Shownotes
Episode Summary
Founder and CEO of Vertical Future, Jamie Burrows is a passionate leader with extensive knowledge of the indoor AgTech space. Vertical Future is the world’s leading vertical farming technology and research company, providing revolutionary products and services that enable people and nature to thrive. Today, Harry and Jamie talk about Jamie’s passion for health, life sciences, and addressing critical issues like climate change, food inequalities and population health. Jamie expounds on his leadership style, the focus and mission of Vertical Future, and key milestones he’s reached along the journey.
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Key Takeaways
07:14 – Harry welcomes Founder and CEO of Vertical Future, Jamie Burrows, to discuss culture shock, his eclectic background, and his experience serving in the Air Force
14:17 – Jamie’s passion for health and life sciences and how he got involved in vertical farming
16:57 – Leadership styles and building an effective team as a first time CEO
24:45 – Key milestones of Jamie’s vertical farming journey
30:57 – The importance of developing in-house tech stack
37:31 – Jamie’s specific focus on the UK
47:19 – A tough question Jamie has had to ask himself recently and
50:53 – What keeps Jamie motivated and excited about the future
53:31 – Harry thanks Jamie for joining the show and let’s listeners know where they can follow Jamie and Vertical Future
Tweetable Quotes
“Looking back seven to ten years, I’d had a tremendous amount of exposure to what a good leader is and what a bad leader is at the Air Force Academy. I saw many examples and was mentored personally by Colonels.” (17:31) (Jamie)
“The unit economics of vertical farming demand that it’s all about space and scale. And, if you want to compete then you need big farms and you need a lot of capital.” (20:37) (Jamie)
“I think that on our side of the equation, you’ve got the growers over here and the tech providers over here. You have a lot of companies that are building street components. So it might just be lights and great lighting companies. But then you’ve got what I would call systems integrators, where they’ll piecemeal tech from different people, position it as a system of their own, and sell it.” (31:12) (Jamie)
“I think people underappreciate that, even in the UK, we still need to spend a helluva lot of money on building out vertical farming.” (40:06) (Jamie)
“From a personal standpoint, I do really believe in the fact that what we are doing is addressing very important topics and will continue to.” (51:16) (Jamie)
Resources Mentioned
Vertical Future – https://verticalfuture.com/
Jamie’s Linkedin – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-burrows-12890817/?originalSubdomain=uk
Vertical Future Email – [email protected]
Sponsor Info
Cultivatd’s Website – https://cultivatd.com/
Cultivatd’s Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/cultivatdco/
Cultivatd’s Twitter – https://twitter.com/cultivatd
Cultivatd’s Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/cultivatd/
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Mentioned in this episode:
2025 Precision Ag Report by iGrowNews
2025 Precision Ag Report by iGrowNews
Transcripts
$680 million poured into precision ag last year.
Speaker:Autonomous weeding robots dominated, and John Deere made 2 acquisitions in 3
Speaker:months. A food company, not an equipment maker, bought a
Speaker:robotics startup to protect its own supply chain. The deals are
Speaker:accelerating, the money is moving, and the winners are already separating from the
Speaker:pack. If you're investing, building, or buying in this space,
Speaker:you need the full picture before your competitors get it. The 2025
Speaker:Precision Agriculture Intelligence Report From iGrow News is now
Speaker:available. Get your copy today at
Speaker:igrownews.com/precision. If you are starting a vertical
Speaker:farm and don't know where to begin or which technology would suit your needs,
Speaker:then reach out to the experts at Cultivated. As indoor farm brokers, they
Speaker:help connect you to the right technology and ensure your project is successful.
Speaker:Best of all, their service is free because they work on behalf of their
Speaker:partners. Visit cultivated.com to learn more. And
Speaker:that's spelled C-U-L-T-I-V-A-T-D.com,
Speaker:or click the link in the show notes. Because it's a classic error
Speaker:for a lot of scale-up companies is to expand too quickly and
Speaker:overextend yourself. You get one vertical farm that goes wrong, or I don't know,
Speaker:there's an E. coli outbreak because you don't have the right policies in place and
Speaker:the operator who's built the farm hasn't followed them, that'll come back to your brand.
Speaker:So that's a real, I think a really good
Speaker:case to be made for not expanding too quickly.
Speaker:Welcome to the Vertical Farming Podcast, weekly conversations with
Speaker:fascinating CEOs, founders, and agtech visionaries.
Speaker:Join us every week as we dive deep into the world of vertical
Speaker:farming with your host, Harry Duran.
Speaker:Vertical Farming Podcast, welcome back. Season 5, still in
Speaker:full effect. If this is your first time listening, thank you so much for taking
Speaker:a chance on this podcast. You were probably searching for something about indoor
Speaker:ag, controlled environment agriculture, or vertical farming,
Speaker:and you were looking for a podcast and you ended up here. And so I
Speaker:want to roll out the welcome mat and tell you that you are definitely in
Speaker:the right place. This is the show where we interview fascinating CEOs and founders
Speaker:of the leading vertical farming companies from around the world. I'm your host, Harry Duran.
Speaker:In case you missed last week's episode, we had a great conversation, really
Speaker:fascinating, deep diving, sharing personal stories, all
Speaker:the kind of stuff that I love to talk about on this show with founder
Speaker:and CEO of Kitos, Meena Shankaran. She joined the show to talk
Speaker:about her passion for leveraging disruptive technologies to make an impact as a social
Speaker:entrepreneur. If you're not familiar with Kitos, it's a vertically integrated water
Speaker:intelligence platform on a mission to transform how water operators measure, manage, and
Speaker:forecast water quality. Great episode talking about her
Speaker:immigration story, Women Inner Strength, the group that she started, and her
Speaker:passion for solving existential problems and doing good at the same
Speaker:time. Please check it out if you haven't. Already last episode, episode
Speaker:61. This week, another great conversation with the founder and CEO
Speaker:of Vertical Future, Jamie Burrows. He's a passionate leader with an extensive
Speaker:knowledge of the indoor agtech space. If you're not familiar with Vertical
Speaker:Future, it's the world's leading vertical farming technology and research company, which
Speaker:provides revolutionary products and services that enable people
Speaker:and nature to thrive. And in this episode, Jamie and I talk about his
Speaker:passion for health, life sciences, and addressing critical issues like climate change,
Speaker:food inequalities, and population health. We dig in on Jamie's
Speaker:leadership style, the focus and mission of Vertical Future, and key milestones he's
Speaker:reached along the journey. As a reminder, if you're enjoying this episode or past
Speaker:episodes, I'm looking out for those ratings and reviews.
Speaker:You can leave one at ratethispodcast.com/vfp. I'd love to
Speaker:read yours out next. All right, let's get into this conversation with Jamie.
Speaker:So, Jamie Burrows, founder and CEO of Vertical Future, thank you for joining me on
Speaker:the Vertical Farming Podcast. No problem. Thanks very much, Hari, and, um,
Speaker:pleasure to be here. So where in the world are you dialing in from?
Speaker:I am dialing in from sunny Southeast London. Okay.
Speaker:Which is there, but, uh, yeah, I live down in Southeast London with my family.
Speaker:I just said dialing in from, and I probably dated myself with that reference
Speaker:because I think it's been a while since I've had a
Speaker:phone or a rotary phone. I don't know if you remember how far back, or
Speaker:I think my parents held on to their copper line for as long as they
Speaker:could. I don't know when the transition happened in the UK. I
Speaker:think ours was, I think our last copper line was, I don't
Speaker:know, a long time ago. It was definitely my parents, not us. Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah. Yeah, I think— My 3 kids
Speaker:are not seeing those. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So I
Speaker:was looking at a bit of your background and I thought it was interesting that
Speaker:you spent some time in the Air Force. Is that correct? Yeah, exactly.
Speaker:I'm half American. I grew up in America. So until I was
Speaker:kind of 10, 11, and then I went back when I was 16 and did
Speaker:some time enlisted and then actually at the Air Force Academy.
Speaker:So yeah, always had a passion for flying and that kind of stuff.
Speaker:And then decided I didn't want to do a whole career in it, but did
Speaker:a good 5 years. It was a really, really good experience. What was life
Speaker:like growing up? Was it in Florida where you grew up? No, I, so my
Speaker:mother was from Seattle and my dad was from Manchester. Okay.
Speaker:So we, I was born in Wales, then moved to Riyadh in Saudi
Speaker:Arabia and then very randomly and then back to Seattle and
Speaker:then back to the UK, then back to all over the US. Then I've been
Speaker:all over. Yeah. Which one of those was more of a culture shock? I mean,
Speaker:growing up in New York, I guess you had some of the references, but was
Speaker:it going and coming back or going to the UK in the first place? To
Speaker:be fair, I don't really remember because, I mean, yeah, they're all quite different. I
Speaker:definitely don't remember Riyadh when I was a kid because I was
Speaker:like, I don't know, very young. But culture
Speaker:shock, probably my wife and I, when we had our first child, we moved to
Speaker:Brussels in my mid-20s for a consulting role. Oh, okay. And
Speaker:that was quite interesting because we lived right around the corner from the Commission and
Speaker:that was quite a culture shock in a good way. I really liked it there,
Speaker:but it was quite different from other places we've lived. I am,
Speaker:yeah. It was all very, very different experiences and lots of nice
Speaker:people in everywhere we've lived. Where did the fascination for
Speaker:flying and airplanes come from? So my grandfather was a
Speaker:Spitfire pilot who— actually, as you— Oh, wow. A US Air Force
Speaker:pilot, but he flew over. So he came over to, obviously, you know, during World
Speaker:War II and flew with the Brits. I think he flew in North Africa as
Speaker:well. And I just really got a passion for flying when I was growing
Speaker:up. And, uh, when I was 16, I, the day before I
Speaker:was supposed to start my A-levels, I said to my parents, I'm going to join
Speaker:the military in the US. And you can imagine how that went down. And,
Speaker:um, found myself on a, uh, on a yellow bus, uh, being
Speaker:shouted at by a drill sergeant in, uh, San Antonio, Texas, uh, 2
Speaker:days later. So that was quite an introduction to, uh, adulthood.
Speaker:So, uh, yeah, a bit of a shock for, if
Speaker:I think for anyone who's joined. And, and thank you for your service, by the
Speaker:way, as well. But to show up at boot camp where the rules have been,
Speaker:are quite different than they probably are at home is, I'm sure, always a bit
Speaker:of a shock. I was certainly the only person with a British accent,
Speaker:so you can imagine how that went down with the drill instructor. So. Oh,
Speaker:that's true. That's funny. So how accurate, for those
Speaker:interested, are the Top Gun movies to what really happens in the Air Force?
Speaker:Top Gun's Navy. Oh, that's right. Top Gun's Navy. But I'm thinking about the flying
Speaker:scenes. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, so I've had some time in F-15s. So
Speaker:I've had about 16 hours in F-15s, um, mostly incentive
Speaker:rides. And, you know, I, I did go too— I've got about, um, got a
Speaker:lot of hundreds of hours of flying experience, but in smaller aircraft.
Speaker:But I've been in the Air Force equivalent, which is the F-15, which has the
Speaker:vertical stabs, stabilizers, okay, at the back. And,
Speaker:uh, yeah, it's incredible. But I can't really talk to
Speaker:operational service, you know. I've never been deployed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've
Speaker:never you know, okay, gone to war or anything. So I— but, um,
Speaker:but certainly the camaraderie and the way that people speak and things
Speaker:like that in the military was, was certainly accurate. A lot of hazing,
Speaker:and, uh, in a good way. But, um, but yeah, I think the Navy and
Speaker:the Air Force are quite different, so I don't know. Yeah. Is there something I've
Speaker:heard from multiple pilots? There's this sense of calm you get when
Speaker:you're in the air, and just that feeling of just like, you know,
Speaker:being in control of an aircraft, but also you know, that time you get
Speaker:to spend is not something that, that's something that very few people ever get to
Speaker:experience. And I'm wondering what that actual experience is like for you. It depends how
Speaker:many Gs you're pulling. So yeah, you can have some, uh, some
Speaker:very calm moments, uh, in the air. But, um, ultimately,
Speaker:yeah, if you're, if you're doing a, um, I've never done really kind of
Speaker:crazy stuff and most of mine was training, so I was in the back. But,
Speaker:um, I've pulled, I don't know, 6, 6.5 Gs and, uh, That's
Speaker:certainly not calm. But yeah, when you're up there, even in a smaller aircraft, you
Speaker:know, a Cessna 172 or something, which I learned to fly in,
Speaker:or, you know, you do have a certain degree of calmness and
Speaker:separation from everything else that's going on below you. Yeah.
Speaker:It's hard to think about any other thing about like whether if you took the
Speaker:trash out that day when you're, I imagine when you're at 6.5
Speaker:Gs, that singular focus I think is something that's pretty interesting as well.
Speaker:Yes, from what I can recall. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker:So just transitioning there, so when you left the Air Force and you started to
Speaker:focus on your career, did you have an idea what type of work you wanted
Speaker:to get into? And I noticed you've had a couple of stints in consulting as
Speaker:well. Yeah, so I came out and obviously, you know, I needed to
Speaker:figure out what I wanted to do next. So I completed my degrees. So
Speaker:I did a bachelor's in economics and master's in energy trade
Speaker:and finance, and then took my first role on in economic
Speaker:regeneration. Considered going into banking and got some
Speaker:offers and decided not to go down that track, which I think was a good
Speaker:choice in the long run, but who knows, right? And
Speaker:then in parallel with that kind of 4-year economic
Speaker:regeneration role, I did a PhD, which I haven't quite finished yet
Speaker:because other things have taken over my life. Okay. But I'm only a couple of
Speaker:papers away. And then, yeah, and then I kind of hop from
Speaker:consulting company to consulting company. They were poaching me along the way.
Speaker:And so that's when I went to Brussels, and then I came back to
Speaker:EY in London, and then I got another job. And that next job that I
Speaker:got, I didn't really like the environment. So
Speaker:that's where the consulting career stopped. I had a nice
Speaker:secondment in the Department of Health during that time, which was really interesting because
Speaker:despite forgetting about all the Air Force stuff, my discipline's always been in
Speaker:economics. with a focus on health and life sciences. That's
Speaker:kind of really been my passion. So, so that was certainly a really interesting and
Speaker:varied experience for me. Where do you think, or can you point back to the
Speaker:origins of your interests in health and life sciences, like where that came
Speaker:from? Sure. Yeah. Well, in economics, I've just been fascinated
Speaker:and actually I had a very good professor at university. So obviously I had to
Speaker:choose business economics before, well, I chose business economics before
Speaker:seeing any of my professors. So nobody inspired me into that. I just chose that.
Speaker:But in terms of health, my mother was an NHS
Speaker:chief exec. So, you know, health and the National Health
Speaker:Service and anything health-related discussions
Speaker:around the dinner table would occur on a very regular basis. So that's probably
Speaker:where it came from. So yeah, I've taken probably inspiration from people in my family
Speaker:for things that I've done in my life in those kind of last 2, I
Speaker:mean, I'm 36 now. And I've effectively had 3
Speaker:careers, you know, the military, the consulting,
Speaker:and now obviously UltraVertical Futures. So it's been quite interesting.
Speaker:Can you recall when indoor ag, controlled
Speaker:environment agriculture, like when that started to appear on your radar or you started hearing
Speaker:about it? Yeah. So a really good friend of mine mentioned it to me.
Speaker:I'd left that last role in consulting. He sent me a
Speaker:kind of an article on it. company in the US, a shipping
Speaker:container, doing the container farming, which isn't
Speaker:necessarily, I mean, it's just one small part of the, obviously the overall
Speaker:sector. And it's the first I'd heard of it really. I was kind of, I
Speaker:was pretty fascinated. And when I think about economics, I think I,
Speaker:the first thing that came to my mind was
Speaker:efficiency, allocative and technical efficiency and how you use
Speaker:space. And really that's what a container farm's about in
Speaker:the most basic sense, you know, making the most possible use of
Speaker:space and putting it in a location where it would, you know, you otherwise wouldn't
Speaker:grow food. And yeah, I was inspired by that. And then
Speaker:just, you know, I'd had some life experience from a personal
Speaker:standpoint. Both my parents had passed away in the kind of 2 years
Speaker:prior to that. And, you know, I had a little bit of inheritance, 2 kids
Speaker:at the time under 4 years old, and Just
Speaker:decided that if I'm going to do something, then I should
Speaker:just go for it really. And I think that idea was one that I
Speaker:felt had the most legs. There were some other ideas I
Speaker:formulated. One was in kind of focused on health
Speaker:and it was more focused on the digital space. But, and then actually when
Speaker:Vertical Future was set up, it actually had kind of different themes
Speaker:around it, different verticals really. And then it just so happened that we
Speaker:really ran with the vertical farming aspect for a
Speaker:multitude of reasons. And I'm sure many of them
Speaker:in this discussion. And so how did you think about
Speaker:what approach you wanted to take? What specific track within
Speaker:vertical farming was most interesting to you to pursue?
Speaker:And then as a, if I'm correct, first-time CEO,
Speaker:what are some of the things you start to think about as you try to
Speaker:decide what, how do you actually go about building a team?
Speaker:Well, I'd run teams in EY and
Speaker:also in the company I was at after was IMS Health, which
Speaker:became, which had merged to become UEIA, I think.
Speaker:So, you know, I had some experience and I think looking back
Speaker:kind of 7 to 10 years, I'd had a tremendous amount of
Speaker:exposure to what a good leader is, what a bad leader is
Speaker:at the Air Force Academy, of course. And saw many examples, was
Speaker:mentored. personally by colonels, a
Speaker:general on several occasions, actually completed a
Speaker:leadership enrichment and development program. So I had
Speaker:some knowledge and understanding of how you should build
Speaker:and run a team. And then also some looking at
Speaker:myself, what are my personality traits and how could they actually
Speaker:be applied to building a team? And what kind of leader am I?
Speaker:Am I more of a Assertive leader that wants to,
Speaker:you know, have a tyrannical structure, which usually doesn't end up
Speaker:very well. And, um, yeah, I'm not a big guy anyway, so
Speaker:that wouldn't work. So yeah, I think I had a good idea about how to
Speaker:go about it and some good experiences and people to call on
Speaker:from my past. And also I've been very fortunate in my life to have,
Speaker:you know, after my parents had passed away, you know, have some mentors who could
Speaker:give me some experience and, you know, fill, you know, not fill the whole gap,
Speaker:but, you know, fill parts of that gap. I was going to ask that. Are
Speaker:there some mentors or managers that come to mind that
Speaker:had an impact on you and your development, your professional development?
Speaker:Yeah. So, I mean, looking over the 6 years of Vertical
Speaker:Future BF, you know, we've— our first chairman, Hamish Davidson, who
Speaker:stepped down last year after, you know, 5 years of service, was a
Speaker:really good mentor to me. And then more recently, Lord Chris, who
Speaker:ran the National Health Service, who's our Our current chairman has been
Speaker:tremendously supportive. But interestingly, I think, you know, when it
Speaker:comes to mentoring, you don't necessarily need to have one mentor
Speaker:or one coach. You can really, you can form, you can learn
Speaker:things from people from different lived experiences from those
Speaker:people and kind of put everything together and then figure out,
Speaker:you know, this is the kind of person, these are the things I need to
Speaker:change in my company and about myself to be more
Speaker:successful or make us more efficient. But I mean, going— I didn't
Speaker:fully answer your question, but in terms of choosing the kind of vertical farming model
Speaker:that we elected to go for, at the beginning it was myself,
Speaker:my wife, obviously we had our 2 kids at home. We had no family in
Speaker:London. We had about 100 grand to put in to build a small
Speaker:farm. We took an abandoned warehouse and we
Speaker:had a full debenture on our assets. So if it went bust, we
Speaker:lose everything. So it was tremendously, I mean,
Speaker:I've told the story many times, you've probably read it. So that was the, you
Speaker:know, the vertical farming model we chose was somewhat governed by the
Speaker:amount of capital that we had available at the time
Speaker:and the amount of human resource. So I had a bit of money on the
Speaker:side, which I used to support my family, so I didn't pay myself.
Speaker:And then we decided to set up the equivalent of
Speaker:probably 3 or 4 shipping containers in, and shipping
Speaker:containers usually have about 30 square meters of growing space,
Speaker:sometimes a bit more, but within an indoor setting. And the
Speaker:unit economics of vertical farming demand that, I mean, it's all about space and
Speaker:scale. And if you want to compete, then you need big farms,
Speaker:you need a lot of capital. We were kind of forced into the bracket of
Speaker:selling, you know, your premium, premium quality, but also
Speaker:premium price microgreens and things to restaurants. We, the
Speaker:first couple of years of the business, were just going around and working night
Speaker:shifts because the way that chefs work is, you know, they finish their shift
Speaker:and then they literally, they want to put their order in for the next day.
Speaker:And because they're perishables, you know, literally. So I'd work until probably
Speaker:5 in the morning. We had a couple of people to help with deliveries in
Speaker:the morning. We had a person to help me at night. Marie, my
Speaker:wife, would do deliveries in the morning. And then we really just built a customer
Speaker:base from there. And a lot of it was about Didn't spend money on marketing.
Speaker:It's about word of mouth, getting a couple of good chefs on board who
Speaker:supported us. And then obviously, you know, just building from there. And
Speaker:that's how we've built the first part of the business. I mean, our business has
Speaker:really evolved over those, over the past kind of roughly 6
Speaker:years, but learning, kind of being down in the
Speaker:trenches and understanding actually how to not
Speaker:lock capital into a successful business that people
Speaker:value and can actually stand behind the quality of the
Speaker:produce and the service. I mean, the service shouldn't be forgotten here.
Speaker:It was a big achievement for us and got a lot of support.
Speaker:I'm curious, or I'd be remiss if I didn't ask what the conversation was like
Speaker:with your wife as you're getting ready to go down
Speaker:this path and what that conversation at the dinner table must have been like too.
Speaker:And then if she knew what she was going to be signing up for. The
Speaker:conversation when we first started talking about Vertical Future,
Speaker:was, I think probably, you know, Maria has always been very, you know, Maria, my
Speaker:wife, has always been very supportive of me and my ideas. And, you know,
Speaker:we knew it was a big risk, but I think we just went for it.
Speaker:Just said we'd been through so much in the years prior
Speaker:to that from a personal standpoint. So it actually wasn't really too
Speaker:difficult a conversation. Clearly, okay, we had no
Speaker:experience in the sector, so there was a big learning curve, but
Speaker:I think we were confident enough in ourselves and our abilities to be able
Speaker:to make it work. And how much of the experience that you had, because you
Speaker:had all the previous experience at these consulting companies, and I imagine a lot of
Speaker:having worked in a couple of finance companies where we had consultants come in,
Speaker:their ability to really just see the big picture, understand
Speaker:operationally where there's places for improved
Speaker:efficiencies. And so I think a lot of those skill sets that you may have
Speaker:had, did those come into play as you were thinking about how to hit the
Speaker:ground running and what was the most effective and/or efficient way for you
Speaker:to get started? Honestly, I didn't really take a lot from the previous
Speaker:experiences. Oh, really? I think actually
Speaker:my military experience was in the structure, which was
Speaker:obviously years before, I think helped a lot. I think
Speaker:the experiences in consulting and in data,
Speaker:obviously the most recent ones prior to setting up Vertical Future, Have
Speaker:really come into play and are much more useful now because
Speaker:you learn a lot of invaluable skills. I mean, people
Speaker:underrate things like how to deal with a client, how to pitch,
Speaker:how to do a really good PowerPoint, how to do an Excel model, how to
Speaker:do a fully integrated kind of corporate finance model,
Speaker:integrating with yield data and all this kind of thing. All of these things, when
Speaker:we evolved our business into more of a tech business,
Speaker:came in handy because in that kind of mid-stage, which
Speaker:I'm sure we'll go on to talk about, was still very much doing
Speaker:bits of everything and still am to a degree. So
Speaker:I think they did come in handy then. I think any consultant you
Speaker:speak to from any of the Big 4 consulting firms will tell you that
Speaker:PowerPoint or Excel were big takeaways for
Speaker:them if they ever left. Pivot tables.
Speaker:Pivot tables. Exactly. Exactly.
Speaker:So Jamie, talk, give us the sped up version. You launched in
Speaker:2016. So maybe just taking it, if you think of it as snapshots,
Speaker:2017, '18 to present, give us some milestones that
Speaker:happened along the way to get us to bring us to present day. Sure. So
Speaker:2016 to 2019 was what I would say the real growers. We
Speaker:split the vertical farming sector into kind of grower brands. who are now having
Speaker:to raise a lot of capital because the scale is required
Speaker:and demand answer. And then we got that just about
Speaker:into profitability, which was good. I mentioned earlier we were selling
Speaker:premium. We were also selling and competing with
Speaker:traditional farms and glasshouses on pricing in London. So
Speaker:we didn't actually put a big premium on a lot of our products. So again,
Speaker:I think that was a major achievement at that stage. In 2019, we
Speaker:did roughly a £4 million raise, just over. Okay. That's
Speaker:fun here in the UK. At that stage, we realized that there were 2
Speaker:major— it's kind of a crossroads. We realized 2 things. One
Speaker:is, I just mentioned it, if you're a grower, it's very, very,
Speaker:very capital intensive and it will continue to be for the next however
Speaker:long vertical farming exists, which I think it's a permanent fixture
Speaker:in our economy. So that was the first one. And at that point, you know,
Speaker:I didn't really have the investment context to, £4 million,
Speaker:unless you want a very, very basic system, which is very
Speaker:OpEx intensive, is not a lot of money. We'd still, we'd have to
Speaker:fundraise really quickly again after that, probably. So, and then
Speaker:the second realization was that the technology we'd been using, which was from
Speaker:a supplier here in the UK, it was, you know, one of the very
Speaker:popular international lighting LED suppliers who I won't mention.
Speaker:great lights, Dutch beds, very standard vertical farming systems,
Speaker:no automation, no data integration, no
Speaker:end-to-end integration with any of the ancillary
Speaker:components. And I just realized that this is just so
Speaker:inefficient. And so we decided, we said, look, you know,
Speaker:first of all, let's take a step back and let's build a company now
Speaker:leveraging all of that prior growing experience and our knowledge of the
Speaker:market and how to interact with customers. and actually build something which
Speaker:has as much as possible in-house so that we can
Speaker:actually then go to a company like us 3
Speaker:years ago and say, look, here's the system, here's the data,
Speaker:here's the expertise, here's the know-how, here are the standard
Speaker:operating procedures. Let us hold your hand through the first year of you building
Speaker:this. And there was, there's still a huge deficiency in that. I mean, there
Speaker:are companies that are piecemealing bits of tech together. It's almost like
Speaker:having BrickBow and Lego and trying to somehow make them fit. Sure.
Speaker:And so, yes, we went down that route, built 3 teams, 3
Speaker:core teams, software engineering, engineering, and plant R&D. You
Speaker:can look on our website. We have amazing people who took, I won't tell you,
Speaker:they took, you know, pretty big pay cuts to come and work for us. Now
Speaker:being rewarded because of where we are, those 3 teams. And then
Speaker:fast forward 3 years, our kind of Next milestone
Speaker:following on from that decision to develop the technologies was our
Speaker:first major sale, which was a £2.5 million
Speaker:project in the Midlands. It was a group of entrepreneurs who'd
Speaker:been in dentistry. You can check them out. They're named Cyan Farms.
Speaker:They're building a very interesting brand in their own right. They've also got
Speaker:some other verticals in their business around vegan food
Speaker:and so on, and onsite production of— I'm a meat eater, but I
Speaker:eat less meat now, but I've tried their products and they're amazing. So
Speaker:they instilled a lot of trust in us. In 2020, sorry, in early
Speaker:2021, we signed our first contract to build that farm.
Speaker:We're just about to complete that. During that time as well, we
Speaker:also deployed a lot of shipping containers to various
Speaker:customers, one being a company called Crate to Plate in London. Again, I
Speaker:mentioned the unit economics of vertical farming. it's very
Speaker:predicated on scale. However, we do believe
Speaker:that shipping containers can be used for things like learning and
Speaker:education outreach, premium products,
Speaker:ultra-urban growing, and so on. So we believed in their model as well.
Speaker:So we kind of put a mini version of our automated system
Speaker:and stripped out some of the automation and worked with them. And they'd been
Speaker:working previously with one of the biggest shipping container suppliers
Speaker:globally. So that was another, again, another really important milestone. They're
Speaker:about to complete. So both the companies I've just spoken about have just
Speaker:completed or are completing good investment rounds and are
Speaker:kind of really first 2 pivotal customers, but I'd say
Speaker:partners because we've really, they've trusted a lot of us and
Speaker:we've, you know, it hasn't been a smooth ride when you develop an entire tech
Speaker:system, including the SaaS around it, because it's fully
Speaker:automated. I haven't gone into the detail of our system, but it's
Speaker:end-to-end. as many components developed in-house, it's
Speaker:challenging and there are errors and there are mistakes and any tech
Speaker:company that says otherwise are lying. So there was that.
Speaker:And then the next major milestone has been our recent
Speaker:£22.3 or £22.4 million raise,
Speaker:which is our Series A that completed about 3 months ago. We did that
Speaker:without any venture capitalists. We actually turned down some pretty
Speaker:substantive offers from some large VC funds and decided to keep
Speaker:it at this stage, the Series A stage. a cap table structure,
Speaker:which consists of ultra-high net worth and
Speaker:individuals who believe in what we're doing. And whilst that's a
Speaker:bit of a headache when it comes to paperwork and shareholder and stakeholder management,
Speaker:we just felt that it was better for our company at this time. For our
Speaker:Series B, we may do something different. And then
Speaker:4th or 5th milestone, wherever we are, I think has been really
Speaker:building our commercial team because I mentioned those projects we've sold, you know.
Speaker:Okay. We've had millions of pounds of revenue over the last couple of years,
Speaker:but we've done that without a commercial function. In the past 3 to 4 months,
Speaker:we've built our first kind of outward-looking commercial function, which
Speaker:has generated a lot of business for us. So I think that's another really key
Speaker:milestone. Very interesting. Yeah, a lot of points there to sort of
Speaker:pull apart. I want to circle back to your mention of the
Speaker:in-house tech stack that you've built. Can you elaborate on that and
Speaker:why that was an important decision for you? And to the extent that we can
Speaker:cover some of the components of that and how they all integrated and work together.
Speaker:Sure. So I think that there are on our side of the equation, so if
Speaker:you've got the growers over here and you've got the tech providers over here, you
Speaker:have a lot of companies that are building discrete components. So it
Speaker:might just be lights and really great lighting companies. Yeah.
Speaker:But then you've got what I would call systems integrators. So
Speaker:they'll piecemeal tech from different people,
Speaker:position it as a system of their own and sell it on. And there's a
Speaker:really big one I'm not going to mention that are getting a lot of airtime.
Speaker:They're a systems integrator. We know their CapEx and it's very high.
Speaker:And it makes sense for the CapEx to be high because they're having to eat
Speaker:the margins from the people they're buying from, and then they're having
Speaker:to sell it on and make a margin themselves. And then of course, when you
Speaker:are piecemealing different bits of tech together to build a vertical farm, you
Speaker:need a software system that's going to be able to fully integrate all those different
Speaker:bits of tech. And if you're piecemealing it, It's very difficult. You could go and,
Speaker:you know, if I, it's like going down to my kitchen and trying to integrate
Speaker:my, I dunno, Philips washing machine with my,
Speaker:I dunno, fridge from some other brand. That doesn't make much
Speaker:sense. Yeah. LG. LG. Yeah. I forget all these brands.
Speaker:The principal decision to do everything in-house, even though it was a
Speaker:really, still continues to be a very challenging
Speaker:task because you have to go through so many stages of tech development, hardware side
Speaker:and the software side, and it's very expensive, was mainly
Speaker:to have an end-to-end system. So if, you know, these are long-term
Speaker:infrastructure projects, things will break and customers will come
Speaker:back and they'll say, right, I don't know, I need this replaced. So you need
Speaker:very clear maintenance regimes. If you're coming back to one central party who's
Speaker:responsible and legally responsible for that, you know, long-term
Speaker:maintenance regime, It's far easier. Secondly, if you are
Speaker:building everything in-house, your CapEx is going to be lower because
Speaker:you're doing it yourself. You have full control of it. Thirdly, we've,
Speaker:as part of our recent investment round, we've actually invested in a lot of in-house
Speaker:manufacturing. So being able to actually then even take a step
Speaker:further in controlling the supply chain, going straight to the commodities market
Speaker:to get our steel has given us more control and brought
Speaker:down the, obviously, you know, brought down prices. for customers on
Speaker:the CapEx side. So for this sector to really work, we need
Speaker:cheaper systems that are more advanced, and the two of them
Speaker:don't usually go hand in hand. So I think the
Speaker:baseline for the sector has been that a more advanced
Speaker:system, which has R&D-level capabilities, has to
Speaker:be way more expensive, but it shouldn't have to be really. I
Speaker:think an R&D-level system in terms of the level of control and
Speaker:flexibility you have, should be implicit within a vertical farm
Speaker:because a vertical farm is going to be dealing with many different crops
Speaker:and all of these crops like different things. So you need that control and
Speaker:flexibility. You can't just have one type of light, 60% red,
Speaker:40% blue, whatever you do. Yeah. That'll work. That's fine. The
Speaker:question is, are you going to achieve those long-term economies of scale? And are you
Speaker:going to be able to actually build a system that can compete at
Speaker:price parity with cheap foreign imports. We're pretty
Speaker:sure, I mean, people are very private. We're pretty open about what we're doing.
Speaker:People are very private about, in our sector, about what they're doing. But
Speaker:we're pretty sure that there are a lot of lies, maybe lies a bit, but
Speaker:there's a lot of overselling going on. Yeah. So now a company will pick
Speaker:their highest yielding crop and say, this is your
Speaker:average yield for the year, and this is what you should be selling. And we're
Speaker:going to build you a 10,000 square meter farm and You're only going to
Speaker:grow micro radish or micro broccoli, not a hell of a lot of
Speaker:microgreens, and nobody's going to buy that. I mean, some people will buy it. It's
Speaker:a limited market. It will saturate. So we're taking a very different approach despite
Speaker:the fact that today we, we're moving on to, I think the next size
Speaker:farm we're building is, I think roughly kind of 11,000 square meters.
Speaker:Okay. We're, we're still not even close to
Speaker:the scale that we want to be at. in terms of making the unit economics
Speaker:truly work. I mean, they do work at that scale for particular crops,
Speaker:but for some of these other crops being mentioned in the sector, we need
Speaker:to be getting much bigger and we need to be maintaining and bringing that CapEx
Speaker:point down. And I think what you've probably already
Speaker:discovered is having all the different components
Speaker:of that tech stack in-house, you have the different
Speaker:teams able to talk to each other about what's working, what's not,
Speaker:whereas if they were separate or outsourced, And there was a need for
Speaker:the software to work differently with the lighting or the irrigation,
Speaker:it'd be a harder challenge to sort of, to your point, like earlier
Speaker:analogy, like the Lego block these things together. Whereas it becomes, I
Speaker:imagine there's regular meetings where everyone's talking and everyone's saying,
Speaker:hey, the software's not working for this specifically. And I think
Speaker:having that as a cohesive team that can feed off each other and see where
Speaker:the progress is being made and where there's gaps and rooms for improvement, I think
Speaker:is probably proving very valuable for you. Indeed. Although I would
Speaker:say that having a business which has a software and a hardware
Speaker:arm and an infrastructure arm, an operating arm, is
Speaker:very challenging from a managerial perspective. And as you
Speaker:scale, and this is the phase that we're in now where we have,
Speaker:it's not a case of not, we have projects, it's more a case of choosing
Speaker:which projects we pursue. Because especially when you start going
Speaker:internationally, I mean, you really have to We have this
Speaker:continual development pathway on the kind of hard
Speaker:engineering side. We have a wraparound software solution, which
Speaker:is being enriched by internal R&D. But if
Speaker:there are breaks in communication between those teams, you can have problems. So
Speaker:from a technology standpoint and an overall offering standpoint,
Speaker:when it works and it is working, it's great. But
Speaker:you really have to carefully, as our business moves forward and close to
Speaker:60 staff now. We were only 10 staff a year and a half ago.
Speaker:I think it's really, really important from a managerial standpoint and
Speaker:across the entire C-suite to ensure everything joins up in a
Speaker:very cohesive manner. And I think that's a challenge for most companies.
Speaker:It's just, I think for ours is probably a bit more complex because
Speaker:of the number of areas that we have involved. Jamie, can you talk a
Speaker:little bit about your specific focus and, you know, where you're
Speaker:headquartered? You're in the UK. And I imagine because of
Speaker:the experience you have there and because of the system you've created
Speaker:there, I feel like you're best suited to understand sort of the lay of the
Speaker:land there and, you know, what the opportunities are that exist in the UK,
Speaker:you know, better than most. So can you talk a little bit about your expertise
Speaker:there? Yes. So we have, we've got an R&D center in, in
Speaker:Deptford, which is very close to Greenwich. So for those who don't know where
Speaker:Deptford is, it's southeast London, just across from Canary Wharf. That's where we've been
Speaker:for 6 years. We have R&D center there on our older site,
Speaker:which is not our tech. Above that, it's a kind of big 2-story warehouse.
Speaker:We've got a headquarters at the London Bridge. So just, just by the mayor's office
Speaker:and Tower Bridge. So if you want to come and have a nice meeting with
Speaker:us and then sit out opposite Tower Bridge, it's very nice in the summer. In
Speaker:the winter, it's not so good. And then we have a manufacturing
Speaker:site north of London. Then we have, I think, 8 or
Speaker:9 deployed vertical farms across the UK, relatively
Speaker:small, obviously a larger one coming online, the Seine Farms, in the
Speaker:next kind of 6 to 8 weeks. Okay. And then our bigger focus has
Speaker:been, and there are some confidential aspects to this, so I can't
Speaker:talk too much about it, but as I mentioned, you know, our next farm is
Speaker:an 11,000 square meter farm. We have infrastructure
Speaker:funders who we're talking to who could who do want to
Speaker:support us with this undertaking. I think there's been— I can't
Speaker:talk to the European markets, but I can certainly say that in the
Speaker:UK market, we've seen a change in the way that
Speaker:investors are looking at the sector. So previously, if
Speaker:you spoke to a PE fund or a VC fund, they would look at it
Speaker:as a parent-level company investment, an expectation
Speaker:for an exit or a return in a very short time horizon. Whereas
Speaker:infrastructure funds who have traditionally done things like
Speaker:solar and other kind of more
Speaker:infrastructure-focused assets or investments, sorry, I think they're starting
Speaker:to turn towards it and notice that there's a real opportunity here, not
Speaker:just in terms of making money, which funds obviously want to do, but to
Speaker:do something meaningful. So from an ESG standpoint
Speaker:and tackling some of the challenges that we all face, I mean, food
Speaker:security, food pricing, supply chains. I mean, I don't need to go through them
Speaker:all because I'm sure all of your listeners and viewers are
Speaker:aware of all the challenges we face. Sure. Yes. I think the UK
Speaker:climate will probably see some of the US players coming here and some of the
Speaker:other European players, and I'm aware of it already. I think people
Speaker:underappreciate that even in a country the size of,
Speaker:even in the UK, you still need to spend a hell of a lot of
Speaker:money on building out vertical farming, or glasshouse
Speaker:infrastructure even have a single-digit
Speaker:share of the market for a specific product.
Speaker:We're talking about hundreds of millions, in fact, moving into the
Speaker:billions of capital investments that are required over many years
Speaker:to make it happen. So it's a really hot topic, vertical farming, and it should
Speaker:be, but it's really, I mean, this is a long-term
Speaker:sector and of course there will be companies that will do couple of
Speaker:investment rounds, raise as much money as they can, do an IPO.
Speaker:Great. Good for them. But if we really wanted to do this
Speaker:correctly, we could do this for 10, 20, 30, 40 years
Speaker:and really build out a proper kind of reactive or
Speaker:protectionist system where we are food independent in
Speaker:some ways. Not for every product, clearly. I'm not going to be
Speaker:one of these fanatics that says that we should grow I don't know,
Speaker:avocados and things in vertical farms. I think it's absolute fantasy.
Speaker:Of course you can grow it, but it's a question as to whether or not
Speaker:you should grow it because do the unit economics work?
Speaker:So yeah, I think there are many opportunities in the UK and we'll
Speaker:continue to see buildouts. I think most of the buildouts will be
Speaker:in the more rural or peri-urban areas. It's not, we tend to
Speaker:deviate away from the term urban farming because
Speaker:we talk very much about, you know, CEA or vertical farming.
Speaker:But yeah, certainly the UK is going to be a big focal point in the
Speaker:future. Yeah, I think this topic of food independence is
Speaker:really top of mind for a lot of folks given what's been happening the past
Speaker:couple of years. And I think you're really at the forefront in terms of
Speaker:figuring out which are the crops that you can specialize in that allow
Speaker:that, but also because of all the R&D and work you're putting into
Speaker:the company, I think there's opportunities which may not
Speaker:have surfaced yet, but are sort of bubbling around in the minds
Speaker:of the folks on your team in terms of what's possible. Yeah, I think we'd
Speaker:like to— there's a process, right? I mean, there's the saying, you
Speaker:know, don't run before you can walk or even crawl. Yeah,
Speaker:I feel like a lot of the sector has kind of jumped to the running
Speaker:or even sprinting stage without really properly validating the tech.
Speaker:And I think the sector will pay for that in future years, or
Speaker:actually the buyers of those systems will pay for that.
Speaker:And that's not to claim that we have the best system in the world. We
Speaker:don't know if we have the best system in the world because we don't know
Speaker:what everybody else is doing. I mean, we have a good idea and a good
Speaker:understanding of based on what people share, but I think
Speaker:getting it right at a small scale and understanding it and then building up is
Speaker:really important. It's maybe not the thing that early-stage
Speaker:investors want quite a lot. And that's one of the reasons why we
Speaker:didn't go with a VC for this round. We wanted to have
Speaker:more time to kind of still develop the tech, make sure that we hit those
Speaker:proof points, and then really, really scale. Because I mean, that's the
Speaker:proper way to do it. And there's a reason why we're doing most of it
Speaker:in the UK. I mean, we have a lot of opportunities globally that we could
Speaker:go for, but If you can't prove, I mean, we've hit
Speaker:proof points at particular levels of scale, but we've run these
Speaker:farms for a while, monitor them and make sure that everything's
Speaker:good from a yield standpoint, from a system standpoint, from a maintenance standpoint
Speaker:before really kind of expanding out. So I think, you know, the only
Speaker:other geography that we've targeted, I mean, there are 3 core
Speaker:geographies for us, which are UK and mainland Europe, the Middle East and
Speaker:Southeast Asia, specifically Singapore. Okay. We've got a partnership in Singapore.
Speaker:We've been working on that for 18 months and a huge
Speaker:company that we're working with there. In the Middle East, we have a lot of
Speaker:opportunities, but we're kind of holding fire for now to
Speaker:determine when's the right time to kind of push the go button
Speaker:on those based on what we're doing in the UK. Because it's a classic
Speaker:error for a lot of scale-up companies is to expand too quickly and
Speaker:overextend yourself. And satisfy your
Speaker:customers. And, you know, you, you get one vertical farm that goes wrong, or I
Speaker:don't know, there's an E. coli outbreak because you don't have the right policies in
Speaker:place and the operator who's built the farm hasn't followed them, that'll come back to
Speaker:your brand. So that's a real, I think a really
Speaker:good case to be made for not expanding too quickly.
Speaker:Makes sense. Are you discovering specific regional
Speaker:challenges when it comes to working in Singapore and the Middle East?
Speaker:different than obviously anything you might see in the UK? There's far more
Speaker:government intervention. And I think a lot of, which we knew before,
Speaker:I think the Middle East, you have to understand the culture. You need to have
Speaker:local partners and things are just in a different way. You know, I,
Speaker:uh, I was in Middle East 2 weeks ago and
Speaker:trying, sitting, having dates and tea that I've never tried before,
Speaker:which was delicious. And just culturally, I think it's very
Speaker:important to understand how they work. And a lot of that is
Speaker:ingrained in the way that they approach business. Same thing goes in
Speaker:Singapore. In Singapore, you find yourself having a very serious
Speaker:business day and then going and quite heavy night drinking sake. This
Speaker:is kind of how business is done. And you could say the same thing about
Speaker:the UK. Yeah. I think the way that the, if I've talked and I've
Speaker:spoken specifically about the customers that we, or the partners that we've
Speaker:spoken to and are working with, but more so it's more difficult
Speaker:to get a project off the ground in those geographies. because there are
Speaker:more hoops to jump through. There are more regulations. In Singapore, for
Speaker:example, you require a farm license. So it's
Speaker:more challenging. The UK has far less red tape. I don't
Speaker:think UK's moving fast enough, actually. I think there should be more policy
Speaker:and more thought leadership that goes into this and how we want to position this.
Speaker:Like, it is going on in the background, but it's just not as
Speaker:evident as the Middle East and Southeast Asia, Singapore, and probably
Speaker:some other parts of the world as well. Fascinating to just get a
Speaker:taste for what the different cultures are like. And just to your point, like, without
Speaker:having that on-the-ground knowledge of how business is done,
Speaker:you'd probably find yourself at a disadvantage if you didn't have that experience trying to
Speaker:go into those markets and then just trying to learn it on the spot.
Speaker:Completely. I mean, you know, we were told that it happens again and again. You
Speaker:know, you see foreign companies showing up and knocking on the door
Speaker:and just not understanding how things are done. And maybe
Speaker:that's one reason why we haven't seen the build-out of
Speaker:vertical farming systems to the degree that you would expect in a place
Speaker:like the Middle East, because the Middle East is a perfect candidate. You know, they
Speaker:have very little arable land. Sure. High prices,
Speaker:growing population, impact of climate change, many,
Speaker:many reasons, a lot of capital. So investment is really not an issue out
Speaker:there. Why have we not seen more large-scale vertical farms? I mean, a couple of,
Speaker:couple of the US companies have gone over, there've been some local companies, but I
Speaker:would have expected to see a much, much more rapid expansion,
Speaker:but maybe the reasons we've discussed, you know, the underlying basis for that.
Speaker:Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So a couple of questions as we come
Speaker:to a close here. I'm curious, what's a tough question you've had to
Speaker:ask yourself recently? So energy prices has been a big one for
Speaker:us. It's questions on it every week. And
Speaker:it's something we've thought a lot about. I think when we developed our system, we
Speaker:focused on a very different approach to, you know, if you watch
Speaker:videos of our systems, it looks very different than other vertical farms. We
Speaker:focus a lot on power and on light and on
Speaker:manipulating different wavelengths of light to bring about
Speaker:different expressions in crops. So focusing on the primary or
Speaker:secondary metabolism of the crop, focusing maybe on blue and green
Speaker:and then a bit of red, or, you know, these are the plant plant recipes.
Speaker:This is where the IP is actually. There isn't really a lot of IP in
Speaker:the actual hardware. Yeah. So we've, in response to the kind of
Speaker:inflection in energy prices, which we kind of
Speaker:preempted, we've been doing this research anyway, is just to figure out
Speaker:where we can push the boundaries. You know, how, how can we shape the
Speaker:cycle of the crop? Probably I didn't articulate that in the right way, but how
Speaker:can we trick a crop to grow in a particular way
Speaker:and manipulate the conditions So that we're actually using less energy, we're
Speaker:creating more biomass and also maintaining quality
Speaker:principles. And we posted something on LinkedIn recently, you know, we found with,
Speaker:I think it was a butterhead lettuce variety, we did a whole load of things
Speaker:mostly around light and selecting different light wavelengths at
Speaker:different levels of intensity throughout the growing process. And we
Speaker:found that we use roughly 25% less power.
Speaker:Also adding to the fact that our lights, because the way they're designed, emit
Speaker:less heat, which means as a positive externality, we use less
Speaker:power across the planet anyway because it doesn't— the ancillary systems don't have to work
Speaker:as hard. But through those tests, we found, you know, 25% less energy, but
Speaker:we saw between a 20% and 43% increase
Speaker:in biomass growing cycle, which just shows that— Wow. It
Speaker:disproves the whole point about just putting some
Speaker:shelves up and putting some really high voltage lights and just blasting energy
Speaker:at occur is the way forward. It's really not. So
Speaker:I think this is where our approach of centralized R&D—
Speaker:and we've got 10, sorry, 9 PhDs, one
Speaker:who's almost got a PhD, I shouldn't single him out, but
Speaker:amazing plant scientists all focused on different areas. So yeah,
Speaker:that's probably been the biggest thing for us, and it's something that we are tackling.
Speaker:Because if investors or the market think that
Speaker:vertical farming's dead because prior to the energy price inflections, they
Speaker:were already saying, oh, it's too energy intensive, too carbon intensive.
Speaker:Oh yeah. The sector's in trouble. So we have to
Speaker:find, it's almost like flying a plane, you know, you have to, you know, throw
Speaker:out some countermeasures if you see a missile coming at you. So yeah, so that's
Speaker:been the biggest topic recently. And I appreciate you bringing it full circle
Speaker:with the airplane reference too. Thank you for that. And
Speaker:yeah, it's interesting because to your point, it's one of those fields that there's
Speaker:never going to be a shortage of problems to fix and for creative and
Speaker:highly intelligent people who thrive on finding
Speaker:solutions to problems like this. I think they're, to your point, it sounds like you've
Speaker:got the right team in the right environment to figure out just how to move
Speaker:forward with these sorts of challenges. We have an excellent team and it's
Speaker:a, it's very diverse in skill sets and obviously in other
Speaker:ways. It's definitely, yeah, it's the team that makes it or breaks it.
Speaker:And it's definitely not a sector where you have oversupply
Speaker:of people who have expertise in this. So finding good people
Speaker:and holding on to them is very, very important. So last question
Speaker:for you, just on a personal level, Jamie. I mean, I imagine there's a different
Speaker:experience and a feeling and excitement about where you were when you started this in
Speaker:2016. Like, so what keeps you motivated? What keeps you excited?
Speaker:You know, 6 years into this with all the growth and the challenges and the
Speaker:success you've had along the way, I'm just curious on a personal level, like, what
Speaker:has you excited about the future? Well, from a, from a personal
Speaker:standpoint, I do really believe in the fact that what we're
Speaker:doing is addressing very important topics and will
Speaker:continue to. And actually, the R&D work that
Speaker:my team will continue to do through the years is just going to make
Speaker:our offering better and better and address, you know, I'm a big believer in climate
Speaker:change. I really think that a lot of the data is underreported.
Speaker:I think we're gonna have massive problems with agriculture in the future.
Speaker:So yeah, I mean, and didn't talk a lot about health despite being from a
Speaker:health background, but I really think there's a big health angle related to vertical farming.
Speaker:You hear stories and there's peer-reviewed studies relating
Speaker:to declining sperm counts in places in Africa
Speaker:because they have overexposure to pesticides and babies being born
Speaker:without limbs. This is really— Yeah. Pesticide use
Speaker:is, which is a necessity actually, If you're growing outside, because
Speaker:you have to be able to grow the crops, but it's not indoors. So that's
Speaker:another reason. But personally, my main driver is
Speaker:not really my personal successes. You know, I enjoy my job. I
Speaker:love it. It's more so my kids. I want to be able to do
Speaker:something that's had an impact on the world, as corny as it may sound.
Speaker:And when I'm older, I can say to my kids, look, we've built a nice
Speaker:company and it's doing good things and we have happy
Speaker:customers. And, you know, these people over here are
Speaker:eating produce grown at farms that we developed the tech for years
Speaker:ago at fair prices. We've done something good.
Speaker:And I think that's a nice story to tell your kids. I've, you know, I've
Speaker:got 3, an 8-year-old, a 6-year-old, and a 6-month-old. I'm not having
Speaker:any more. I think, mind you, it's not me that has to have them, but
Speaker:we are not having any more. I've said that several times. And so,
Speaker:yeah, I think that's truly the main driving force, you know. Family, I think, is
Speaker:a real driving force for many people, not just
Speaker:entrepreneurs. So it's not really personal gain that is
Speaker:something for me. And the money side of things, of course, you know, we're building
Speaker:a big company, we have a $100 million plus valuation. That's all
Speaker:well and good. But if you're not happy in your job, and it's been proven
Speaker:that people that, you know, make money aren't necessarily happy, they're not necessarily
Speaker:correlated. So that's not really something that I'm I just want to be
Speaker:comfortable and have a nice family and have something to be proud of. Well,
Speaker:that's a perfect way to wrap up and then just understand that it's been interesting
Speaker:to just hear your story and hear your passion for
Speaker:why you're into this, you know, why this is important for you
Speaker:and your commitment, you know, leaving the earth a better place than you found it.
Speaker:And I think that's really admirable. And I want to applaud you on your journey
Speaker:and the launch and the success of the company because it's not an easy environment.
Speaker:There's a lot of buzz around it, but that doesn't necessarily translate to having success.
Speaker:in this industry. So congrats and kudos to you and the team for what you've
Speaker:put together so far and to your ongoing success. Thank you very
Speaker:much. And it's been a pleasure to have this chat and thanks for inviting me
Speaker:on. Likewise. Verticalfuture.com is the website. Is there any
Speaker:other place we should direct folks to learn more about you and/or the
Speaker:company? I think LinkedIn is where we do a lot of our
Speaker:activity. We don't really focus on the other social media platforms. So find us on
Speaker:LinkedIn. Very importantly, it's Vertical Future. You didn't get it wrong, but
Speaker:a lot of people get it wrong. There's no S on the end. So it's,
Speaker:um, this is a common mistake that people end up thinking they're going
Speaker:after a vertical farming company. And I think it's a good trading company or
Speaker:something. Okay. Verticalfuture.com. And then if you want to get in touch, you
Speaker:can email us at [email protected]. Okay.
Speaker:One thing I did forget to mention is that because of this audience and because
Speaker:of who listens to the podcast, is there anything that you have that would be
Speaker:an ask or just a message to your colleagues and folks in the
Speaker:industry? Be more transparent. Don't
Speaker:over-accentuate what you can deliver on, and
Speaker:let's build this together. Building something together doesn't mean sharing
Speaker:IP. It just means that, you know, we,
Speaker:you know, we're on the same page and, you know, we're all going in the
Speaker:right direction. There are lots of customers out there that we can go after,
Speaker:and it doesn't need to be a cutthroat industry. This is a long-term industry here.
Speaker:This is not a quick quickfire things. That would be my main message.
Speaker:And to be fair, I'm in contact regularly with
Speaker:CEOs of some of the, quote, you know, biggest vertical farming companies in the
Speaker:world in terms of capital raised. And they're lovely people and
Speaker:they're exactly on the same page. Yeah. And that's a consistent message that I've been
Speaker:hearing throughout these episodes as well. So I'm glad you continue to deliver that
Speaker:message. Thanks again for your time, Jamie. I really appreciate it. No problem. Have a
Speaker:nice evening. Thanks again to Jamie for coming on the show and sharing his story.
Speaker:As always, I value the time that people spend on the show. I don't take
Speaker:it for granted. And I'm grateful when they let
Speaker:their guard down a little bit and share some of the insights into what got
Speaker:them to where they are today. And I think that's what's been inspiring for me
Speaker:and for the feedback I'm getting from listeners of the show. Thanks again to our
Speaker:Season 5 title sponsor, Cultivated. If you are looking into a vertical farm and don't
Speaker:know where to start or which technology would suit your needs, reach out to them
Speaker:today. Best of all, their service is free because they work on behalf of their
Speaker:partners. Learn more at cultivated.com, and that's spelled
Speaker:Just leave out that last E. Podcast production and marketing provided
Speaker:by Fullcast. Learn more at fullcast.co.
Speaker:As a reminder, if you are enjoying the show, please leave us a rating and
Speaker:a review at ratethispodcast.com/vfp. I'll be sure to
Speaker:read those out on future episodes. Next week we have a return
Speaker:guest. It's Nicola Kerslakey of Contain, giving us
Speaker:an update on what's happening in her world. So looking forward to having that conversation
Speaker:and sharing it with you. Until we meet again next week, here's to your health.
Speaker:Thanks for listening. To read the full show notes for this episode, which
Speaker:includes any links mentioned in the episode, as well as a full show
Speaker:transcription, visit verticalfarmingpodcast.com.
Speaker:There, you can sign up for our email list to be notified when new
Speaker:episodes are published.
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