Nikola Kerslake is a registered investment adviser and founder of Contain, a fintech platform for indoor agriculture that aids indoor farmers in finding lease funding for their projects. Join Harry Duran, host of Vertical Farming Podcast, as he and Nicola discuss common misconceptions about the indoor AgTech space, access to funding, and how her experience as a manager of private equity funds has contributed to her success in the vertical farming industry.

Special thanks to our Season 1 Sponsor

IGS – https://intelligentgrowthsolutions.com/

Key Takeaways

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• 00:01 – Nicola shares her background in indoor agriculture and the origin story and goals of her FinTech company, Contain
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• 05:09 – Nicola expounds on how she got involved in finance
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• 08:42 – Nicola speaks to common misconceptions people have about the indoor AgTech space and lessons she’s learned from her work with Techstars
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• 15:54 – Nicola details the process of how Contain identifies new companies to work with
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• 20:21 – Trends and shifts in the indoor AgTech space that Nicola has noticed over the past few months and years
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• 27:45 – What excites Nicola the most about the future of indoor AgTech and vertical farming
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• 29:21 – What is something that Nicola has changed her mind about recently and where listeners can follow and connect with Nicola and Contain
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Tweetables:

“The biggest challenge that indoor farmers face is not necessarily technical or growing, it’s just they can’t finance their farms. So, that looked like a problem I could solve.” (03:03)

“It’s been a fairly circumlocutious route, but I think every entrepreneur has to hustle. And we certainly do that every single day.” (06:41)

“Lenders don’t work like equity investors or like private investors. They have checklists and black boxes that they use and you are not going to be able to charm them, or impress them with your vision, into committing earlier.” (16:55)

“There are many more sources of funding than there were when we first started. And actually that’s great for us because you never want to be one hundred percent of a deal. You always want to get to share it with someone.” (24:56)

Links Mentioned:

Nicola’s LinkedIn

Nicola’s Website

Contain Website

Contain’s Email

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Mentioned in this episode:

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information, visit intelligentgrowthsolutions.com. I

mean, it's been a fairly circumlocutious route, but I

think, you know, every entrepreneur has to hustle. And we

certainly do that every single day. 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. Welcome back, episode 7. If you are new to the

show, this is the podcast where we interview fascinating CEOs and

founders of some of the leading vertical farming companies from around the

world. In case you missed last week's episode, I had a great conversation with

Dave Riddell of Clausen Greens. If you haven't listened to it, I definitely

recommend you check it out, episode number 6. This week, I have a great

engaging conversation with Nicola Kurzleki. Nicola is a

registered investment advisor and the founder of Contain, a fintech

platform for indoor agriculture that aids indoor farmers in finding

lease funding for their projects. This is a high-energy

conversation with Nicola, and we discuss the common misconceptions about the

indoor agtech space, access to funding, and how her experience as a

manager of private equity funds has contributed to her success in the

vertical farming industry. She shares her background story in indoor

agriculture as well as the background story for how she got involved in finance.

We learn about lessons she acquired from her work with Techstars,

and she details the process of how Contain identifies new companies to

work with. We talk about trends and shifts in the indoor agtech space that

Nicola has noticed over the past few years and months. We wrap up with

Nicola sharing what excites her most about the future of indoor agtech and

vertical farming. And regular listeners can also hear something Nicola has

changed her mind about recently. If you enjoyed this episode or past

episodes, don't forget to leave a rating and review at ratethispodcast.com/vfp.

I did mention that I was going to be reading these out as I received

them. So my first shout out is to user Jono

Chan, who wrote a fantastic review. Bountifully

insightful and inspirational. I've been interested in vertical farming for some

time now and have been seriously considering creating my own vertical farm and

growing a business to benefit my community and local region. This

podcast and the incredible people interviewed have inspired me to keep pursuing my dreams

and always leaves me excitedly awaiting each new episode. Thank you

so much for this opportunity to learn and get excited about vertical

farming. Thank you so much for that heartfelt review, Jono Chan.

I truly appreciate it from the bottom of my heart. Okay, this is a

really great conversation with Nicola, so let's get into it. So Nicola

Kerslake, founder of Contain, thank you so much for joining us on

Vertical Farming Podcast. Thanks for having us. So Nicola,

we are in the midst of COVID we're towards the end of

May when this is being recorded, so I'm wondering just for some

context, it's affected businesses in

varying degrees, so I'm wondering if we could just start off by

checking to see how personally how you're doing and then how your business is going

and what the path couple of months have been like? Sure. So it's been an

interesting couple of months, I think, for everyone. We've been

extremely fortunate on a couple of levels. Firstly, as a

team, we always work remotely. Our headquarters was always Slack. And

so day to day, not much changed for the team. And then in

addition, we saw just this huge jump in interest in indoor agriculture.

So I feel like most of my friends are complaining about being bored in

lockdown, and we have just never been busier. So,

and I think that's one of the real positives that's going to come out of

this is a So can you talk a little bit

about Contain, how long the company's been around,

and the background for the benefit of the listener? Sure. So Contain

is a fintech platform that's dedicated to indoor agriculture.

So we work with indoor farmers of all stripes, folks growing in

greenhouse, in warehouse, in container farms. And they're

often growing everything from produce to hemp to

aquaponics. We do a fair amount with those guys, insects, and

occasionally things like mushrooms as well. And the way that we work

is typically vendors, so folks who are selling greenhouse equipment or

LED lights or HVAC, will send their customers over

to us at the point where they're ready to start building their or expanding their

farm. And we work with the farmers to

understand their business plan and then to help them

find lease financing. We work with a pool of

currently 15 lenders. And those range from small

2-person shops on the West Coast through to big

brand names that that most folks will have heard of. And at the point where

the lender puts an agreement in place with the farmer,

we take an arrangement fee. So that's how we get paid. I've been involved in

indoor agriculture for, gosh, 7 years now. I got involved almost

by accident. I was driving across the country and

stayed at an off-the-grid community and saw this

rudimentary hydroponic system. And it just seemed to

me like something that could change the world. And I kept coming back to

that. At the time, I couldn't find anyone who was doing this

commercially. The pot guys at the time were mostly underground. And

a friend of mine, another VC said, you know, why don't you have

an event and just wait and see who shows up? He said, in the early

days of mobile, that's what we used to do. And so almost by

accident, I ended up founding IndotAdCon, which

we grew from one small event in Las Vegas

to having events in Las Vegas, New York, and

Singapore. And what I learned through that experience is that the biggest challenge

that indoor farmers face is not necessarily technical or growing.

It's just, they can't finance their farms. And so that looked

like a problem that I could solve for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I'd

got to know pretty much everyone through Indoor AgCon. And so we knew

the vendors, we knew the growers, and we

understood enough about the industry. And then in addition, most of my

background is in finance. And having

lived in 4 countries, often in countries where there weren't developed

financial systems, this just looked like another finance geek problem. And that's

something that, that I knew how to do. So we started Contain in earnest

really a couple of years ago. And it's been a really

interesting experience. We went to Techstars last year

and received investment from Cargill and Ecolab through that. And that's

allowed us to develop some neat technology that uses algorithms

to match growers with lenders. What was— so many things to

dig into. So let's start with Indoor AgCon. Was

there anything at the time that was similar, or what was the need that you

were looking to fill in terms of getting all these folks from the indoor

agricultural space together in one area? Well, I mean, when we first started it

in 2013, there really wasn't such a thing

as the indoor agriculture industry. I mean, there had obviously— hydroponics have been around

forever. But that first event that we had in Las Vegas, we had

preppers who seemed kind of esoteric at the time, and now everyone's following

their blogs and it's fascinating. They have reality

shows now. Yeah, but they were one of the first groups to really understand

the potential of the industry. I met Nate Storey, who built and

sold Bright Agrotech to Plenty and is now at Plenty, that first

event. And then folks like Chris Higgins at HortAmerica.

So there were the seeds of something, but it wasn't super clear what it was

going to turn into at that point. And I I think the common

bond between everyone was that we were all being told we were crazy for even

looking at this. And that's obviously changed dramatically over time.

But at that point, there really wasn't such a thing as the indoor ag industry.

And talk a little bit about how you ended up in

finance. So, gosh,

I graduated from Oxford. Half of my class went into politics and half of

us went into finance, because that's what you do. And

I actually went to Procter& Gamble for a year and did brand management, which is

an experience that that, at the time, I really didn't enjoy, and now

keeps coming back to me and has been super helpful in all kinds of ways.

I mean, how do you brand an event when you don't have experience of doing

that kind of thing? But it really wasn't something that I wanted to do. And

then, some friends of mine who were in the city said, you know, you should

really be an analyst. I kept getting told, you should be an analyst. And I

was invited to go meet with some folks at ABN Amro in London, walked onto

a dealing floor, and thought, okay, this is what I'm supposed to do. It just

had this energy. And if you're a geek,

markets are endlessly fascinating. There's no 2 days that are alike.

And you really, in the past few months as well, you're just chatting with folks

that I've known for a long time in the markets. This is simultaneously

horrifying what's going on. And if you're a finance geek, this is fascinating

stuff. This is stuff you've only historically seen in models. What's

interesting is that all your passions started

to merge in a way that led to where you are right now.

And it feels like all the experience you've had with P&G, in finance,

and even putting Indoor Icon together, they seem to

like perfectly have let all roads have led to what you're doing now

with Containd. And it seems like you're pulling a bit from each of those

skill sets for what you're doing on a day-to-day basis there. Well, I mean, it's

been a fairly circumlocutious route, but I think, you know, every

entrepreneur has to hustle. And we certainly do that every

single day. We're constantly thinking about, you know,

what could we do better? What could we do more of? How do we take

advantage of any given situation? And I think you draw on whatever experiences

you've had. And I'm incredibly fortunate that we, that I have

folks I've been in touch with for 15, 20 years who have stuck their hand

up and said, yeah, sure, we'll help you with this, or have thrown in

their opinion. So we've been really fortunate to have some great mentors along the way

as well. It seems like you have a personal passion for this as well, because

you mentioned earlier that you had stayed at an off-the-grid community. So I'm

wondering, What was the pull there? And has that always been something

that's intrigued you? So I ran my last kind of big

corporate gig was running the real assets and private equity

platform for a group called SEI Investments, which runs, I don't know, several

hundred billion dollars in mostly mutual fund assets. And

one of the things I learned as I was putting together this real assets platform

is there just weren't good ways to invest in agriculture.

There were 3 or 4 farmland funds that you could

as institutional quality farmland funds, but there wasn't much else. And I was really

interested that why was there so little and what was going on

that was more interesting? And so when I left that position, I had to drive

across the country anyway. And it just seemed like

there were, and for the first time in a long time, I had some time.

And so I figured I'd take 6 weeks and just go see what was out

there. Now, if anyone's going to do that, don't do it in a BMW because

some of these, some of these communities are not wild about

people showing up in a— In that.

Yeah, but by and large, I met some amazing people who had just really

different worldviews. And that's really what I needed at that point was

to, to see what else was out there. And I was looking at energy as

well and, you know, how alternate energy could fit into some of these systems. And

it's fascinating watching that whole theme come back around now. From the

time you've spent in this space and having to

educate newcomers, new investors to this space, what are some

of the top misconceptions people have about the indoor agtech space? So I

think the biggest one just on the finance side is probably that

the only path to success is through VC and through

going out and essentially looking for big brand name investors.

There's plenty of paths to success that don't require that. I think

there's also a perception that this

is an industry that's just about the

economics of leafy greens. And that's certainly something when we talk to investors a lot,

they're They want to be persuaded that leafy greens can be economic

in these systems. And I think there's an argument to say that, but it's also

just not about that. There's so much more that is

interesting. I mean, to me, what's much more interesting about this industry is

how do you take food ingredient crops and

use the ability to grow them in indoor systems

as a way to reconfigure global food supply chains, which seemed like a crazy

notion 3 months ago and now is something that we get calls about all the

time. When— and that's exciting. And, and we have a

couple of episodes coming up thanks to some introductions you've made. So I'm, I'm

really excited to have those conversations, especially around the topic of

raising insects and, and mushrooms, which a lot of people don't think about when they

think about vertical farming. To your point, they think about the leafy greens, but I

think what you've probably seen and discovered is that the market and the

opportunities are only as limited as your imagination in terms of

like where, where you want Focus your energies and your business. Well,

and the other theme that we've seen just recently is that

what we saw in the kind of the first wave of venture capital was folks

funding the cheapest lettuce, essentially the, how do you use

technology? How do you use farming techniques? How do you

use plant biology to a lesser extent to get to the

point where you can reach field parity, which feels like a phrase that

was everything 3 years ago and now no one talks about. That was kind

of the first wave. The next wave is how do you use

automation to reduce costs and to manage labor?

And with some AI kind of overlay as well. What we've

seen recently, just in the past 3, 4 months, is alternate crops

getting funded. So Beta Hatch just did a, who I think you're going to

speak with Virginia soon. Beta Hatch just did a $3 million round. We're

also seeing a big pickup in Europe. So Intelligent Growth

Solutions, which is a Scottish firm, got a decent-sized round last year

and just announced some expansion into Dubai. But then we're also seeing a number of

insect players in Europe do really well. So it's fascinating that

at a time when people are complaining that the markets are

not open to them, in fact, for indoor farmers who are doing something

interesting, a different type of model, the markets are really open. How

beneficial was the time you spent with Techstars? And what were some of the

takeaways you had from working with that team? So we were super

skeptical about accelerators in general initially. And

Brett Bohl, who runs the Farm to Fork program in St. Paul,

Paul reached out to us through some mutual friends.

And my initial comment to him was, look, I'm not moving a team who

have families and pets and

babies, and in one case, a turtle. I'm not moving them

to St. Paul. It's not going to happen. And he said, let me set up

an information call for you. And he put someone fairly senior at

Cargill and some Ecolab folks on the call. And the

first question that the Cargill representative asked was, how

do you do crop insurance in this sector? And I thought, whoa, there's someone who

not only understands what we're trying to do, but gets indoor farming

as well. And so that completely changed our worldview. And

we managed to figure out a way to make it work for the team without

being too intrusive. So we actually had a great summer in

St. Paul. You know, people always talk about mentors as being the

best part of Techstars, and I don't think our experience was, was any different. We

had some really fascinating mentors who we keep in touch

with to this day. So, we had Richard Cargill, who's the, essentially the

millennial representative on the Cargill board of the family, who just has this

amazing strategic worldview. And we

had a chap called Jim Leslie, who built and sold a business to

Microsoft, who's an incredible fundraiser and taught us a lot about

fundraising and how to interact with investors, amongst many other things. He

was also super helpful in helping us think through strategy. And

then, we had folks like Aaron Knutson from

Compeer Bank, who was great at every time we threw a crazy

idea at him saying, well, no, no, no mainline bank's ever going to go for

that. Or, well, actually, this might kind of work. So, we got really lucky on

that front. And then, I think as well, just the experience of being away and

in a different environment. It's almost like being at college for 4 months, which,

you know, we had a setup such that We did our tech stuff

and our lives were taken care of when we went

home. And that's just really unique. I don't think you get those kinds of

opportunities often in life. And how did you find St. Paul? I'm actually a new

transplant. I'm actually, this call is from Minneapolis on my

side. I lived in New York and I lived in LA. So it's the first

time I'm in the middle of the country. So I'm wondering what your experience was.

So we had a blast. I mean, we, where we had our

apartments were just off this kind of little restaurant strip in St. Paul there. And

so it was It was awesome going to see like all the local

brew pubs. And I feel like we really didn't take advantage of it. Like I

never went to Prince's House. We were crazy busy with

tech. Have you been yet or you're still— No, I haven't. No, Paisley

Park, no. So there are certain things I wish I'd done, but it just seems

like a really neat area. And I think it's, I don't know if you're finding

the same, but we're seeing this revival in smaller

cities, in non-major cities.

places like St. Paul and Minneapolis seem really well positioned for that. Yeah.

So you spent the 4 months with Techstars and then

talk a little bit about the timing relative to Kontane. As were you in the

ramp-up phase or as you were leaving Techstars and getting ready to kind of put

the move forward with Kontane, where were you at? Sure. So we'd

already, we met a lot of farmers at that point. We'd done some

deals. And so we were operating. I think what

Techstars allowed us to do was really 2 things: think about

the bigger picture, the kind of world domination plan. And in addition,

it allowed us to build some tech around what we'd done. So what we did

is we took the data and the understanding that

we had from interacting with just over 300 farmers at that point, and we

used it to create an automated leasing platform. So we essentially used it

to create some algorithms. And that sets us up to scale pretty

quickly. So we've been able to onboard more lenders as a consequence

without adding much in the way of cost or in time for the team.

And it also allowed us to lay out this kind of tech plan

that we are now executing. So, part of what we've been

doing during lockdown, or at least what Chris, our tech lead, has been putting

together, is some neat new tech stuff that we're super

excited about getting to launch, hopefully in the fall. It takes a while

to get through testing. So, can you talk a little bit about what you look

for, or How you begin to work with companies that are in

the early stages? What stages are you seeing companies? And what's the process

for them to start to engage with Contain? So about 80% of the

folks we deal with are new farmers. They have never farmed

indoors before. And though we do see a fair number of folks who

are either existing outdoor farmers or existing indoor farmers looking

to expand. So we kind of deal with both sides. The

typical point at which we can actually help is when You have

your farm planned out and you are executing a

game plan. So when you get to the point, normally

6 to 12 months after you first meet your vendors, when you get to the

point where you say, okay, this is my equipment list, this is what I'm going

to do, and I've either secured my site or

I have pretty good visibility into securing that site, that's

normally the point at which we're best placed to help you. Now, we're always happy

to chat with people at earlier stages. But

lenders don't work like equity investors or like private investors.

They have checklists and black boxes that they use, and you are not

going to be able to charm them or impress them with

your vision into committing earlier. They typically

want to see that you already have your ducks in a row, that you know,

I always compare it to, it's a little like going to a mortgage lender and

saying, I would like to buy a house. In theory, I

can't tell you where it is, how much it's going to cost, or indeed how

much deposit I have to put down, but I'd just like you to give me

a, you know, a loan for a mortgage right now. So it's simply, you've got

to know the specifics of what you're doing. And how much of that is

education on their part? And maybe they come to you and they may not be

ready to engage with you, but there's some steps that they could take to better

prepare themselves for 6 months, 12 months down the line to revisit.

Sure. So we get kind of 2 questions on that front. One is, you know,

can you tell us which equipment vendor to use? And we don't. We're Switzerland. If

someone says, you know, I want to build the specific sort of greenhouse,

and, you know, are there anyone on your vendor list who could help? Sure, we'll

refer them to the 2 or 3 folks on our vendor list for whom that's

their thing. And then the second one is essentially, can you build my business plan

for me? Now, no is the answer. That's, we're not equipped to do it. And

it's not, no one can build your business plan for you. There are some great

tools out there now, though. And so we often just refer folks over to those.

And we're really excited to see some of the new tools that are being developed

on the education side. So I think Agritek, who you spoke with recently, And they've

done some interesting stuff on allowing people to plan out their farm on

their system, which is, you know, that's really neat to have those kinds of

tools. And then the other thing we always encourage folks to do is,

if you're not farming right now, figure out a way to farm, even if it's

in your garage, just figure out a way to do something and start selling

something. And it doesn't matter if it's at the local farmer's market or

it's, you know, to one local restaurant or it's to your brother-in-law, it really doesn't

matter. The what matters is the experience of having a customer

and of being expected to deliver week on week. And the vast

majority of the successful farms that we see have gone that route. What's

interesting about that, it's almost a mindset and an expectation of

how serious they are about this business. And I can

see how something like that would be extremely valuable, even if it's, to your point,

something from the garage, but that discipline and that dedication to get up every day

and to deliver a quality product to a customer, in your

mind, the reason you give that advice is because you've seen

that that's what you need in order to succeed in this business. Is that correct?

So, you know, the pattern recognition of success today is really, you

start off small, you do something that's

little in scale. There's a group in Seattle that had literally started in

a garage. That's why I was thinking about that, because I remember discussing it

earlier with him when he was converting his garage at his— and his wife was

not best pleased. And he went on to sell that business to a

fairly large distribution company. So you start off small, you make your

mistakes small and early and figure out what you're good at and you're

bad at. You know, Plenty started in a container farm on

the Google campus. You know, people think that Plenty started in a large vertical farm.

They didn't. They started really small and they spent a lot of time understanding what

was good about their produce, what advantages they had before they

went on to expand. So we encourage folks to start But that's small. The other

thing is, you know, farming's hard and you don't want to go

all in until you know it's what you want.

And it's really different. It's a little like folks who are—

there's a huge difference between doing something as a hobby and doing something because it's

fun and doing it day to day and trying to make a commercial

success of it. And so I think it helps to make a small commitment first

and to figure out if it's really what you want to do. And

then what we then see is, you know, the customer falls in love with the

product, it's sold out, and they come back and they say, look, can you do

this at 10 times the scale? And that's when you get to scale up into

your dream farm and then continue to grow from

there. That point's really interesting about dedication. How

much consideration do you put into

a deal in terms of where the farmer is

and how on board their partner is or their family is? And I

would imagine because of the investment that it takes, are those questions that you ask

or are you just focused on the farmer that you're having the interaction with? Because

I would imagine if it would be something that would affect family life in terms

of how bought in they are to this. Sure. And so lenders really don't,

you know, lenders have checklists and it's not super,

those kinds of questions are more what equity guys ask about.

However, we see the gamut of human behavior. We see the

divorces, the bankruptcies, the successes, you know, the, I

just had 2 kids and this is now what I want to do. So we

do end up getting a little involved in that, but the reality is that

most lenders want to see a solid equity base. They want to see

enough deposit going down to know that you have skin in the game. And they

want to see that you have customers committed to this. And then

collateral as well is there, which is kind of the corollary of the equity base.

That tends to be what they're interested in. We have a couple of lenders that

we work with who do get a little more involved in what does the corporation

look like. But I've never had, I can't honestly say I've ever had a lender

say, ask me about someone's family. And that's probably good, right? You probably don't want

your finance folks up in your business. That's true.

Can you talk a little bit about the distribution? You mentioned aquaponics,

insects, but what are you seeing in terms of trends and if it was different

pre-COVID and currently now in terms of the mix of the types of

farms? So I'd say the big thing that we've, the big

shift that we've seen just in the past couple of months is in customers'

willingness to interact with folks. So it used to be that you

pretty much had to just sell your product on the spot market and you just

got whatever pricing you got. Now we're seeing, particularly regional

supermarkets stepping up and saying, okay, we're going to do a couple of years contract

here. The other thing that we haven't seen yet, but we're hearing rumblings of,

are more partnerships, which have really been led

by BrightFarms. So their model is essentially, we

go to a supermarket chain and we will grow for them, and

we'll dedicate a greenhouse to their needs, and we'll grow a

slate of products for them. And Square Roots is doing

something that's kind of similar but different with Gordon Food Services.

And so I think we're to see more of those kinds of arrangements, particularly

with regional players who are now

recognizing that local is going to be ever more important than it was,

even than it has been to their consumers, but also who are

concerned about their supply chains. So were there a lot of folks in this

space when you started Contain, or have you been able to carve out

a niche in terms of your specialty and the fact that you're focused on this

industry? Sure. So when we first started Contain, I actually spent 6

months cold calling to find a lender who would work with us. And we

eventually found one small leasing shop on the West Coast who

said, you know, I saw a, I saw a container farm with my son last

weekend. They seem really cool and we're having a good year. Yeah, why not? We'll

give you a shot. That's changed dramatically. I mean, now you have

much bigger players involved in the industry. You know, for us, I think the

advantages that we bring for farmers are that you're not going to have to

stop and explain the industry to us. We actually had one

farmer who came to us who'd been working with a lender for 4 months on

a deal, and then it fell through because the underwriters couldn't

understand what he was doing with LED lights in the farm. He said, they said

it can't be a farm deal. He's using LED lights. By definition, it can't be.

So all of our lenders are, you know, understand the industry. We spend a

fair amount of time with them helping them understand the

vendors and the marketplace. And then with the farmers

themselves as well, we're able to give them access

to 15 lenders at once. So we are not wasting their time of,

you've gotta go through this process over and over and over again. But there are

many more sources of funding than there were when we, we first started. And actually

that's great for us because you never wanna be 100% of a deal. You

always want to get to share it with someone. And so, you know, we're excited

by some of the, the government funding initiatives that are happening now. It's nice

that now that there's an office of, I think it's called Urban Ag and

innovative production at USDA, that there might be more government funding

support on the lending side as well. So, you know, for us,

having more folks out there who are interested in the industry and who are able

to lend and able to work with these growers is an advantage, not a

disadvantage. And what's the timeline for when a business

starts to engage with you from the minute they have that first meeting to

where, you know, realistically, if everything, all the ducks line up in a row that

they can So if they needed to do it quickly,

and it's a simple case, then we could probably get it

done in a couple of weeks. We have never had anyone who needs to do

it that quickly. Other folks, you know, we've been talking with them on and off

for 18 months at this point. I mean, building a farm is not an insignificant

endeavor. And so it just takes time. And that's, you know, why it helps that

we have seen so many growers at this point, because we have, you know, we

have some, some pattern recognition in terms of what works.

Do you get involved at all in how they spend the money? Or did they

come to you with a pretty solid business plan and marketing plan? So

we would never tell a grower how to manage their business. I mean, they're, you

know, that's not our expertise. I'd say, you know, there's a dream scenario, and then

there's a nightmare scenario. The dream scenario is someone comes in

and says, you know, I've been growing for a couple of years, and 2 years

is kind of the magic limit. Once you've got 2 years of track

record, your attractiveness to lenders jumps dramatically. So,

they come in and they said, we've been growing for a couple of years. Our

customer is now asking us to triple our output.

And here's our stats. We've called our vendor.

Here's our equipment list. And here are our financials. And

here's the collateral we've got. That's kind of the dream scenario. The

nightmare scenario is, we've never grown before. We

kind of know what we're going to grow, but we'd also like you to find

us a grower. We are looking for $10 million.

And we've got $100,000 to put down

and here's a 70-page business plan. So there's, you know,

there's extremes. No one has an absolutely clean deal, but there's extremes between those.

And there's really not much that you can do for the folks in

the latter category. And we don't get involved in writing the business plan. We

will occasionally say, look, this business plan is just never going to fly with a

lender, so it might be an idea to go clean

it Is it safe to say you've seen the gamut of both those scenarios?

Yes. I mean, and again, you know, we came back to like how much passion

you have for the industry. If you really want to do this, then

ditch the $10 million plan and start growing in your garage. A couple of questions

as we wrap up. It's obvious that you seem to have found

the perfect job for you, given all the experience you've had and the passions you've

had and the jobs you've had in the past. I'm curious

what What has you most excited of all the things we've mentioned or anything we

haven't mentioned in terms of what's happening with this industry, indoor

ag, vertical farming, what comes to mind? Gosh, there's so much.

I mean, as you probably know, the life of an entrepreneur is not smooth sailing.

So the thing that keeps me going is really a couple of different things.

On the industry itself, seeing new crops come into

indoor ag is really exciting to me. I just saw something the other day on

a wasabi grower in Austria and wasabi is fascinating

to me as a crop. crop. So that kind of stuff, just being able to

geek out on that is really fun. And then also

seeing folks that we've worked with do well.

I mean, that's really why you do it, to see them being able to support

their families and getting these great stories back about, oh, you know, we've been sold

out for the past 3 months, and that's really motivating. And then

on the finance side, a lot of what we're thinking

through as to where the financial infrastructure of the industry

goes, and some of the technologies that we're able to bring to bear to help

that are are really interesting. And I'm being intentionally vague about that because that's some

stuff we're going to start rolling out fairly soon.

But there's just so much. I mean, our goal is really to be,

to create the financial infrastructure that this industry needs to thrive.

And discovering that we don't have to do it the way that you did a

decade ago, that there's all kinds of cool stuff that we can do is really

neat. Very cool. Personal question. What's something you've

changed your mind about recently? So, one that we actually, that's kind of a

bit broader is, the presupposition is that because I'm a

female entrepreneur, that I must be super into

marketing and not technical, is not true. I actually code a fair amount.

And I hacked together pretty much all of the backend

for what we did at Indoor AgCon, which we don't talk about much. But one

of the realizations that Chris and I had really over the past 6

months is that we don't necessarily need to build anywhere near as much

as we thought we did. So, a lot of the tech tech, build has become

about building partnerships, not about necessarily the purest of code.

So, that's definitely something that I've changed my

mind about recently. And then, the other is really this

whole government funding piece, which we always thought was not

super interesting. And now, with some of the initiatives that we're seeing

around things like Buy Fresh, which is a

project where they're going out and they're purchasing purchasing produce from folks and

repurposing it and delivering it to food banks and some other groups. That's

been really interesting. And thinking through how do you

combine government with market funding? That's

a really interesting one. Again, I'm being intentionally vague because we're working on a couple

of different things there. But that's certainly, you know, a year ago, I would never

have thought we'd be even thinking about that. Well, that's just all the more reason

for folks to stay tuned and continue to follow what's happening at

Kontain because it like you've got some interesting things coming

down the pike and some projects and plans that are in the works.

And so I think it sounds like it's something that anyone in this space is

going to want to keep a close eye on. I hope so. I mean, we'll

mess stuff up along the way, but

hopefully folks will stick in there with us and hopefully we'll be able to

help the industry. Is there anything I didn't ask about the business?

I don't think so. I think this was good. So where's the best

place for folks to learn more about Contain and to engage and

ask questions as needed? Sure. So, our website is

contain.ag, and you can apply there.

There's some more information on the site. You can actually start your application via chatbot

there, if that's your thing. And some folks just email or call

us, and our email address is [email protected]. So,

people still actually use the telephone nowadays?

Some folks. Well, Nicola, thank you so much for taking the time,

sharing the story, and your personal journey on how you got here. I thought that

was just as fascinating to learn how you built Contain. I'm really excited about the

opportunities in this space and the work that you're doing to help new companies get

funding, because I think now more than ever, there's a lot of people with great

ideas. And I think with your support and your company's support, I think helping

them see their dreams become a reality is probably one of the most satisfying things

for you as a company. So thanks for sharing that. Yep. And thanks, thanks so

much for having us today. So thanks again to Nicola for sharing her

insights about the financing field in

vertical As you no doubt heard, her energy level is high, and I

really enjoyed this conversation. If you enjoyed this episode or

past episodes, please leave us a rating and review at ratethispodcast.com/vfp.

As always, special thanks to our season 1 sponsor, Intelligent Growth

Solutions. Podcast production and marketing provided by

Fullcast. If your company would like to understand how a podcast can help build

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Make sure you tune in next week for my engaging conversation with

Virginia Emery of Beta Hatch. If you don't know Beta Hatch, then you're going

to be educated and entertained to learn a

lot about exactly what it takes to become an

insect entrepreneur. I'll just leave it at that.

Thanks again for joining us on this episode of the Vertical Farming Podcast. Thank you.

Here's to your health. Thanks for listening. To hear all

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