but I didn't know I didn't know too much. I knew that

LEDs had started to get to a level, and that's a big part of the

catalyst as well, right? Which is cheap enough from an OpEx module

power draw and also cheaper from a CapEx standpoint that it became

plausible, plausible to grow within indoors. And that's when I

met the other Austin, and then we hooked up with my brother, Brack, and we

really just looked at it and said, but the unfortunate piece here is that labor

is actually the killer here because the

approach, the form factors that were built really just took

people from outdoors and moved them indoors, right? Just sort of that incremental mindset of

taking ag from outdoors to indoors. And we knew we needed to completely

change the game on that and really make it so that you could be in

the black, right? And make positive unit economics today and then increase that

as you build scale. And so that's sort of the maturation on my

end. And certainly, I think the industry as a whole, I think, has experienced

that maturation as well. Where'd the passion for robotics start? How young

were you? Well, that's the thing. I think it really comes from my

brother and it comes from outside forces. And growing up, I was so focused

on, you know, competitive tennis and then really started to fall in love with finance

and economics. And that was really my background. And, you know,

my brother, on the other hand, started coding. So he's my older brother. He started

coding when he was 12 on a DOS computer and really just started getting into

it. And I'd say because of that, experience and that exposure,

I've always been more in touch, or at least just had the

opportunity to really understand the important impacts of how,

right, tech is its own language and how that's going to be our common

universal language as we move forward. And I think that's been a big part of

my background. And I would say that the

entrepreneurial fever even started as well when my brother and I

felt that with our very different mindsets and different skill sets,

we could combine powers to create, again, create a company that could make a positive

dent in the world. And just really fortunate we've been able to do, uh, to

do that. Do you have experience working with your brother in

previous life? No. I mean, we had a close

relationship. We lived together in DC. I think those are all important

foundations to a relationship that can lead to a working

relationship. But, you know, we'd done small things, but this was

definitely the most extensive, you know, part of building out a

long-term co-founder and colleague relationship, for sure.

You mentioned smart manufacturing, so I did want to dig into that a little bit.

When you say that, like, how should we be envisioning how that's

different or how Fifth Season is applying robotics to the

industry? Yeah, so what we've really built here is an

end-to-end automated platform, right? So harvest, you know,

automated media insertion, automated seeding, automated

harvesting, automated packaging, Insert washing, tray

washing, the growing process. We literally set in a grow

recipe. Imagine scanning a QR code at a smart oven for

salmon, for example, and it will cook it the same way every time. We really

built that into an automated platform. But what's even more important

is that all that is run by our software, cloud-managed platform.

So, you know, we have an 8-week forecast and our software

brain will work backwards and really run the entire show in the sequence of

scheduling. which is in order to hit this demand forecast, we're going

to seed these specific crops on these specific days,

right? This spinach should go to rack 6, row 3 for the first half of

its life, rack 5, row 4 for the second half of its life, come

out on this specific day in this sequence to go on that pallet for

this specific customer. And all those electromechanical systems as

part of that sit within our software skin. And so you really have is

an end-to-end IoT embedded systems, right? And so everything is

interconnected and is being run by Again, our software brain and

these pathfinding algorithms. And so that

inevitably creates this smart manufacturing platform where you don't have to

check to see if the lights came on, right? The system knows if it did

or not. Every tray, as I mentioned, has a unique ID and barcode, and

we track that from the beginning of its life all the way to the individual

package. So you've got unprecedented levels of food safety traceability

because you have seed lot codes and media lot codes connected to your 5-ounce

clamshell or your ready-to-eat salad. And we also have 26,000

data points that we take across every environmental parameter

during that tray's life, during that plant's life, all the way to your package as

well. And that opens up so many wonderful things as we think about machine learning

and computer vision, but it also just means you know exactly where

your product came from and can literally break it down

to the individual slot inside of our farm on a specific rack in a

specific row. And so that's just very different than this idea

of, you know, one traditional agriculture where you can't control certain aspects.

And it's still very different than greenhouse, right? So greenhouse gets

looped into a bit of controlled environment agriculture, right? The idea of CEA.

But the truth is you can't control the sun and it's not true CEA if

you can't grow it the same way on Mars. And that's very much how we

have that mindset. Because in a greenhouse, you can't control the sun. You

also can't control the air temperature and humidity, which are really important

aspects to crop health, but it also leads to additional

pests and disease pressure. Whereas in what we've built, we call it true CEA,

because again, we're literally managing and optimizing every

single aspect of the environment. So there's this

combination of smart manufacturing. It just happens to be

what's coming out are living organisms, if you will, if you want to think of

it in that fashion. And the second is this idea of true CEA

versus greenhouse, or certainly compared to traditional agriculture.

And that's just something that's a huge difference. And the final thing I'll say on

that, that's a helpful analogy, right, is traditional farming, we put it in

the form of horsepower, right? Traditional farming is a single horse.

We wanna think of it in that fashion, right? With Greenhouse, we've been able to

take a couple of horses and hook them up to a carriage. And what

we're doing in the 5th season, when you come inside our facilities, you're really

at that point, you're at a Tesla manufacturing facility. And that's not to be

putting down Greenhouse in any way. It's an important aspect. As we think about

overall crop development in the food system. And in fact,

we at Fifth Season plan to really have a cross-footprint and really

hybridize vertical farming and greenhouse and leverage both of those

platforms to be able to really continue to move the needle on both

quality, safety, and cost across a number and

variety of vegetables and potentially also proteins and things of

that nature. But so that's to say that there is an important aspect to where

horse and carriage is an important part of the transportation here in this analogy, but

there is also still a difference when you think about a Tesla that

has auto-driving capabilities and can also automatically reroute you with an

integrated Google Map, right? And so, you know, that's very different than

the old days as well with printing out MapQuest, for example, and then, hey,

there happens to be traffic or construction. So hopefully that helps add just

this element of both the smart manufacturing and even the true CEA

portion as we really think of it inside of our facilities. Can you talk a

little bit about the journey, team-wise,

personal-wise, when— because you got started in 2016, so I would

imagine there's a lot of iterations that got you to the point where you were

able to refine this. But with so many moving parts, so many variables,

so many things you're tracking, there must have been a couple of bumps along the

way. Is there anything that, you know, without getting too specific, is

there something memorable that was a bit of a pain point for you or

something you're happy to have gotten through? Figured out? Yeah, well,

I think what I can at least say to start at a high level

is it is really hard to do

hardware and software at the same time. They have different development cycles.

A lot of times you're thinking agile-based on the software side, project-based on the hardware

side, and that can be enough in itself. But

when you add in operations and then you add in food safety and perishability

of less than a month of, you know, total shelf life or around a

month in total shelf life, you have just additional challenges.

And so I'd say the breadth and not just the depth of some of the

challenge that makes this a hard business and tough to really, again, just

completely change the way that we can grow food. It makes it very

challenging and, of course, rewarding as you continue to hit milestones. And as we say

all the time, you know, one of our values is resilience. And what we say

is, right, there's never an easy win. You have to earn them all. And you'd

be surprised the number of times where even the smallest of things

You find yourself saying, you're right, there's no easy win. And then you go and

you have to achieve it. And I think you just have to dig deep and

move through. So that's certainly what stands out to me when you ask that question

of what's been difficult and what are the challenges. And, you know, I'm sure there's

so many specific things that can inevitably come to mind. But when you

then add all of those to the typical challenges you have of scaling and growing

and becoming, you know, 50 people at a corporate setting, when there was, once

upon a time, there were 3 and then there were 5. So you've got all

of those standard challenges. as well. And it's, uh,

but it's been a fun journey. You know, I'd say, to make sure I answer

your question around something very specific, I think

there's been times that the funding environment has been specifically difficult.

And we've, we've done a great job in terms of what we've raised, and there's

been a lot of money coming in this space. But why I say this is

because you did have this industry-wide struggle to make the economics work,

and you did have a lot of excitement that came in from an investment

investor standpoint. And unfortunately, there were a number of groups

that made some false promises, right? And therefore

made false hype. And that led to

souring of markets, that led to, you know, others that are creating something

different to just add levels and barrier to entry.

But again, that's something we were able to sort of sidestep because of

the differentiation we came with, both in terms of the mindsets

that I mentioned earlier, right? One being this is a smart manufacturing platform, the other

being that, We don't really consider ourselves a vertical farming company, right?

We're a new food system pioneer that's creating a whole new era of fresh foods,

and we started that journey with vertical farming. Those mindsets,

and then the execution of how we brought in together engineering and grow

science and grow operations, and even doing operations R&D, where

I think other, a lot of other folks maybe think of those as silos, those

are 2 key aspects that allowed us to just create differentiation and

execute differently. And so as a result, we've been able to catch up

to the rest of the space, But we've been able to do that with a

fraction of the time and also a fraction of the capital. And

so we've been able to take what we've raised today much further than

sort of some of the others that maybe had raised some large, very loud

raises that were a few hundred million. And we've, again, been able to do that

with a fraction. And I think it's made us a better company. But I think

the industry has created some of its own barriers because of,

unfortunately, some of the false hype that was created. But inevitably,

Right? Resilience is never an easy win. So continue with that mentality.

And it speaks to the, you know, what you've just outlined is really

like the discipline to getting it right and taking the

time to make sure you're putting in the systems, the processes, the

learnings to iterate pretty quickly so that you can continue to

improve at a faster scale. And that sounds like what you've been able to achieve.

And I noticed that you also received the 100% Food Safety Audit

ranking, which I'm sure was no small feat. So can you talk a little bit

about that? Yeah, so when we think about this smart

manufacturing platform that we've built and the value propositions of

it, right, we talked a bit about one of those being economics, right?

Really huge, important unlock of, hey, our technology unlocks

unit economics that allow us to be cost competitive with field grown today.

In addition to that, we thought about repeatability. So the ability to do

this not just in Pittsburgh, but then repeat that multiple times over.

Take the exact same modular design and

build 600,000-square-foot facilities instead of 60,000 square feet and not have to

recreate the wheel to do that. Well, in addition to those 2 elements, there

are a number of other factors as we think about being able to create

differentiated products like ready-to-eat salads and how quickly we can automate

and plug into, you know, our abstraction layers and our software stack as we

think about that. But food safety is one of those as well, as you pointed

out. And so, you know, there has been in this space,

I think, a bit of just contentment to say, we're

indoor, so we're not outdoor, so naturally

we will have safer products at the end of the day. And you have to

go a lot further than that. You know, one, you still have to get the

design right. If you don't, you're creating a perfect

environment for the plants. It also means you're creating a perfect environment for other

organisms, in this case, ones that are Not what we want

when we think about biotype pressure. So you've got to get the structural

design, the equipment design, the automation design

right. But when you do that, you also get to reduce the amount of human

contamination. We have human-free grow rooms, which is very different than a lot

of the other vertical farms, and certainly different than greenhouse. But then you still have

to get the people processes right, right? People are an important part of

who we are and what we do to execute well. And so as we think

about The human side of the processes, and therefore,

with the first that I mentioned, that's the overall system, you got to get that

right. And I'd say it really comes a lot down to our approach and our

design, but then it does come down to daily execution. And when you put all

those together, you can get 100% on an SQF,

which is obviously very rare and something we are incredibly proud of. But it

comes down to that technology unlock

in the same way that those other items are unlocked by our tech. It's the

same here in the case of food safety. Yeah, and to your point, how much

of that is measuring different things that

traditionally did not have to be measured or were not as important when it came

to either agricultural— I mean, outdoor ag or

greenhouses? You know, there's new metrics probably when it comes to controlled environment

agriculture that people probably weren't thinking of 10 or 20 years ago.

Yeah, I think in a lot of ways the way we view it, right, is

you're really graduating the traditional idea of GAP good

agricultural practices, and being able to take that to a level that's

closer and closer to, as you would have on the processing side, and we have

in our packaging areas, right, good manufacturing practices. And so you

can really just raise the bar overall food safety because you just

have, to your point, you just have different elements, right? You no longer have to

think about, is there any form of systemic or

non-systemic animal feces or droppings that come on? I mean,

it's obviously not fun to think about, but it's something that is a change.

And so absolutely, there are differences there. And of course, when

you create the smart manufacturing platform that we've built and

you take data points every single minute across things that are

important as well, when we think about, in this case, let's take water quality as

an example, pH, electroconductivity, ORP, well,

also in terms of constant monitoring, measurement, and swabbing

around things that are, you know, salmonella

or E. coli or et cetera, right? And so you just are able to

take that to a new level where instead of, someone walking acres

and trying to take samples, and you automate that and just take it into

something that's kind of constant, repetitive across every minute or every hour,

you've done exactly as you stated. And so I think those are all important.

And it's worth mentioning as well that when you think about greenhouse,

we mentioned before, there can be some additional pressures because you have a much

different, larger open environment. You have to open up windows in many cases

because you just have a difference in kind of your temperature and humidity

setups. You have a larger swing in that temperature and humidity, and

that creates additional disease pressure and pest pressure,

in addition to sort of what I mentioned there around opening up

elements like opening up a window from a structural protection

biosecurity standpoint. Whereas when you really dial in the

HVAC, you have a really, really tight zone, you can actually just

avoid a lot of the pressure, and then you go the extra length

around any within the range that you're in. And you can just continue to, as

we think about it, mitigating, mitigating as much as possible, and it hasn't

asymptotic type fashion. And that's the mindset. I'm

always fascinated by these conversations because inevitably I'll hear a phrase that I hadn't heard

before. And this episode, it's pest pressure.

So specifically, is there like a specific pressure at where you get a

preponderance of pests? Is that— Yeah. If you look at air temperature

and air humidity, you can start to see within those ranges

of temp and RH, relative humidity, you can start to see

different aspects of quote unquote pressure, which is the potential

entrance and/or overall amount of pest or

disease possibilities, right? So yep.

Well, when you think of it just at a homeowner level, like if

randomly you'll start to see fruit flies or little gnats and you're

like, where'd that come from? And you start to like play back, was it the

banana I brought in or something on the leafy greens I brought in?

And so there you can usually find a culprit, but I'm wondering as you

try to control all these outside influences, it must get

interesting to make sure you don't get to that point, because I imagine trying to

find the source of that would be pretty challenging to figure out.

Yeah, exactly. It can always depend. But if you ever look inside

the greenhouse, right, and you see the huge pieces of yellow tape, right,

and you wonder what is all the yellow tape, that is tape to catch bugs

and flies and pests. And in our case, we will have

similar items inside of our grow rooms because it's just good practice to have

that, of course. But you always find yourself looking at an empty

sticky tape cart, and that's always great because I've certainly been in a number of

greenhouses and sometimes that yellow starts to become black.

But yeah, it's all in the effort of

avoidance as much as possible. And again, it comes down to things like

structural design and process for sure. And have you filed patents on any of

the processes that you currently have? Yeah, so most of across our platform, we really

focused on having more trade secret type strategy, no need to

publicize, but we do have a pending patent around

our, as we call it, our autonomous method of vertical farming. And so that's both

apparatus and method around the automated storage and

retrieval solution system that we have that goes down the middle

aisleways of our biomes and grabs on both sides in a deep storage

rack type of setup. And the integration

between that ASRS, again, stands for automated storage and

retrieval solution system, It's actually a bit of an older school term,

but that integration between that and our proprietary grow

trays. So we'll look to potentially continue to include

and build on that patent portfolio. But again, our focus has really

been more so to take something like that, that's, you know, more easily

seen and available, and focus on patenting that, whereas

everything else, and obviously where so many of the hard parts of what

we built are, which is in the software and not easy to see,

more of the, I noticed there's a

theme on the site about talking about the relationship you do have with the city.

So can you talk a little bit about that? Because I think it's important and

I feel like it's a Fifth Season mission in terms of like the

relationship you want to have, how important community is, specifically where you're at.

Absolutely. Yeah, it's a big part. It's a big tenet of who we are.

Very much have that triple bottom line attitude and perspective here

at Fifth Season. And so It all starts with where we decided

to put our production facility, which is Braddock. And we chose Braddock

specifically, and we did because we knew that we can build these anywhere in the

world. So anytime we have the opportunity, we want to build these in

areas where we can have the most impact. And Braddock

is a Federal Opportunity Zone. But, you know, what they really are,

to take that label off of them, right, is a really hardworking community that's certainly

been down on its luck since the steel mill collapse.

in Pittsburgh, it was once a thriving community, and it's a very— has that hardworking

attitude. It's continuing to build itself up in this tech transformation and

becoming, you know, a bit of a rebirth, but at the same time, the same

at its core, which is the hard work ethic and just also that

innovation and industry-defining legacy, right? So the

Braddock Press, Carnegie Steel was invented in Braddock.

The first Carnegie Library was in Braddock. So when you put these together

and then we think of how we're re-changing the way that we think about

growing food and then creating this whole new consumer experience around

changing the definition of what fresh food should taste like and

making it fun again and joy and delight around eating

healthy. Because again, you're just creating that whole new category

of fresh food and making that just more ubiquitous, making it more easier

to eat healthier. It just makes sense that we would go and do something

like that. that can be disruptive in such a positive way there, in the same

way that the same things were happening inside of a different industry in

a different century. And so there's a lot to that

mentality and that personality that drew us there. In terms of

some of the specifics, you know, there, you know, Braddock is a food desert,

and we've been very excited to start creating

and distributing product and giving that to those in need and donating that to

those in need. But then beyond that, You know, it's also, of course, the jobs

and the economic development, right? We hire locally, and we're really creating this whole new

workforce of the future, as we call it, right? You're creating these new

ag/manufacturing jobs inside the city that haven't

existed before, and that's an important piece. But then we just continue to go

further, right? Which is thinking about STEM in ag,

education, K-12 exposure, reconnecting people to their food

inside cities. A lot of times people don't get that exposure, forget

in some cases, or don't know where their food comes from, but also now showing

them a whole new way that it can be grown. So a lot of different

elements to that community impact piece, but it's part of just the core

of who we are. And there's a lot of angles to which we get to

do that. And so being able to hit on all of those is very important

to us. And what's been— I mean, obviously it sounds like it's all been a

positive impact in the community. Is there anything that stands out in terms of like

educating people into something that's brand new? You seeing like the

results of, you know, the impact that Feasting Houston is having on the

community? Yeah. So we partner with organizations like

4Good PGH and 412 Food Rescue. We've been able to be a

part of seeing the impact of some of

our meal donations and food donations, but then also right when

we're holding, you know, local community job fairs

and making that available inside the library. It's been

fun to watch and see that impact and see folks that

live in Braddock walk to work and be able to do that. And I'd say

there's so much more that we can and will do. I mean, a lot of—

unfortunately, when we sort of built the facility and started to open it, right, COVID

hit. So there's plenty of, I think, opportunity for us to

reengage in an even more in-person nature, as was the original

intention. And again, things like STEM in Ag and And those programming

opportunities are certainly at the forefront for us in that as we get

post-pandemic here. But, but yeah, it's been, it's certainly

been great so far. And we look forward to doing a lot more. Have you

had any companies in, maybe not even agtech,

but just curious if companies are seeing the model, how you're coming into a city

like Braddock, you know, a former steel town, and

just, you know, being able with, you know, the right business that has,

you know, future-facing technology, future-facing product, future-facing growth,

and seeing how that can revitalize a town that probably, you know, at

some point folks had given up on. Yeah, well, absolutely.

There's a lot of partnership opportunities. We're having a number of conversations, and

there's so many ways to be able to do that. And we're

doing it inside food. We're, you know, starting to partner with companies and,

you know, bring them inside the produce category. We're doing that with retailers.

We're doing that with restaurants. We're starting to, We've got our

ready-to-eat salad, right? So we've talked about this before, but we have our leafy

greens product where we sell spinach, we sell our Bridge City Blend, which is a

spring mix, we sell baby romaine, but we also take

those and put those into ready-to-eat salads. And therefore, it's a

grab-and-go, ready-to-eat option. And so now we're being able to

start partnering when we think about university locations,

hospital locations, corporate campuses, that are starting to come

back now post-pandemic. No more salad bar in

many cases because they were huge pains for food service providers. They

actually lost money. Interesting. And I don't see— there's a lot of

talk around how those won't come back, and we'll certainly see if that's the case.

But what that leads to is just additional needs for ready-to-eat,

grab-and-go products and solutions. And again,

that just feeds right into that mission of making it easier to eat

healthier. So, you know, we're just able to start thinking of it around

items of food, items around community, and then just, you know,

continue to go from there when we, when we think about partnering with groups that

are either in Pittsburgh or outside of Pittsburgh where we're, we're going to go, right?

Food is medicine, right? Food is medicine. Oh yeah. Start to think about

additional elements there and trying to have partnerships across insurance

and again, university hospital. So It's really an endless list and I could

probably go on forever, but hopefully a couple of those are good

examples. This is your first CEO-level position?

Yeah, it sure is. Yeah. What's the learning curve been like? Like,

how's it been over the past couple of years? First time leading a team? Well,

it's a hard job. You know, I did have the experience of leading

teams in the past, which definitely helped, but you just continue to grow

into new levels. And, you know, if you were to be

in the corporate setting for a full career. You get to build

through the leadership pipeline one stage at a time,

right? Individual contributor, lead, first-line manager,

manager of managers, starting to run entire groups, entire business

lines, right? You're able to continue moving up that pipeline. And in

some cases, you know, it's never good to skip, but if you obviously are on

a huge growth trajectory, you start getting to a level where you, you feel like,

you feel like you start to skip. So you just, I try to be super

cognizant of that, know that I'm not perfect, have a lot

of weaknesses, and you build a strong team around you.

And inevitably, my goal is to be the support, right? And servant

leadership style, right? You flip that pyramid, I'm at the bottom.

And that's the mindset that I try to have. But it's a very

hard job. And you just think about your key

responsibilities that are both internal And external.

And you just have to learn to manage the time. And

decision-making has to be forefront, because you can't, you don't help your

team if you've gotten yourself into a point of decision fatigue. So

a lot of aspects around the, the

thinking about strengths and weaknesses, thinking about the

support and the servant leadership style. And then again, you got to fill in the

holes and build a team around you. That's one of the most important aspects.

You know, if you think of Andrew Carnegie and Charles Schwab, right, there's

very much the conversation of hire people smarter than you, right? Take

pride in being, as I like to think of, some of probably the lowest IQ

in many of our internal conference calls and meetings.

And if I can continue that trend in my role as CEO, I think that's

important. And you just have to remember too, honestly, the final thing I'll say is,

as you continue to grow as a company, your role as CEO changes

and changes significantly, and you've got to scale yourself and you've got to

build and grow yourself into that scaling CEO role, because it's very

different with zero revenue and 5 people

and an idea that you've got to honestly make sure you've got product-market fit. So

then when you have product-market fit and then you continue to scale beyond that, right?

Just very, very different changes. Those job responsibilities stay the

same, but they change in terms of impact degree and what it

takes. Must be something to be in the shadows of the One of

the titans of industry. Yeah,

certainly inspiring. That's for sure. That's good. And it's fun because in

Braddock, our facility is right across the street from Thomson Steel Works,

which is one of the last remaining steel mills generally in the area. And you

just have a bit of this old Pittsburgh right next to new Pittsburgh. Very cool.

And it makes it fun. What's a tough question you're asking yourself

recently? Well, I always ask myself, what am I not doing?

That I should be doing. Oh yeah, it's a good one. Been asking myself that

since day one, starting this season. Yeah, I

would say beyond that, it's a lot of focus

around growing the team and growing external

relationships and customer partnerships. I mean, that's certainly huge focuses for

me right now. Okay. Well, I know we're a little tight on time, so Austin,

thank you so much. I think we covered all the things that I was interested

in and maybe we can figure out a follow-up. And I think hopefully when

conferences open up, maybe that'll be an opportunity to connect as well. But thank

you for sharing your story, and it was really exciting to see how

much effort and dedication is going into what you're building at Fifth Season.

Thank you, Harry. Thanks so much for having me. It was a pleasure to be

on. And we'll, uh, for folks who wanted to learn more, they can head over

to fifthseasonfresh.com. Yes, fifthseasonfresh.com.

And if you're in the Pittsburgh area, you can actually order and get it delivered

right to your door. both greens and salads. Nice. Well, thanks again, Austin.

I appreciate your time. Thank you, Harry. Thanks to Austin for coming on the show

and sharing his story. As always, full show notes available at

verticalfarmingpodcast.com. Special thanks to our season

3 title sponsor, Cultivated. If you're looking into a vertical farm and don't know

where to start or which technology would suit your needs, reach out to them today.

Best of all, the service is free because they work on behalf of their partners.

Learn more at cultivated.com, and that's spelled

C-U-L-T-I-V-A-T-E-D.com, and just leave out that

last E. Learn more about Indoor AgCon at

indoor.ag and save an additional $100 off registration with our

promo code VFP0D2021.

Podcast production and marketing provided by Fullcast. If you'd like to learn how a podcast

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And as a reminder, if you're enjoying the show,

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

We'll be sure to read those out on future episodes. That's a wrap for

season 3. We're so excited to confirm that we have

Cultivated coming on as a season 4 sponsor. So look for an

announcement around there. And we have, as of this recording, additional sponsors coming on.

Sponsorship opportunities available. So reach out to me,

[email protected]. It's been a

wildly informative and entertaining season 3, and

I'm really excited at some of the season 4 guests that

we've got queued up, and we're lining up a few more, and

it's going to be a fun season. I can't wait to share that with you.

So we'll likely take a break for a week or two

and And get back in the saddle. But if you have questions for me

about the show or suggestions for guests, reach out to me,

[email protected]. 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

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