When you ask somebody who is not from california what californias biggest industry is, they will often guess technology. Thats incorrect. They will say, its probably entertainment because they are thinking of hollywood. That is incorrect as well. The answer is just south of here. Its agriculture. Just south of Silicon Valley, you will find artichokes and lettuce and Strawberry Fields forever. Plenty wants to bring agriculture into cities with robotic farms inside perfectly controlled and with amazingly high yields. Nate story is the cofounder. Thanks for being with us. Your vertical farms are shipping to 32 stores . You will build a new one in los angeles . Thats right. We are building a farm down there to ship to hundreds. How big can these farms get . When i talk about those fields that are just south of me sometimes i can smell the garlic and onions here in Silicon Valley. We are talk about miles upon miles. You are talking about a building. Can you scale to reach demand . You know, each building that we have build can replace hundreds and hundreds of acres of production. The equivalent of hundreds of acres of production. As we look at the u. S. , the world and the amount of demand that we need to meet, it will take a lot of farms. There is the ability to meet that need with indoor farms, yes. Indoor farming is not new. What makes you new . What technology exists now that didnt when we first interest vented the greenhouse . Indoor farms are driven by Technology Cost curves. The interesting thing about what we do, its an immature field. A lot of the Technology Inputs to our business, things like led. They are a great example. Led were not efficient enough or costeffective enough five or six years ago to make an economical business. Think about led, think about processing power, think about all of the Different Technology and you understand this gets much better over time. 5 of the water, how is that . Why would you use so little water . We use a fraction of the water, because all of the water we put into the system, almost all we recapture. The only water moving is in the pro duce. Even water vapor. We capture the evaporated water and put it back into the system. What sort of things grow best . I mentioned strawberries. Im getting wheat would not be a good idea. Whats best for this farming . We have tended to focus on high quality, high value crops to start. Theres virtually no limit to the crops that will be grown indoors. A lot of whats grown today is crossbred for heartiness against bugs, poor weather. You dont have bugs or poor weather. Im guessing you can give us the tomato or strawberry we remember, not the tomato or strawberry thats on so many shelves. Thats right. A lot of the crops that we grow in the field have been bred to resist stress. Thats really the chief thing that we have been breeding for. When we bring them indoors, we have a simpler problem. They dont have to experience stress. We dont care about pests. All we care about is quality. We are able to focus in on flavor, reducing things that are delicious that remind you of your grandmothers garden as a kid. That was my association with a great tomato was the garden, the summertime, those feelings of joy. We were able to capture some of those in the flavor of the products we produce. You locate your farms in urban areas. Obviously, that has a huge advantage as far as the amount of time it takes to get to a store and the Carbon Footprint because you are not shipping across the United States. Do you see this coming to iowa . A huge iowa farm field that grows some sort of produce, maybe not corn or wheat, because thats impractical, would do this on a gigantic industrial scale . I see it getting there, yes. When we look at what the first revolution did, the first green revolution it gave us calories, inexpensive calories. That was Important Notice 60s and 70s. We were struggling with this global specter of drought and hunger. We werent producing enough and distributing enough globally. The first revolution gave us calories. The second revolution, which i believe we are on the cusp of, will deliver nutrition and flavor and joy in the form of produce again. In iowa, they are great at corn. There isnt a lettuce industry in iowa. As we think about how we distribute access to healthy, nutritious fruits and vegetables, i see this being critical. Their lettuce is shipped in from us. They could grow lettuce in one of your farms. Thats right. Talk to me about the robots. What are the robots specifically doing . We think about our robots the way you would think about a tractor in a field. They are there to assist the farmers, to multiply the force of our people, of our farmers. We have operators that sit there and run those machines day in, day out. They help process hundreds or thousands of plants in an hour as opposed to doing it by hand. They are a way for us to improve the quality of the work for the folks in the farm. They are also a great way for us to improve the quality of the product. If you think about this repeatable process where everything gets handled the same and we can control the output and make sure the product is really high quality every time, that is why robotics are important to us. Finally, is there some way we know that that strawberry came from you . Are you labelling it in such a way . Is it just the strawberry at the store . All of our products will be branded. If it doesnt have a plenty label on it, its probably not from plenty. You can keep your eyes peeled over the coming year for all sorts of interesting plenty things. Thats a good tease. Dr. Nate story is cofounder and chief scientist at plenty. Thank you for being with us this morning. Well be right back. Welcome back. There will be many books written about the president ial election of 2020, no doubt. A lot of lessons learned. I know you are glad to have it behind us. I want to think and talk about Silicon Valleys approach to the election. Im not talking about facebook and twitters influence but the decision by some ceos at smaller Tech Companies to weigh in or forbid weighing in. Two sides of the same coin. Brian armstrong, who forbade political talk or support of political movements at his Small Company lost 60 employees in the resulting protests. The ceo of expenseify spammed his employees with an email saying they should support joe biden. There was a study of the political environment at Silicon Valley companies shortly before the election. Welcome back. They spend about 18 of their time solving conflicts. That didnt surprise me. Problems percolate up. You found that much of the conflict was political. Yes, thats true. 61 of them are saying the conflicts are about politics right now. Hopefully, given the election being over, we can move on to a more stable time. Lets hope. What conflicts were they seeing . Simple red and blue . What were they dealing with . Three kinds that were identified. Politics was the third most divisive type of conflict. The first was general communication issues. The second were around strategy kinds of decisions and how companies were going to decide to move forward with so much ambiguity. Which we would expect from corporations. Those issues come up in any kind of business. Was there a specific thing that was coming up in the political sort of arena . Was it just general people disagreeing with each other . I think its the red and blue thing you are talking about. People in our neck of the woods are more liberal, in Silicon Valley. Theres a drive to make statements about high mind eed society issues. Some ceos want to maintain a more balanced perspective. Some made a statement that they wouldnt participation in the conversations. That was a tough spot. I need to jump in. Those who are watching from far away, snowflake is used to describe a political person, in this case its the name of the company. Thats right. A successful ipo. Very good. I want people to understand the ban on activity that coin base went beyond forbidding somebody from wearing a tshirt or hat. It included banning hours spent at work supporting civil rights issues. I want to read from the memo. On broader societal issues, we dont engage when issues are unrelated to our core mission, because we believe impact only comes with focus. This is very different than other companies that embraced black lives matter and nike and levi and google and facebook. In this case, he was very specific. Right. True. I think that that is an opinion that i think a lot of the ceos that i work with have that are trying to find the balance. I have a ceo that works in government. They have to maintain a neutral position. Brian armstrong took a strong stand on what many ceos are probably also trying to do about stepping into the bad side of the conversation. Zero tolerance does seem often like the easiest. When you talk about something as simple as a dress code or whether you can bring a pet to work. If you allow pets, what about snakes . There becomes that, well, then we have what about poisonous snakes . If you say no pets, the problem is solved. He did that. He said, no political activity by this company or in this company whatsoever. Yeah. I think the underlying theme that they are dealing with is the issue that inclusion is important and respect is really important. By that notion, it means you need to allow different opinions to surface and conflicts are going to be a natural part of a good companys day to day life. I think that the focus should be more on inclusion and respectful communication regardless of the issue that people have. That is where i think the good work is needed. How do we allow that conflict to surface . W the ceo sent out a memo to customers saying they should support joe biden. That got pushback as well. Yeah. I find that thats not as typical, the ceos will take that portion wi position with their customers. Brian is doing what many people many ceos are trying to find a fine line to walk. Your study found 73 had never experienced more conflict than in 2020. Ta doesn that doesnt surprise me. Are there lessons that we can take away from this that somebody who figured out a best practice . I think that in my 30 years of consulting, conflict has been at the core of most of the work im doing. No one likes it. It is a natural part of a great organization. Learning to deal with that is at the forefront now. The trouble is that we have never seen i have never seen the rate of change happening that we are experiencing right now. Its exponential. That creates this runaway increase in tension that leads to potential violence like we are experiencing. To be able to bring that down and learn skills i think the Research Shows thats companies and people that are able to deal with ambiguity, that are looking that have more comfort with complexity are the ones that are going to get through conflict. People that want the quick and cant deal with the stress of ambiguity are the ones that will have the harder time. Thats the lesson in this. If theres a Silver Lining, that hopefully its teaching us the importance of building trust, which is the antitodote. If you thought of an organization as a living system, then you either have a system thats regenerating itself and growing or one that is attacking itself and becoming diseased. We have that choice. Are we going to become a fatal, terminal illness . Do we want to learn how to thrive . Thats what i think the challenge is for us. Thank you so much. The head of the kung group. We appreciate her with us with that wisdom. Welcome back. My bank has been limiting its hours at the local branch due to the pandemic, of course. You know what i discovered . I havent noticed at all. Most of us use a banking app these days. I make my car payment or my kids will point out i can send money to anyone simply by tapping a button on my phone. I dont go to the atm that much anymore. Simply because the Small Businesses that im dealing with dont want to pay in cash. When my next guest got involved in banking, it was a different story. Collin walsh helped create borrow when the idea of a Branchless Bank kind of scared people. They didnt know what to see to get their money. Collin has decades of experience in the banking industry. I never want to find a Silver Lining in a pandemic. But it did change consumer behavior. Grocery store delivery is routine now. Online banking as well. Its great to be on your show. Thanks for having me on. You said it yourself, the branch reduced its hours and you hardly notice. We are living in a world where everyone is so much more connected through digital technology. You can get by doing everything you need without having to go into a physical branch. This is part of the future of banking. Not only is it about the accessibility and having your bank with you 24 7 on your mobile phone, but its also about using technology in powerful ways to help solve problems for consumers. When i started borrow, it was about trying to create a new kind of bank that could make a difference in millions of peoples lives who were not being served well by the brick and mortar banks. I would love to talk more about that. Talk to me about getting a national charter. What does that mean and why is that significant . Sure. We are very proud to be the First NationalTechnology Company in the United States to be granted a full National Bank charter by the office of the controller of the currency. We have direct membership into the fdic and federal reserve, which is quite something. This is a territory that has been largely protected by the incumbent banks. Being able to break through that was quite a rigorous process. We had to gain approvals from all three agencies. We had to build a modern Banking Technology stack from the ground up that the regulators would approve. We had to hire seasoned executives and Board Members that the regulators could be comfortable were going to successfully execute our Business Plan and create a Profitable Bank that was not going to become an issue for the safety and soundness of the banking system. We had to demonstrate we understood risk management, control, business peoples money. Its a serious topic. It was a very lengthy 3 1 2 year process of which we were able to get to the end of in august, which was really the beginning. So thats when we opened borrow bank, our National Bank. Now we are in the process of now starting to bring customers into the banking platform. Its a super exciting time for us. There are a lot of apps that people would use, venmo is a good example. You might store money, then use it to pay other people. Those are not banks. Right . That is correct. Many of those are working with partner banks. When i started the company, i was fairly pragmatic about the fact that getting a National Bank charter was going to take time. We approached the bank corps bank, or partner in the early years. They were a great partner for us. They allowed us to get a product to market, to gain valuable insight around problems the consumers are trying to solve and how we can address those. That was a really important way for us to get to market quickly. Its the path that many pursue. They work with partner banks. They identify solutions and they develop technology appbased technology to solve those solutions. I think being a bank is kind of in a very different space. Now we are not limited to just a single Product Offering or point solution. We can now innovate across a full range of the National Services products. If you think about bank of america or wells fargo or Jp Morgan Chase and what they can offer consumers, we have the same bank charter as they do. When you think out two, three years from now, we will be able to offer that full suite of products but on a fully digital platform, using the latest technology. You will see a lot of innovation in this space. Im proud of my team to have been able to pioneer this. You getting a bank chart er allows you to do things the big banks do. Is there something you are doing that the big banks dont do . I have noticed that my big bank wont say the name has gotten better, the app. It has gotten slicker, more useful. How are you staying ahead of them . I think there are a number of areas that we are in a moment in time right now culturally in many ways. I believe that borrow will be able to innovate in a lot of ways. One is that we dont create the implicit or explicit barriers to entry that are associated with lots of fees like minimum balance fees and fees for using the atm and fees for tran transferring money. We take away all of that, which saves our customers hundreds of dollars a year in fees that go away. We help customers stretch their paychecks by providing early paychecks, providing tools like shortterm Lending Solutions that help people bridge from one paycheck to the next. We use our digital platform to introduce people to new Job Opportunities and gig economy work. We are providing tools to help people automatically save money. We are paying a good Interest Rate on that savinsavings. We are focused on a series of points that customers are facing. These are everyday consumers that are trying to make ends meet. Talk to me about that. I realize you are going to keep your accountholders information secret. How are americans doing . You mentioned paycheck to paycheck. I think you have probably heard this mentioned. This really is sort of a kshaped recovery. You are seeing people who more professionals, higher income that have the ability to work remotely, were working in industries that were not directly impacted. The Tech Industry was largely not impacted as much by the pandemic. If anything, it was helped. Then you see folks like essential workers and people that were living paycheck to paycheck often had one, maybe two, sometimes three jobs to get by. Those people are really struggling right now. I think you have entire industries where you are seeing systemic unemployment. If you happen to be in the events or you are a local Restaurant Owner or in the travel industry or the cruise industry, all of these industries are struggling. Its going to take time before they come back. You really are seeing this kshaped economy. What we stand for and the products we offer are really targeting your everyday middle class american who is trying to get ahead and move forward in their lives. These folks are very disproportionally impacted by what we are seeing and are on the wrong side of the k. They are loyal customers. We are working hard to try to give them the solutions they immediate to get ahead. Very experienced in banking for decades now, founder and ceo of borrow, thank you for being with us this morning. We will be right back. Before we go this week, a reminder, we have a relatively new podcast called sandhill road. This week, we talk to airbus about the future of airplanes and space travel. Find it wherever you find your podcasts, including Apple Podcast and google play and, of course, the amazon echo. Thats our show this week. Thanks to my guests. Thank you for making us part of your sunday morning. Damian trujillo hello, and welcome to comunidad del valle. Im damian trujillo, we are back in our studio for the First Time Since march. Our guests are still virtual, but the topics are just as important on your comunidad del valle. Damian and were going to begin with some amazing work out of Evergreen Valley College in san jose. Celso batalha is a professor of astronomy in science there at evergreen, and daniel reyes is a student mentor, hes an advocate for students. So, welcome to the show. Were going to start with you, celso, welcome to the show