so if you told me a year ago that I’d be
standing here in front of you and that
our company would be celebrating its
first year anniversary I definitely
would not have believed you for a bunch
of reasons some of which are probably
quite obvious and some which may not be
so we’re approaching our one-year
anniversary when I got the invitation to
come here to to do this talk the first
question that came up was why me there’s
a lot of very talented people some of
which you’ve already heard today that
could easily be standing here instead of
me and I actually asked them I emailed
them and said like really like why me
and reply that came back was well you
have to be an expert in your field and
bearing in mind that today’s theme is
zero to one I thought crikey I’m I’m an
expert at being a zero so well we figure
that out in just a minute
so most people who come on this stage
they have a thing an idea a vision or a
passion that they’re they’re really into
and it’s certainly true of myself and my
co-founder Raman and ours is fairly
simple to talk about it’s another thing
to actually do and that thing is that we
want everybody around the world to be
able to automatically grow their own
crops and make it fun and most
importantly intuitive and easy which
sounds relatively simple the easy part
is the bit that’s not so simple and why
do we want it to be easy
well my co-founder and I are very very
lazy people trapped inside these
hard-working bodies and we want it to be
easy and why because we know how hard it
is like we both got experience growing
crops indoors and it’s one thing to grow
a crop once but to be able to do it
again and again and again and do it
efficiently and really well is very very
difficult and there are things that we’d
be rather doing with our time than
running around watering things getting
the lights to work and the temperature
to be right and the humidity such as
would rather be hiking we’d rather be
fishing we’d rather be drinking well
like for sure
now when we think about it there are
plenty of industries for hundreds and
hundreds of years that have been around
but have recently been totally
revolutionized by technology so hundreds
of years ago lots of people are being
ferried from A to B in a horse and cart
people were renting out rooms within
their accommodation to strangers and now
there’s an app for that everybody can
become a taxi driver and everybody can
rent out a room so why is that not the
case with one of the oldest industries
on the planet which is agriculture why
are we not having in our own homes the
ability to grow our own crops really
easily why are we not asking for our
schools to teach this to our kids why
are we not demanding this for the
world’s most vulnerable people to look
after themselves through technology so
it’s true that there are products on the
market that will help you grow a plant a
little bit more efficiently but most of
the money pouring into this industry is
for cannabis which isn’t necessarily
going to do much for our families right
I mean maybe it will make an interesting
dinner there are there are other places
where you know Endor farms are getting
bigger and bigger and they’re starting
to try and optimize things but really
just for their own purpose so what we
think is that a real big game changer
would be to democratize the ability for
anybody to use technology to efficiently
grow indoors automatically and actually
redefine what automatically means so
this could be for something the size of
a closet right up to acres and acres of
production so what would that look like
so let’s just imagine you’ve got an
indoor grow of some description and
you’re sitting there and instead of just
having technology turn things on and off
you’re actually using artificial
intelligence to decide when those things
should be turned on or off and
artificial intelligence who’s making
those calculations far quicker than any
human person could do it and it would
actually stop bad things from happening
such as crop disease and it would enable
a lot of really good things to happen
such as be more energy efficient and
increase the yield of your crop and my
personal favorite perhaps even changing
the taste of what you’re growing
imagine a kid in the north of Canada
where you know fresh fruit is hard to
come by and it’s certainly hard to come
by at an affordable price wouldn’t be
great if the kid is the one who’s
growing these crops automatically for
their community wouldn’t it be
interesting if industrial sized growers
can change the taste of a product based
upon demand there’s anyone here eatin
kale recently it’s disgusting
so somebody has to do something about
the taste of some of the stuff that were
regional
now you might be thinking why are we
talking about indoor farming there’s
plenty of land right we can grow
outdoors well on the map behind me
everything in red pink that shows where
we’ll be insofar as the amount of
produce we can come up with in the year
2050 and it’s about 50 percent less
where it’s red and why is that well
whole different reason but outdoor
agriculture has some significant
problems one of which is that it emits a
lot of greenhouse gas at nearly 25
percent it’s taking up 37% of the land
mass we actually have and probably more
worryingly it’s taken up a ton of water
seventy percent of our resources for
water are going into agriculture whereas
indoor farming actually you can reduce
the consumption by about 90% so let’s
grow closer to where we live because
it’s stupid to keep trucking you know
strawberries in from Mexico in the
winter to Montreal if you need to grow
small you need to grow big you need to
automate it and make it easy and
predictable and we can do that anywhere
in the world
or maybe we should not even start
thinking about doing it outside of the
world so that a year ago was a nice
little throwaway dream comment that
myself and co-founder Raman had living
in the lovely town of Sutton which is
about an hour and a half away from here
for any of you that have been to certain
it’s great for skiing and hiking and all
that kind of stuff but it’s not exactly
the sort of tech epicenter of the
province I can tell you that confidently
because we’re the largest tech company
in the town
and we were when we were two so we’re
living in Saturn kids family everyone’s
having a good time and we were talking
about this so what did we do
well ramen decided to come up with a
prototype because he had a small indoor
farm in his house but every time he
wanted to go on vacation he couldn’t
because you know the plants wouldn’t do
so well and he looked online and he
tried to find something that would solve
that problem and he couldn’t find it so
he started to build it and we were
friends because our kids go to the same
school and he showed it to me and we
started to look at it and it seemed to
be a really good idea so we decided
we’ll start a business now that sounds
simple we’ll start a business but bear
in mind that we both had full-time jobs
he had his own IT business and I had my
own business development consultancy you
know we’ve got wives with full-time jobs
we got at that point five kids between
us dogs cats all of the stuff that’s
just called life and the other thing
that perhaps for you for those of you
who haven’t ever tried to start a
hardware and a software company it’s
like starting two companies at the same
time with half the resources it’s called
hardware right it’s hard and it wears on
you is it’s it’s a good word but it’s
really really really difficult so anyway
we were quite naive and we said we know
how hard can it be but there should have
been that big sign that says reality
check you’re not independently wealthy
it’s going to take money we’re doing no
problem so I got someone to design our
first logo for $5.00 and then we went
crazy and spent $10 on a website and we
called ourselves a startup and somebody
believed us and invited us to Las Vegas
to attend a agriculture convention so I
I use my my loyalty points from my
credit card and we got on a plane to
Vegas which ramen you haven’t paid me
back for yet actually so off we went and
all we had really in our hand was
basically what you see on the screen
it’s a mock-up of what our four pieces
of hardware would look like and a sort
of rough explanation as to how it would
connect to all the equipment that’s
already in an indoor farm such as
humidifiers and feeder pumps and pH
mixers and all the stuff that’s already
there so the purpose of going was really
to show people like this is what we have
in mind what was the reaction when we
walked in there there was a guy standing
on the stage called Mike Bettes
and he was talking about the the
landscape of investment at the time and
it was actually pretty hot I mean there
was a lot of money pouring into into
agricultural technology so he came off
the stage and Romans that were stood
there and I went and I ran after him I
said grab him by the shoulder and I said
politely asked him to come and sit down
and listen to what we had to say and he
did thankfully for us because he knew
that the landscape really well and he
was the first person within the industry
to to validate at least the idea and say
yeah you know what there is a big need
for that and you need to get started
before somebody else jumps into the
space so with that we jump back on our
plane zoom back to Montreal full of
confidence and we applied for the
founder fuel accelerator program and
this is basically like doing a business
MBA in three months and the idea is to
get you investment ready at this point
we were still working full-time but we
turned up in our suits and we landed a
small investment which allowed us to
quit our jobs and focus on this
full-time and I remember that moment
because it was probably one of the first
moments what I really felt like
something had just clicked into place
and it felt you know absolutely like
we’re on the right track so I remember
going home and I said to my wife the
six-figure income I have we’re going on
minimum wage and I thought I thought she
was really excited because our eyes were
really big in her mouth is really big
but she wasn’t she wasn’t quite as
excited as I was but she you know she
ended up being pretty supportive about
the whole thing so what happened next
well we went to found a fuel with what
we thought was a idea of who we were and
what the product was gonna do and and
how it was gonna work but the funny
thing about an idea is when you started
vocalizing it you get a lot of people
questioning what you’re saying and with
those questions you need to have the
answers and we certainly didn’t have all
the answers at all and what we thought
then
merged into more a little grew into more
of an artificial intelligence powered
product and service and the more we
talked about that we’re carrying around
this newer idea the more people we’re
connecting with the more input we’re
getting the more questions we’re getting
the more answers that we need so I won’t
say that it’s it was our idea it was
just we were the ones that were walking
it around and showing it to people and
then it kind of grew out from there so
at the end of the founder field program
there’s me standing on stage in front of
1,500 people vocalizing what it was that
we were trying to do and at that point
we started getting people contacting us
from all over the world saying that they
wanted to become customers they might
want to invest in the company they might
want to join the company as a member of
the team so the momentum really started
to build really from from that point so
we built our prototypes pictured in the
in the shot is a price chocolate
supermarket and I believe we were the
first company to automate growing
tomatoes within a superstore for a
supermarket and then we deployed these
these prototypes in schools in indoor
farms in hydroponic vertical farming and
even in like a new way of growing which
is like a container farm so things again
we felt the momentum moving I don’t like
reading slides but this one I think is
pertinent to our story imagination is
more important than knowledge the
knowledge is limited whereas imagination
embraces the entire world stimulating
progress giving birth to evolution and
why that resonates with me is because we
never had all the answers to what we
wanted to do but we had the imagination
to visualize what it will look like in
the future and then we had to just find
ways to plug those those gaps that were
still a bit hazy and I think that made
all the difference for us because just
because you don’t have a business plan
that’s you know a-to-z worked out at
every single point that’s not the thing
that’s going to get you there
it’s the determination to figure out
those big question marks that you know
exist so now we’re growing at what we
call a tribe of growers so all over the
world we’ve got people contacting us all
raising their hand saying yeah we like
the idea we think it’s needed and
somehow we want to either help you or or
fund you or or buy your product so the
theme of today is zero to one everybody
in this room everybody everywhere when
you think you’re starting at
zero if you look really really closely
there are a whole bunch of tiny weeny
little ones that you have and for
rahmanir myself i think when we look
back yeah we had no money and all that
kind of stuff but for example we had
families that were going to support us
and i sort of gloss over how hard it was
but you know we left for montreal and
left our kids behind left our wives to
look after the kids carry on their
full-time jobs and off we went to
Montreal five days a week for three
months so that was a really a big number
one to have to be able to do that ramen
has a background in agricultural
engineering from McGill so he
understands the mechanics of how a
greenhouse works so that’s a big win
right from the get-go and I have some
experience in business development from
a technology standpoint so I think all
that to say is that you never really are
at zero and we were determined that we
would never have a zero day every single
day we did something that would push
that ball a little bit further along so
we’ve reached the top of our first
number one our first mountain and I’m
pretty pleased to tell you that right
now we’ve raised seven figures and we’ve
got a team of 12 people which is a
pretty amazing thing for me to be able
and just to go off-script just a second
um I think it’s important to note that
the majority of our team are either
first or second-generation immigrants
and I’m really proud to say that we
we’re that collective so we haven’t
finished we’re going to keep going and
now we’ve got a new number one to get to
and which is really a much much bigger
girl we want to have our technology
throughout the world people growing all
over the place as quickly as we can but
we’re not scared because that’s exactly
the what we had to do 12 months ago
thank you very much [Applause]