Are you tired of bland supermarket produce that lacks flavor and nutrition? Join me as I dive into a conversation with Daniel Bosman, the innovative founder of Our Greenery, who is revolutionizing the way we think about food production and consumption. With a background in entrepreneurship and sustainable product development, Daniel brings a wealth of knowledge and passion to the table, aiming to reconnect people with the food they eat.

In this episode, Daniel shares his journey from a young entrepreneur selling cocktails outside clubs to founding a company focused on hyper-local food production. He discusses the challenges and triumphs of creating the Raumgarten, a stylish and efficient indoor gardening system that allows users to grow fresh produce right in their living rooms. Daniel's insights into the importance of food quality and the impact of supply chains on nutrition are eye-opening and thought-provoking.

We also explore Daniel's diverse background, including his ventures in surfboard manufacturing and his passion for design and sustainability. The conversation touches on the role of technology in food production, the potential health benefits of interacting with living plants, and the importance of building a community around innovative food solutions.

Curious to learn how you can transform your relationship with food and embrace a healthier lifestyle? Click to listen to the full episode and discover the future of indoor farming with Daniel Bosman.

Thanks to Our Sponsors

Bio520

Key Takeaways

05:00 Fundraising and Major Customers

10:00 Passion for Electronic Music

20:00 Our Greenery's Mission

25:00 Product Design and Community

30:00 Form Factor and Market Approach

35:00 Challenges and Timing

40:00 Collaboration in the Industry

Tweetable Quotes

"I always love to create new things that have a combination of usefulness and design. With our greenery, that is hopefully the pinnacle of that journey, where a furniture piece can inspire people to live healthier and better."

"We have to step away from trying to be perfect or pretending something that is not natural because I feel that is actually one of the roots of our current society issues."

"I really believe that together we are standing a way better chance. This market is so young, and I think that even the D2C brands, even the brands that are doing similar products, should look into our timeline of the next products that we want to do."

Resources Mentioned

Website - http://www.ourgreenery.com

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-bosman-og/

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ourgreenery_de/

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz0J896ueMg

Connect With Us

VFP - LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/verticalfarmingpodcast

VFP Twitter - https://twitter.com/VerticalFarmPod

VFP Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/direct/inbox/

VFP Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/VerticalFarmPod

Vertical Farming Jobs - http://verticalfarmingjobs.com

Vertical Farming Weekly - www.getrevue.co/profile/verticalfarmingpodcast

🎙️🎙️🎙️

Podcast Production and Marketing by FullCast

Mentioned in this episode:

Indoor AgCon 2025

Indoor AgCon 2025

CEA Summit East 2024

CEA Summit East 2024

Harry Duran [0:01 - 0:05]:

So, Daniel Bosman, founder of our Greenery, thank you so much for joining me on the vertical farming podcast.

Daniel Bosman [0:06 - 0:07]:

It's a pleasure.

Harry Duran [0:07 - 0:10]:

What's the best thing that happened to you this week?

Daniel Bosman [0:11 - 1:00]:

Well, that's funny that you're asking this because we are going right now through like a fundraising stage and we are also signing right now major customers for our ramgarten in B2B. And so like there's a lot of pressure on me as the CEO. You know, I'm doing the sales right now. I'm doing together with one of my team members, I'm doing the fundraising and today I've been to Google at their campus and we discussed our products at their campus, which is exciting. But I also, while I was at the meeting I got like just before I got an email of an investor that just signed a ticket, you know, and all of that after I yesterday kind of manifested, you know, I have a Buddhistic background. I manifested. You know, this is now the quarter we have to pull it off and that was just exciting. So yeah, you hit it right on the nail.

Harry Duran [1:01 - 1:02]:

That's amazing. And you're in Berlin?

Daniel Bosman [1:04 - 1:21]:

I'm located in Berlin with my company. We have two locations. One is like outside of Berlin where we working more with the region around Berlin that is experts that have a lot of expertise and vertical farming, indoor gardening. But yeah, if you want to build a startup.

Harry Duran [1:21 - 1:36]:

It's been many years. I did go to Berlin probably six, maybe six years ago and I have a passion for electronic music. So one of my stop. What One of my stops was Berghain and we were able to get in with my ex wife and so those are very epic experience.

Daniel Bosman [1:38 - 2:13]:

Amazing. It's one of the best clubs I have been to. I am among my had like two, three different friendship circles and I'm among all of them. The only one who was never rejected at Verkind, I never went. I've been there like seven or eight times. And yes, pre Covid was of course a completely different ball game. It used to be so much more casual. I think like Covid made a lot of people have more fomo. I feel like prices went up, which is okay. They were too low before I would say because the clubs are still full. But yeah, Sisyphus, Berkine, Catablau. They're like a lot of very beautiful.

Harry Duran [2:13 - 2:13]:

Yeah.

Daniel Bosman [2:13 - 2:15]:

Enjoy electronic music.

Harry Duran [2:16 - 3:53]:

Daniel Bosman [3:53 - 4:17]:

Oh man, then we have things to discover here. That's amazing. Well, just to round up the DJ aspect, like obviously Fred again is just right now the young demi God of electronic music. I absolutely love it. But for me, John Talbot, of course, yeah, yeah, you know him as well. I enjoyed him in Berghain. That was amazing. I really like as well.

Harry Duran [4:17 - 4:27]:

Yeah, Tale of Us. You know, I'm thinking now thinking some folks in the space is like, yeah, they'll come to me and I'm sure I'll think of some names throughout our conversation and I'll mention another one, but.

Daniel Bosman [4:27 - 4:29]:

Yeah, yeah, just drop them in there.

Harry Duran [4:29 - 4:44]:

So talk to me about your journey. Did you study university in. In Berlin? And you know, we'll wind the clock back a little bit, but I'm curious Because you've got an interesting and varied background in a lot of different disciplines. So I'm curious at how your journey got started in business and entrepreneurship.

Daniel Bosman [4:45 - 6:34]:

Harry Duran [6:34 - 6:35]: Are they just falling apart?

Daniel Bosman [6:35 - 7:48]:

Eventually, like on surfboards. Because it's such a delicate product, you know, like, it really requires craftsmanship. And in the beginning, we just hired a lot of Chinese workers, which, you know, never served. But eventually I nailed a deal. Like, after nine months, I nailed the deal with Quicksilver, and we made a deal. I told them, you will get lifelong discount. I cannot disclose. So much for you teaching us quality control in surfboards. And so, yeah, eventually I managed to get the quality up after 12 months. And that was the breakthrough. Since then, we produced the best surfboards. We're still producing. I mean, I'm not on the board anymore. I sold my shares. But that's great. So this is the best surfboard factory in the world. Yeah. And then sustainable product development, a lot with the artist, families in Europe, some impact companies like Sea Shepherd, Greenpeace, and then, yeah, more and more entrepreneurship and yeah, that's basically that journey. Here we make a short mini break to get your jacket. Okay. Yeah, you need to get your jacket too. Okay.

Harry Duran [7:48 - 8:51]:

That's okay. We didn't think everything to make sure. I've been podcasting, like I said, 10 years. I've seen everything, you know, one time, but it's all. All sorts of dogs, the mailman, like, it's so many. There was an interruption once and I was recording somebody and I was on my side, so I went to go answer it and my guest was still on, waiting for me to come back. So he took a phone call. He's on the phone call. And then I came back and then we started the conversation. Somehow I think I was editing at the time, I missed it and I left that whole piece inside the interview. So one of my fans of the show, he's like, hey, I know you want to be like real in these podcasts, but did you mean to leave this in? Because it sounds like it's a really awkward silence and it's like, you know, you can hear your guests on personal phone call. And so I had to like re edit the audio. And yeah, just at this point, I've almost seen anything. And I appreciate the. The casualness of podcast interviews with it. It's like we're not npr, so you know, we're just being realistic. Like real life sometimes takes over.

Daniel Bosman [8:51 - 9:28]: So, yeah, I think we have to step away from trying to be perfect or pretending something that is not natural because I feel that is actually one of the roots of our current society issues that we are like, I'm 43 years old, so I grew up like before the Internet pretty much. I mean, the Internet was round, but I didn't use it. And like my comparisons were my brothers or, you know, my dad or my mom, you know, like they're real people. But this artificial way of comparison creates a lot of pressure that we are giving ourselves but younger people episode.

Harry Duran [9:28 - 9:28]:

Yeah, for sure.

Daniel Bosman [9:28 - 9:29]:

I hope we're stepping.

Harry Duran [9:29 - 9:36]: So we'll re edit back in here. So you want to just pick up. You were talking about bringing us to present day with your companies.

Yeah, so a lot more brands. I founded a few e commerce brands which I scaled in between. I started a restaurant with a bunch of friends that we sold 2019 just before COVID So perfect timing. And then Covid came my brother and I, we founded the company, our greenery. We had the motivation to do something with food because our mom used to be two years in a German hospital here suffering from leukemia. And it was a very bad mutation. And like I went there for two years every second day, and I had a lot of arguments with the doctors because the food and the whole setup was so bad. It didn't help people to really heal. So eventually my brother and I, we decided that once we both are not in current projects, we do something together and it has to be with food. And I did a lot of research over the lockdown. You know, I went really deep into nutrition and understanding more about the impact of supply chain on the nutritional values. I mean, you know all about this. But I was shocked when I understood that food in the supermarket, although it looks good, only carries like 20% of the nutrition, sometimes even less. So I decided to develop a disruptive concept. And for that, hyper local production in high quality, always harvested on demand, was the way to go. Yeah, and then we.

Yeah, and that's two things about this. The first one, you know, as long as profit trumps quality, you have this issue, right? Because then the customer is requested or basically left with the responsibility to figure out what really this product is about. And I think it's not really the duty, like, that's not really fulfilling from my perspective at least the duty that a company has that provides a service. The second thing that I already find helpful to explain to people that do not know anything about the industry is if you see the life cycle of foods, of produce like this. Like we received the food in the supermarket at this very, very end. You know, here's the farm, here's the plate, and we are receiving it here. Yeah, it's just about to die, or it's in the process of dying already. And because it's harvested. And what happens if you eat the food right here? You know, like we Europe, I always tell people, you know, like if you're in Italy and you eat tomatoes or rucula, it's so much more flavorful. Not because the Italians have the amor to grow the food, it's just because from harvest to consumption, it's just such a short window. And that's a game changer really. Yeah. Plus, and that's something that I'm really passionate about is options. Who is deciding? Like, I believe in freedom. I'm half Dutch, half French, you know, living in Berlin, obviously. So to me, I feel like who's deciding for me what is available in the supermarket. It is decided probably by big companies to say this looks the longest good.

Sure.

Before it goes bad. And therefore we can grow it scaled like in mass production on a field. It's not complicated. It doesn't give us a headache. In the wrong garden behind me, we have already 138 different kinds of produce within our community tested, like from chilies to like really rare herbs from Georgia, Europe. Yeah, it's just amazing.

It's just so. Yeah, it's interesting. Just one last note on that. It's. There's a book was recommended to me by a previous guest. It's called the Secret Life of Groceries. It's very eye openening and disturbing because it tells you all the insights of like, how food, you know, is shipped. So it goes into like, you know, shrimp farms in Thailand, it goes to the shipping industry and all the bad things that happen with like these truck drivers and how they get paid very poorly. And even like tomatoes are kept in warehouses where they're preserved there just after they're picked for weeks until they're ready to be shipped. And so, you know, that's why nowadays, like none of this stuff has any flavor. And having had to experience it, even now we're growing our own produce here for the first time. I grew up in New York City and I've lived in Los Angeles. And so now to be in the Midwest and actually growing your own food and picking a cherry tomato off the vine and eating it immediately, it's like the flavor is like exploding in your mouth. And so it's just a lot of it is education for people and just understanding like really where their food comes from.

Yeah, totally. We will discover also through the support of AI to really understand all the data points and so on, we will discover in the next couple of years. I mean now this could be the famous moment where I say something and predict the future is coming true. I think we will discover that the scent of food, the scent of a garden, the scent of produce around you has a healthy impact, a health benefit for you. I mean there are first studies that hint on that. The second thing is interacting with living plants is such a difference. You know, it inspires us. I mean like the entertainment industry or information industry, you know, like they're trying so hard to catch our attention and make us feel rewarded through buttons and sounds and whatever. But picking up, as you said, tomato from a vine and eating it, I mean that's just all you need, right? And in the Ramgarten, I mean this is not me making advertisement, but I'm really enthusiastic about it. Opening the front door. The smell that you receive, you know, like of sage and thyme and all these different herbs and you're picking something and eating it. I have two investors that invested in my company only because it tasted something. Maybe they checked a little bit the numbers.

So Daniel, you mentioned you did some research, but I'm curious know what you saw from your perspective about this space and specifically like there's various facets to indoor farming, right. There's the big industrial companies who are producing indoor produce on a mass scale and then there are the folks who are in the appliance sector, if you will. So coming at it from a business perspective, because we do have people who are entrepreneurs and first time farmers, you know, there's also container farms as an option. So when you thought of the or did your research into what the landscape looked like, how did you make the decision to decide on the form factor you finally selected?

Amazing question. Yeah, I mean I first of all think that in order to solve this problem which we are facing, food security, food quality, reconnecting people with what they eat, right. That in itself is such a tremendous task that I believe we need all of the solutions that are being created right now. You know, from a massive vertical farm to a traditional farm, you know, like long cyclic food production for grain and corn. And at the same time you need something like this where the life cycle of a plant is really, really impacted by a supply chain journey. So I think you need many different aspects to it to create a holistic solution. But I have a, like I am designing concepts and products since ever. So for me it's really, really important to design something that inspires people on a regular basis and that makes things applicable to your own life. So when I thought what kind of solutions do I want to create? I want to inspire people to be their own gardeners without having to read a book, without having to like find all the answers by themselves. If you look at our products like from 1 to 10, you know, maybe I rephrase that and but we can leave it inside. I don't care, you know, like from 1 to 10 of the engagement level that you have with a product and let's say one is no engagement possibility at all. Like it's very pre predicted for you. Our products are very, very much in the middle. Like certain aspects of regularity, they're very much perfectly decided for you. But everything else is all explorative. You can grow just what we provide. You can grow open source, whatever you want. You can share with your community, with our community, what you have grown. So we have more and more availability. That to me is really important that we are really creating a community and take if we want to the responsibility of what we eat and what the quality of it is in our own hands if we want. You know, that I think is really, really key. And the other thing is I did a lot of research. I almost joined Infarm 2015 I think, I think they were already 3 years old and I almost joined them because they were having a hard time like deciding B2B D2C. You know, they were a little bit lost there and I almost came on board but I always had this feeling that to create a company you need to be really close to the people. And I also felt that the energy question was not really answered as now in hindsight it sounds like I'm really smart. Sometimes I am, sometimes I'm really not. I felt like as long as your unit economics are based on individual plans, the margins can be eaten up by the answering of energy which we all are feeling is going to be soon answered. This is a big gamble and the Raungarten that stands at customers like Marriott Hotel or like canteens of big German companies that are. Yeah, I feel like there the energy question is answered to some extent but it will be easier to optimize this product than a massive farm. You know like having safe energy saving elements such as dimmed lights. I can implement this very quickly. A massive farm has their different angles to play and yeah, I Wanted to build products that are.

So talk a little bit about the offerings right now because you've got the ROM Garden and you've got the Tish Garden as well.

Yeah, yeah. First of all, a question because we are like now delivering products to the Netherlands, you know, and Denmark. Like, when you read Tischgarten and Raungarten, was it something that was very strange for you or is it a little bit like the IKEA effect that you understand? Okay, this is a company that's.

I mean, the word itself wouldn't have any meaning, obviously, unless you knew what the definition of it was. So I think it just feels like it's a brand or a model, you know, similar to like the way IKEA brands all of its furniture with its Swedish names that no one can pronounce. But I think. I don't know if it's anything that would designate. If you just saw the two names without any visuals, you would have no idea that it doesn't tell you anything about the garden or what it does or the size or, you know. So I think obviously in line with like the visual, that sort of is helpful. But I think probably for. It might be a good start, like where you came up with the name Rum Garden and Tish Garden and the thinking behind that. But, you know, for as you look to expand to an English speaking audience and obviously even just within English, you know, there's no one uk, Australia, you know, us, you know, it could be Canada. It's all seen differently. So there could be some thinking about, you know, maybe how rebranding it could be more accessible.

Yeah. So Tischgarten stands for Table Garden and Ramgarden stands for room Garden. And yeah, it's going to get a little bit incongruent anyway because now we are working on the mushroom garden, which is in Germany. But then, you know, it communicates what's grown inside. You know, actually now I realize this and maybe we are starting to rework a little bit on the wording we came up with the products and the offerings. Like the first idea, Tischgarten Table Garden. Like, maybe to explain it a bit more, it's a ceramics bowl with a lid and you can just add like a certain disc of cellulose and a disc of a hemp. And the hemp is simulating the earth. The cellulose is like a water storage. You add the seeds that you want to grow, you add the water, you put the lid on. Two days later you take the lid off, and then microgreens of any sort Wheatgrass, whatever. Like all kinds of superfoods. They're growing then, but you don't need to water them anymore because added enough water at the setup that the roots can grow into the cellulose and then the product just grows out by itself. You don't need to do anything. You don't have any maintenance. That's basically the ground nominator for all our products. Right? It should be very easy to set up. It should be no maintenance or very little. And the outcome should be fresh produce that you eat when you harvest it. And the Tischgarten was a very simple product, basically to test the market, to understand how far our customers. But furthermore, it helped us to set up the supply chain of a manufacturer. Quality control, how do you call that? Like the facility that delivers all the products for you, distribution center, you know, branding, customer care. We set up all of this with an open access product that, that has the goal to create community with a very simple product, you know, that cannot go wrong. But a side note, we are producing the Tish Garden in Ukraine and we still do. We are staying loyal to them. I think that's the best way to support them. For all the people that do not agree, I'm sorry that you lost a few listeners. And in the meantime, while we scaled the Tisch Garden, we developed the wrong garden at the same time. It was a bit of a stain on my team, but at the end of it, we had the chance to be very close to the market, very close to the customers, which I believe is super important because we have two iterations in the Tischgarten already after three years. And now with the Raumgarten, we learned to really have like we are in touch with our customers. We learned how to handle criticism. We learned, which is for a small team, a challenge, right? Because people love your product or they hate your product, right? We are living in the times where there's no middle ground. And that was really good for us. I think we learned very quickly to implement. We had a customer base in which we can just order, like start a pre sale. You know, we have customers that were very loyal. We can just send them the first version of the Raungarten, which was really not good. They were just using it.

So talk a little bit about the form factor because when it comes to in home appliances, there's obviously the very basics. And the people who have been doing this for many years, the tower garden, which is the standard, you know, anyone who's done any sort of hydroponics or indoor farming and are sort of early pioneers. Probably started with a tower garden. It's a, you know, PVC tower, not very attractive to the eye, but it does a job. Right. And so there's been very variations of that that I've seen throughout the years. And then there's actually the in more looking at as an appliance. So it source has the dimensions of like maybe a dishwasher and under the counter appliance as well. And then you've got some that are actually like full scale. Looks like a piece of furniture, you know, which is where it looks like Romgarden is headed. So as you started to think about the fact that these app you were targeting residential with the Romgarden and well, maybe back up what was the goal? Because it looks like it could be residential. But like you said yourself, you're working with hotels and it sounds like based on your background that form factor was really important visual appeal.

You done some good research. Yeah, that's definitely my passion because I feel like similar to how Tesla approached the market with the Roadster S, we wanted to develop a product which is understood as a design piece but also at the same time like really showing what we can do. You know, like this is a fully automized product which is so energy efficient. You can harvest between six to seven kilos out of the sideboard shaped furniture piece. Right. It's 100cm times 85 height and only 45cm deep. So it's really like a sideboard. You can place it anywhere because it has an integrated water tank. Right. Like we wanted to make a product that can be placed anywhere in a basement, but also in the living room. Like it stands in my house, in my living room. So it's perfect for early adopters, you know, that want to show a little bit with their friends. Hey guys, you know, let's have a cocktail. But we can harvest something from the epic. Your own Basil Smash. Here you go. You know, like this show, I think when you want to create a brand that stands at the end, this is the goal of our greenery as one of the change makers, to bring food home and make people healthier and happier through food and through these experiences, you have to start with high ambitions. If you develop the first product, which is super basic and you want to build nicer and nicer products, you can start a new brand, right? I mean, look at Lexus, right? The origins of Lexus. Lexus needed to be created in order to have a product that people would accept as a luxury car. So I find that Very fascinating. I find that and I love to inspire people and once they are inspired, they would love to explore what else you have to offer within your range of products. So for me, it was important to have a product that is a standalone version that can be eventually displayed ideally in like some fancy magazines. Because we are very early in this journey. Right. Like, not our greenery per se, but we as humans are very early in the journey of understanding that the food that we can buy right now is of bad quality. And therefore the early adopters, the 5% in each country of the GDP high enough, you know, like there are very few people, basically, there's still a lot for our greenery as a customer base, but they represent a small share of the market and we still have to go over the top and then we have to make sure that this becomes a massive platform.

From the looks of your CV on LinkedIn, it's almost like all roads led here. Because you have a background in minimal design, you know, furniture design or. And also jewelry design I saw as well.

Yeah, exactly, yeah. This is, for example, a jewelry piece of Sea Shepherd. Right. I mean, for me it was important, like, you can buy this to support Sea Shepherd. They approached me and they said, hey, we would like to have something that communicates what we do.

Sure.

But we want it to be sustainable. And sustainable is not only recycled plastic, it's like a beacon leather, but it's stainless steel. Right. So it lasts forever. Theoretically. I mean, not theoretically, but it could last for a very long time. And yes, I love to include the concept of like the brand into something that people could really like and enjoy. So, yeah, that was for me, very important with our greeneries products, you know, and I'm a bit of a hardware guy, you know, I love things that I can touch and that's make me feel.

Well, it's important this idea of something that can make you feel something. Where does that desire come from in you?

Good question. I mean, when I was a kid, I played with Lego and I always played myself as Daniel the inventor. And I love to invent stuff because I mean, basically I met at. I did a meta perspective for sure, the best way how to play with Lego, which is just inventing stuff, but I personalized it a bit more. And I always love to create new things that really I found has a combination of usefulness and design. You know, these two things always fascinated me. And with our greenery, that basically is now hopefully the pinnacle of that journey, you know, where like a furniture piece can inspire people to live Healthier, better for kids to learn again about food, you know, like opening it and understanding what Sage is and understanding all the other herbs. I mean, you are now, really, how to say, you're very connected, right. You're growing your own food, you're doing a lot of things. But in Germany, sometimes there are kids in kindergarten and if they're not from a middle or high middle class family, they maybe know with 8 years old, I mean, then they're not in kindergarten anymore, but they don't know many salads, herbs, fruit, vegetables. And I find that crazy.

Yeah, that's a shame. Yeah. I mean, this, that's why you see a lot of programs here in the States with urban farming and just educating, you know, inner city kids and taking them to farms. And sometimes it's the first time they've tasted like something grown from the ground and not bought on a shelf. And it's really like opens their eyes. And I think the more opportunities to do that, I think is going to be helpful for new generation to understand that there's other options. And I would, I think in the past you would have to take someone out of the city to have that experience. And now with, you know, products like Rum Garden, you can, they can have that experience in home or in a school or, you know, in a hotel and start to see, to experience that firsthand what that difference really is.

We have a few schools as customers. We didn't approach them because that's not with our icp, but they just wrote us the same as private households. They're not our ICP that we target, but we're getting constantly approached. And for us, this is a bit of a, how to say, it's a bit of a distraction, of course, Right. But I feel like I don't do our greenery for the money. And I think this might have been said a couple of times on many podcasts before, but I was very lucky in my life. I managed to pick the right project at the right time. You know, I like the restaurants that we had. They were the first ones in Berlin that brought craft beer to Germany. You know, like, it was a super subculture. But we made it really like my two partners and I, we really made it like available in a restaurant with a proper seating, 190 chairs and so on. Like, I feel like I understand a little bit of what, what might be coming. Many people told me, like, when I built the surfboard factory already, I'm absolutely insane because nobody would ever buy a surfboard from a factory because everybody wants this Romantic idea of the shaper at the beach. With this, the same, right. People tell me like, are you crazy? Infarm went bankrupt. Now Aerofarms is like went down. Why would you do this? You know, there's so many easier ways to make money. But I feel, and coming back to your question, we have to be approachable by everyone because although it's harder, we cannot say no to people that want to change in that direction. Right. And of course they buy at the end the product, but at the moment, D2C for us is a lot of management and a lot of costs. But we do that because I feel like this is where the community is developed, right? Like Mercedes Benz or like any other big company in their canteen. They don't experiment. They want regularity, they want guarantee Harvard's quantities. And this is what we can provide. But my heart goes a little bit more into the person that tried the fifth different chili and writes the community. Hey, guys, this is working.

You know, Is that something that you're looking into, building a community? Because I feel like that's. Especially with new products like this, you get these early adopters and they become your champions because like you said, they're testing new things out, they get excited and they want to share that news. And if you start to have people who are the early adopters and testing stuff out, you know, they almost be. They're like an extension of your R and D department.

Exactly. This is the idea behind our greenery, that it's an open access system in which everybody can share their own experiments. We have the plaques or the pads that are like with seeds or without. And then without the seeds, you just install them in your product and you basically use your own seeds from like one of the tomatoes that you picked. Right. I mean, you cannot do this with the supermarket tomato, but you can do it with the stuff that you grow yourself with fruit. With all this kind of stuff, we can reactivate edible things that are not available anymore. You know, like, I always like this example of seed vault, you know, this thing in Norway.

Yeah.

Where they stored all the seeds from all over the world. We have 40,000 edible plants in the world, you know, and we are making every day with the community a step closer to these 40,000. And there you can go really wild. Right. We are building everyday solutions by working with stainless steel and creating solutions at work. But it is possible if we take the examples of nature, for example, ayahuasca, which is like a piece of the tree and the leaf, you know, combined. And then you have Like a crazy psychedelic trip. How many iterations it must have taken people to find out that's a combination. If we make 5,000 or like 1,000 different kinds of plans available in our products, one day somebody will combine something that might help reduce the growth of T cells, you know, of cancer cells. Or people say, oh, that's ridiculous. I don't know. You know, I don't know. But let's just at least create the option compared to what we are doing right now, which is basically growing food and then eating it when it's almost too late.

This can go down a separate rabbit hole into the intelligence of plants and like plant journeys. And, you know, I have a special place in my heart having done some plant medicine journeys before. And the way I've heard it described with ayahuasca, when you ask the shamans is that when they say, how did you know to put these two together? They say the plants told us.

So I mean, that's what we are now discovering with, for example, jaguars, right? They eat before they go hunting. They eat magic mushrooms, and they change the whole observation of the environment. You know, somehow they receive more information than before. And I would not recommend myself doing like extreme sports magic mushrooms, but I mean, the jaguar does.

Yeah. So we have three levels shaped in a surf and a sideboard shaped furniture piece. The top is for microgreens of all sorts. We have 12 fields on which you can grow all different variations if you want. It's a drawer that you can basically pull towards you. And the lower level is two levels within one chamber that you can open like an oven door. And then you have inside sliders that you pull towards you like in a dishwasher. For me, it was very important that this novice kind of technology, you know, that we are bringing home has elements that we are knowing. You know, a drawer we know from a cabinet, the door we know from an oven, and the drawers we know from a dishwasher below. Here in the middle is a water tank that stores enough water for you to refill it maybe every two weeks. Depends. If you grow a lot of microgreens and a lot of very thick leafy greens, then you might need to fill it up every 10 days. Here there's a unit which is like a patented system for automated dosing for each level. It helps the user to just have an autopilot. You know, they don't need to dose anything. You know, it just always per circulation doses the water. And that's basically the ground function to it. We have individual little hubs that you can take out. And there you put the plug in, and there you put the seeds in, or the seeds already inside of the plug. And then the customer receives this product when they buy it, you know, and then they can sign up for a subscription, and then they're getting, like, all the stuff to grow food on a regular basis. They have the option to variate. They can also pause it if they go on vacation.

Did you choose this specific size unit because of the interest in going after, like, the bigger locations, like hotels, you know, maybe like schools or because they would have the need for, like, this quantity of produce almost.

I would say then I would have been smarter. But for me, the most important thing was to not produce a dishwasher or a washing machine for your living room. Yeah, I mean, that's where I come from. Right. And that puts my team under a lot of pain, because when I started this company, I think I have a bit of a persuasion and a bit of an ability to make people believe in my mission. So I looked into the other companies, you know, like Infarm, and then there's some others, and I visited some events where I met some of them, and I could understand which of these are really talented people. So I approached them and I said, hey, why don't you work with me? You know, we are creating this company. We have a bit of a different approach. You know, maybe this is interesting. So I gathered all these very, very talented people in my company now, which makes fundraising easier, which makes product development, obviously easier, but they are suffering because they work with a guy that is not at all a gardener. That is just saying, like, no, these are the measurements of the product. And they're going, like, but why? You know, why don't we build a high product? And I say, if we build a high product, it's unattractive for somebody to put it in the living room. You know, the first people that buy this product will not be gardeners, because, I mean, that's not true. We have some gardeners. That buy the product as well. But it needs to be stylish, it needs to be cool, it needs to be slick. And this is the difference between Apple and all the other companies before. And now look at. Look where Apple is standing, right? Like, because they understood what people really want and people want healthy food, but they also want something that they can be proud of and the produce is the result of it. Yes, but I think the tools, you know, like, look at the very special barbecue, you know, like, if you go to your friend's place, you know, and they have a really cool one, you know, they're proud of it. And I think that's a good feeling because that's inspiration. And like, we don't have on our website, like, we don't talk about global warming, we don't talk about the bad things that are going on in the world. I think we all know plenty of it. And it's decelerating our ability to change. I feel, you know, that can be misunderstood. I think having information and talking about the issues in the world is super important. But my brand should inspire you to live healthier, to live happier. Right? And there's an urgency inside of our greenery, but there's not the warning signs on every corner, you know. So for me, that was really crucial. And therefore we have quicker harvest cycles, you know, because otherwise the plants are growing against lights and so on. But that doesn't mean that eventually we will have a modularity where you can take the middle level out. We're experimenting already with that. But don't develop features of your product before the market really said, I want this. So far, people say, can I have a smaller Raumgarten? That would not make sense because let's say I would produce half of the product. It costs almost the same on CO2, it costs almost the same on material. It's just everything is a little bit smaller. But that doesn't really like. You would have a drastically reduced quantity of harvest. This one produces 6 kilos. It uses 40 kilowatts per month. That's like €12, I think, US dollars, almost the same at the moment. That's very, very efficient for what the unit does. Plus you grow it in your living room or in your kitchen or in your company.

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

Timing was for, like, when inform went down. I was wondering if we were maybe a bit too early still. But every single customer that has the product is so in love with it. And that just means that we need to Find a better way to tell our story. And since three months, I was lucky to take some form an advisory board. And I really have very, very good business angels and they're helping us now to focus even better on B2B, you know, also giving us some intros into big companies going a little bit higher on the decision letter and then making the right decisions. Yeah, but I mean, our greenery started during the lockdown, which on one hand was smart for the idea, but we still needed one and a half years to develop the product. And during this time, supply chain, you know, like by getting different parts from all over the world was difficult then, you know, like, we have shortages on so many parts. You know, like still global supply chains under a lot of pressure. Then the whole vertical farming crisis, then the recession. Investors are losing money because many of the companies go bust. Like, we have really had so many challenges and I really feel like now is now. Yeah, we are still becoming every month more successful. So. Yeah. The toughest question that I asked to ask myself was timing, but that was maybe last year. What else? Tough questions? No, I think at the moment it's going for a bit more. Like two more. Two or three more tickets from business angels would be amazing. Makes everything a little bit more breathable because we're really tight. I find it's the company for the first year by myself.

Well, that just shows how much you believe in what you've created here. And so, you know, nothing speaks to that more than to invest in yourself and invest in your team. Then I'm sure to outside investors and new investors, they see that and they see that's important because it shows how much you believe in your product.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. Plus that we, as I just mentioned, have been like this industry and the economy as a whole has been going through so many challenges, you know, with wars breaking out and just like so much pressure on the consumer as well. Right. Where should he or she put his or her money? Right. What's important right now? Like, so many people that started to finance houses and so on and so forth are under a lot of pressure now because of interest rates went up. I think the breathing space is just at the moment more rare. But I feel like this cleans the market. That helps real innovation to come through. And yeah, to me, another, as you said, you know, like a proof of how hard and dedicated we are.

So I've been leaving some time at the end of these conversations, Daniel, for any messages or any thoughts you have for the indoor farming community. There's a Lot of your peers, colleagues in the space, other CEOs and founders that listen to the show as well. So in the interest of forming this, like, open dialogue. And obviously there's so many different facets to indoor farming now, as we discussed earlier, and you're relatively new to the space, but I'm curious, in the time that you've spent here, I don't know how much you've spent at conferences or events where you get to engage with some of your colleagues in the indoor farming space, but any thoughts come to mind or any messages that you have for this audience?

Yeah, for sure. I, like, I took half a year ago an ambassador role in gica. It stands for Global Impact Capital alliance, and I'm there responsible for nutrition and food tech. Prior to this, I invited every single person that works in this industry to our showroom or to our office. I really believe that we can only solve this together. So anyone which is in Germany, Europe, but also globally believes in creating a network where the CTOs figure stuff out together. The CEOs are maybe even talking about how to approach the market. You know, like, I really believe that together we are standing a way better chance. Like, this market is so young. Like, vertical farming per se has, of course, a little bit more traction and has proven a lot more, and our greenery is building on top of that a lot. But I really think that, like, even the D2C brands, even the brands that are doing similar products that we do, you know, like, let's look into our timeline of the next products that we want to do. Let's not develop at the same time the same product. You know, like, the only beneficiary from that will be, like, hate ads, you know, because they try to outperform each other. Let's find complementary ways of growing and let's exchange information. And I'm all for that, really. I mean, I did talk earlier about, like, looking and finding talents for my company, but people would not leave if they don't think the mission should be a different one. I really believe that very, very important.

Thoughts, and I think that'll resonate a lot with this audience. So I appreciate your team reaching out. I really enjoyed this conversation and thank you for sharing this inspiring journey. If you think about, you know, how you got started and all the different decisions you've made in your past business life, I don't know that you would have ever predicted you would have ended up here, but it seems like you're poised, you know, given where we are in the, in this world for this is now the next phase of your journey, and I think all the preparation has led you to create something that's very unique and needed as well, which I think is really important. So I'm really excited to see where this goes, and hopefully we continue to stay in touch, and I'm sure if I do return to Berlin, I'll be sure to connect with you.

Now you took my finishing sentence away. Awesome. I love it. First of all, thank you so much for the kind words, and I really appreciated this conversation a lot as well. And sure, man. When you come to Berlin, we're gonna dance, we're gonna have some fun. I mean, as I said, you know, I love the openness of this community as well. You know, maybe there will even be some parallels that we can discover. Electronical dance, music. Music and gardening. I think it's all about, like, shared experience.

I just. I just set up. I still have my turntables, so I set them up on the other side of this room. I've got my mixture and set up. But I was thinking I could DJ on top of the wrong garden.

Oh, yes, you can, if you do. So, like, we obviously don't ship yet to the US but when you definitely.

Have the wrong garden as the stay on there, that would be fun. Well, thanks again. Thanks again. I appreciate your time.

Awesome. Yeah, thanks. You too.