Transcript Synced · select any line to jump ▾ 0:00 Mick Liubinskas: You're listening to a DayOne.fm show. 0:06 Anastasia Volkova: What drives you to make bold moves, to build something that didn't exist before, to live, lead, and choose life with intention? Welcome to Perspective X. I'm Pauline Fatowi, and this is not your typical business podcast. Each episode, I get to speak to extraordinary entrepreneurs and leading innovators to unpack what truly fuels their journey. Not just the wins, but the inner work, the overlooked decisions, the mindset shifts, and the personal moments that sparked something bigger. This show is about the ripple effect of choice, the kind of deep accountability that lets us respond to life rather than react to it. Because when you realize everything is temporary, and you are the creator of your own experience, you start to play the game differently. So if you're curious about how people build meaning alongside success, how they evolve through challenges and shape the world with intention, this is your invitation to listen in. Perspective X, where we go beyond the highlight reel and into the moments that changed everything. Available now wherever you get your podcasts. 1:20 Speaker C: Are you building a SaaS business and looking to achieve compliance with SOC 2 and ISO 27001 or other security and privacy frameworks? 1:28 Speaker D: Compliance can unlock major growth and build essential customer trust, but let's face it, it's usually time-consuming and expensive. 1:33 Speaker C: And like really kind of a pain. That's where Vanta comes in. Vanta automates up to 90% of customer compliance tasks, making you audit-ready fast and saving you up to 85% of the associated costs. Plus, Vanta scales with your business, offering a market-leading trust management platform to continuously monitor compliance, unify risk management, and streamline security reviews. Join 7,000 global companies, including Atlassian and Dovetail, that trust Vanta to build and prove their security in real time. 1:59 Speaker D: And for our listeners, Vanta is offering 10% off. 2:02 Speaker C: Just go to vanta.com/first. That's vanta.com/first. 2:12 Mick Liubinskas: Hi everyone. Welcome to the Climate Tech Podcast by Climate Salad, The Mix, where we talk about stories of people building these big, amazing climate tech solutions. Today we're going to be speaking to Anastasia Volkova from Regrow. And I've been working with Anastasia for many years and it's been amazing to see that incredible journey. What one thing I love about this podcast is how it just tracks this incredibly complex system and data, and it just brings it down to helping a farmer make a better decision on a daily basis. What are your thoughts, Charlotte? 2:46 Speaker C: I think Anastasia is incredibly inspiring, and we often celebrate these huge milestones like the $50 million raise that she had recently. And, you know, to think of Regrow in just that context of just a huge raise is to dismiss the incredible solution she has with Regrow. The power to empower farmers on the land to make better decisions, to be those climate activists. You know, agriculture is responsible for a quarter of our global emissions, and we're not— we can't reduce that effort. We have to do more of it to feed a growing population, and it's going to take all the solutions. So I loved learning more about Anastasia's solution. 3:28 Speaker D: Fantastic. 3:28 Mick Liubinskas: Let's listen to what she has to say. 3:32 Speaker D: Great to be here with you guys. As you already heard, the listeners, the introduction, I'm Dr. Anastasia Volkovil. I started the company originally called Lurosat in Australia 6 years ago, which after 2 mergers, acquisitions with other wonderful companies has become a leader in decarbonizing agriculture under the brand Regrow Ag. And I can't wait to tell you more about it. 3:59 Speaker C: Anastasia, can you tell us more about Regrow's solution that empowers farmers to, to fight climate change? 4:08 Speaker D: So the way to think about climate change generally, you think about industries that are emitting, industries that are not very positive for the environment. And unfortunately, agriculture in its conventional industrial form ended up on the list of those industries. So about a quarter of emissions or down to 11%, depending on the country or the metric you use to quantify. Out of all of emissions comes from agriculture. And so from the industry that we expect to actually heal the planet and feed us and nurture the land and the waterways that through stewardship give us the opportunity to actually live, given us nourishment. So the problem really is not in agriculture or in nature. The problem is in the system incentives that has been structured in a way that the farmers needed to move to more monocultures, to the use of maybe synthetic fertilizer, as opposed to running a more comprehensive, more complex, and therefore harder to scale operation that would be a bit more self-sufficient. An example would be having livestock on the farm whilst you're actually growing crops, which is a beautiful but also quite a complex to manage system. And a lot of farms in Australia actually are mixed cropping and grazing. But in other countries where the agriculture is at a larger scale, it's Brazil and the US, that is much— it's a rare case to have this mixed system. So how can we enable farmers to actually move to something that's more positive for the environment? And how can agriculture in a way earn back its good name to support the climate action? Actually, it's not that difficult it turns out from the perspective of what needs to be invented and what needs to be done. In this case, we don't need to invent, you know, additional rocket science. Yes, soil science is complicated, but in the essence, going back to more traditional inclusive methods of farming that keep the soil covered, that keep the rotation very diverse of crops that are grown, or keep the animals on the land as opposed to really creating two separate systems where the crops are grown and where the animals are raised in different places. And then. That creates obvious challenges and issues with how that can be circular in its own right. So farmers often transitioning to what they would call a more climate-proof or climate-smart way of farming, which would also sometimes is called regenerative agriculture. And so the method of farming that in its own way helps to restore the environment, helps to restore those soils and lands. On which the food is produced in a number of ways that it's grown or raised as animals. And agriculture can actually become net positive and receive not only itself, but also help the, the, the climate fight in reducing the impact of maybe other industries that are not as ready or as readily available to transition to the climate positive. Some industries, as you of course know, need new source of material invented or new energy storage sources invented. Whilst in agriculture, we actually have to just go back to the methods that we already practiced many years ago, but also reinvent our financial and insurance systems, our supply chains to enable that transition. But it's right there. The methodology is there. The science is showing that it's working. And a lot of farmers are following it and even more are joining this kind of coming back to— 7:50 Mick Liubinskas: It's amazing. So much about agriculture that a privileged person like me has been kind of hidden. You know, I only would engage in when I buy a product in the, in a store and 90% of the, all the hard work and the complexities is kind of hidden from me. But can you help bring to life for our listeners your product for your customers? How does it work? How do they engage with it? And how does it help them? 8:13 Speaker D: Yes, absolutely. So back from that example, you can actually go to a store and buy certain types of cereals that would have the Regrow logo at the back, and they would tell a story about how the brand is using Regrow science and technology to work with farmers to point them in a direction of how to reduce emissions. So effectively, we offer cloud-based software as a service solution That is very heavily science and data powered. So we produce data layers. You can think of them as maps. They're truly maps. We map how the adoption of regenerative practices has been changing over the years, where there has been a lot of adoption, in which areas has been little adoption. We also pass that information through the impact models that model climate, crops, soils, sometimes together, sometimes as a combination of models. And we are able to see the estimated impact, both historical, present, and potential future impact. So we're able to answer questions, what has the impact of this commodity growing in this area been for the last 3 to 5 years? Because, you know, of course, weather is not static. So the impact is different when you make decisions, you need to adjust for that. But also we are able to show what the path for effectively lowering the emissions profile of agricultural commodities can be for a particular geography. And what's so unique about what we do, this is an area that is becoming quickly regulated. So, uh, even the public markets are quickly starting to demand publicly traded corporations to demonstrate their commitment to climate-tolerant future, climate-proof future, and they need to declare where the emissions come from. So often when you're picking up that box of cereal from the shelf, it means that most of the emissions were actually on the farm or even before when the inputs, maybe it was synthetic fertilizer, when they were produced. So understanding the use of those resources, understanding the impact in the past and present, as well as modeling the future pathways enables our customers, mostly those will be big— those are our big food and ag companies that bring the food to shelves and plates to see which levers they can pull for transformation. And they would enable farmers to have access to our software and they would effectively pay them for that transformation. 10:50 Speaker C: When you say there's labels in, in grocery stores, I know Regrow is across 45 different countries. Are you seeing consumer behavior towards these regenerative farming practices, these farmers who are on the ground helping to fight climate change? Is, is there consumer demand greater in different countries or where are the trends? And now I'm thinking, I'm looking for this when I'm in the grocery store. 11:16 Speaker D: Yes, absolutely. So there's actually research that professional organizations share that shows that the sustainability-aligned or climate outcomes-aligned products are growing double digits while Whilst the normal category products will be growing single-digit percentage growth points a year. This is very significant for the segments of the, say, grocery aisle that usually simply do not grow more than single digits. So the opportunity to truly embrace climate action, truly support the communities of farmers to improve resilience, is actually becoming the imperative. condition for business going forward. And consumers really understand that. They understand if we're being extractive in how we want to source or how we want to grow food. It's challenging. Of course, I've not met a farmer that thinks that way, but sometimes the system forces certain decisions to be made in a more simplistic but scalable fashion that actually is not optimal for the environment. And they need to get help from often the consumers being able to either pay a premium or recognize a brand that is doing that important work so the brand can pay the farmers through, say, using a solution like Regrow to estimate the outcomes and to truly support the farmer to make a difference. That transition is what we're seeing consumers play an important role in. 12:47 Mick Liubinskas: I'd love to dig into something that Charlotte raised there about the differences around the world that there are. There are some technologies which are kind of obvious, you know, you don't have a petrol car, have an EV. Growing food is so complicated, but important because it feeds people, but it also economically for a lot of the, a lot of the people that we need to have a just transition for climate, it is their, their livelihoods, a lot of small plot holders. And they, they may not have access to information and satellite data and all these things. And I have never thought about it until you talked about it, but is there opportunities to help them kind of leap forward to better practices rather than following the factory farming models that I've been through, I guess? Yeah. How do you as an organization with this global pressing problem deal with the complexities across so many different geographies and such complex supply chains? 13:42 Speaker D: I guess that's why Regrow ends up being the leading solution in the market because we do have the model that is globally applicable. And the key aspect of it is truly being able to handle local soil types, local weather conditions, local agronomic or kind of farming practices. We have a concerted effort to bring the developing markets on par with the developed markets as far as the availability of the data and such solutions go. We have a multi-year program with the Gates Foundation and our partners, One Acre Fund and University of Nebraska-Lincoln. to bring decision support to Sub-Saharan Africa. Have multiple programs through USAID and others in, in Asia. And those truly are different conditions to what you would find in Australia or Europe or Brazil, Argentina for that matter. But it's not, it's equally as important to enable that data on that transition. Often that, uh, support comes from. maybe nonprofit sectors first, where the market needs to get its first foot in the door with the adoption of digital, and then it starts growing from there. It's true that it's truly important to have that transition to be just for those people. So many of those farming communities are female-led breadwinners on a daily basis. That is exactly their livelihood, as well as the support of a huge global population using those products. Food and fiber, and there are luckily pathways that technology can unlock in the costs being not scaling exponentially with kind of the number of acres, right? There's economies of scale here that those markets can really benefit from that makes it possible and enables them to get access to these solutions. And it's in the works. 15:32 Speaker C: I do love the agri-tech solutions area because we are going to do And we will need to do more of it, not less of it, to feed this growing population and to support these livelihoods. And as you mentioned, Anastasia, a lot of them are women. And I wasn't aware of that. I think typically I think of Australia as, you know, men on the land with chinos and a blue collared shirt and a kubra. But, you know, the world is global. This challenge is global. And I wanted to delve into your experience and how you came up with this unique solution. You are a global citizen, but also you, you studied space tech and you think about solutions for the land. You go, oh, you must go to the land. You must be part of that. But actually by studying space, you can benefit planet Earth. Can you talk to us about your, your background and how you arrived at Regrow? 16:24 Speaker D: Yes, absolutely. I, I think from a very early age, I wanted to find a solution to the climate crisis that I would really be able to get behind and bring something unique that I understood that I wouldn't be, you know, so out of confidence and out of breath when I would be working on it. Farming for someone who was born in Ukraine is, is pretty natural. You see it around, you go to the market, you know, the people that maybe grow a percentage of the food that your family buys or. Even there is some hobby farming happening. So I think for me, that industry generally was something that when you look and do kind of your research and what aerospace can help do, there is the area where we're looking at the extraterrestrial exploration where a lot of the innovation actually gets built for space, but then gets applied on Earth for human health, for planetary health. And those truly are the keys. But then if you're born in Europe, the space agency there is more focused on the Earth observation and really looking at protecting the planet rather than exploring other worlds. We kind of want to, you know, it's a perspective that I bring sometimes that I want Plan A to work. I don't wanna be working on Plan B. I want this planet to stay here for my children and, and many generations to come. And I think if you look at how do you apply the knowledge and the data and the insights that comes from that the information that comes collected from satellites, whether they're weather satellites or imaging satellites looking at crops, you quickly, pretty quickly see that majority of the land you're really imaging is agriculture land. And that is part of the story. So I wouldn't say, you know, that is like the core of the solution. It's part of the information that I think we can bring to the key decision makers to shift how they make investments to make them more climate positive and— Seems like a detour that you need to go to space to look at Earth, but it's a great vantage point, wouldn't you? 18:26 Mick Liubinskas: Yeah, absolutely. I, I still on my bucket list to go and have a look at that one day from, from space, but not because I'm leaving the planet, but because I'm just loving being here. So fingers crossed about that one. Something I'd love to dive into around that is the data. The, something I've really noticed is obviously is as climate change is affecting us, the, the past data is becoming less reliable. And, and you're developing brand new data that's applying models. You're talking about 3 different complexities around data to arrive to a decision which a farmer can use to do, make, take a different action. Yeah. How can you talk to us a bit about how you try to process that complexity of data and bring it down to something which is actionable? 19:13 Speaker D: I think it always starts with what is a human decision here? Like, it's not really about the story that the data is telling because we only need so much information to make a decision. It's really important to understand a decision. So we would help them plan by giving them the projected outcomes, maybe the first time that they're seeing an estimate of the emissions profile on their land based on this modeling, based on this data collection. If they have data, they can add it to the system. I think what's fascinating for them is looking at what happens, what are the potential scenarios, what is the assumption that model makes? Are those assumptions true? Agriculture is so incredibly personal. So we kind of provide a framework and I often like to refer to it as a decision support system. We don't provide answers. We provide the engine that helps you get the answers, but you need to know what questions you're asking. And good software should be, you know, good workflow. So of course we need to make it simple. For them to add their data, to customize a scenario to what they know is true when they land, and then get the answers that are informative. The same thing applies, and we're not just looking at the farmers that are an incredibly important user group for our software, but also at the companies that are taking climate action that need to understand how effective their programs have been and how to make decisions around various active programs, how to get on the path to net zero. what investments are required. 20:43 Speaker C: I did wanna ask about the empowering farmers to reduce emissions and understand their emission profile in the different scenarios. Could you talk about the, the ability for the agricultural sector to also sequester carbon? Is, is that a possibility for these growers? 21:02 Speaker D: Yes, that is definitely one of the interesting topics that a lot of producers are looking into. I would say Biologically, it's a process that effectively means that the plants are pulling the carbon out of air where there's too much of it and are using it as a building block to build its roots, to effectively build better microbial communities in the soil, to enrich the soil by pulling that carbon out of the air and increasing the, um, organic carbon content in the soil. That process is catalyzed by rainfall. It's catalyzed by good crop rotation. It's catalyzed by using no-till farming practices, which means that you are planting without cultivating or turning over the soil. That disrupts the process that microbial communities are building under the soil surface. And because of all of these aspects of what the texture of the soil is, what the climate is. The potential for carbon sequestration in the soil is very localized. So you would have a much higher potential in higher rainfall zones, a little bit lower potential or a steep or, or less steep sequestration curve in drier areas. And this is not different from a general process of accruing nutrients when you have good crop rotation, good rainfall. So— Yes, of course, the farmers are able to access that curve as a part of their natural system that if they enhance it, those are the levers they can pull. They can reduce the amount of inputs they put into the system and enhance it to a point where it's healthier and therefore is building more organic carbon in the soil, improving the soil texture, quality, water-holding capacity, which then become vital to becoming really resilient against some of the weather challenges that we have been having for the last few years, right? The endless floods. Followed following the drought, and then no one even knows what's gonna happen now. So those regenerative farming techniques, those no-till cover croppers, really they're reaping the benefit now. And that soil organic carbon is what enriches, enriches the soil. I would say that the farmers need to look at it holistically, of course, and look at the nutrition, nutrition profile and at the water holding capacity. And soil organic carbon is kind of like a parameter you can measure. No, but then the whole outcome of the system is what you're looking for. 23:32 Speaker C: Anastasia, farming was like this back in the day, and this was, oh, but then there was this sort of scaling opportunity and it became, you know, mono crops and, and those practices were lost. Do you know the profile of agriculture generally and how much this percentage is going back to these regenerative practices, going back to this way and using the regrow tools? 23:58 Speaker D: That's spot on. That's exactly how, what we have as a, as a business model, right? Like we produce those data layers by mapping the practice adoption and it's mapping it historically and at present and into the future. So we're actually seeing these e-cars convert in near real time. We can actually see people adopting the practices. Again, this is all of course anonymized. We don't know who farms that land. We just look at the landscape and we see what the impacts are. We help people see that data in that abstracted and anonymized format at a group state. So you'd be looking at the state metric, or you'd be looking at the valley or watersheds. You wouldn't be looking at a particular farm unless you farm it, or unless you've contracted with someone who you'd share the data with and you'd say, these are my fields, you can look at them because then you can make the payment of premium to me because I'll prove to you that I'm doing good practices. I would say we're starting to see the reverse trend starting to happen, but of course there's a lot more financial support that is holistic. So, you know, having the banking system recognize how important these resilient practices are to provide cheaper loans to farmers, cheaper insurance, and at the same time support the food companies that are trying to front the cost by bringing this ecosystem on board, because of course in this inflationary environment where we have the the great disruption of the food system, it's hard to expect a certain group of companies to fund it alone. It needs co-investment. And that co-investment is what will really move the needle. We see areas where there's good incentives from the government to adopt these practices already being at a much higher adoption than in areas where there hasn't been investments available. So there's definitely the public and private component there at play as well. And we see that with the investment amount becoming more available, more and more farmers are indeed looking to, to convert, to become more resilient. 25:58 Mick Liubinskas: Yeah, I'm curious about that on the where agriculture is globally in the journey from past practices to sustainable practices. Are they, are they still early and there's a bit of fear and risk in it or are they progressed and they're like, we get it, we've got to get there. Let's just get, get to it. Like what, what's your sense of the, of the, I know it's hard globally. There's, I'm sure there's a lot of variety, but where, where's your sense overall of where we are in that journey? 26:30 Speaker D: Absolutely. And it's very country specific because it is incentive specific and climate specific. So it ends up being that a particular location in the world would be Just more, more suited for some practices. So a large percentage of Canadian arable lands and Australian arable lands in different proportions, but are already using no-till farming because that is what enables you to preserve more water in the system in drier periods. But some of those environments in Canada, for example, are not suitable for cover cropping. Essentially, cover cropping practice means that you harvest the main crop, and then you plant another crop that'll be there over the local winter period. And if the winter's too cold, you are not really able to get the establishment of that crop and the benefit of it to the soil or, uh, to even the livestock system that you may have in other, uh, geographies. So those things are local. And in those areas, I would say those practices are seen as mainstay. They haven't been maybe 20 years ago. That transition has really happened in the last 20 years. So maybe in the US it'll happen in the next 5 to 10 years. But certainly in the European Union, in Australia, there's practices or parts of this regenerative system of practices that are very well adopted. And there are some that are not as well adopted because maybe they haven't been adjusted. And now the new crop is becoming available that maybe is a cover crop that is well suited for that environment whilst there wasn't one before. So there's a lot of innovation is happening in this space, even in machinery, right? Because maybe you weren't able to plant rice in any other way and grow rice in any other way, but actually using new types of rice and new methods of planting it that enable you to use less water is transformational because you actually are reducing emissions from methane whilst the plant stands in the water as it's growing during the different growth stages. And when it doesn't need to be in the water and you're not running that risk of kind of having a plant in conditions where methane emissions would be generated, like you, you are addressing so many problems in one, and that innovation is happening now. I think in different countries they're leading this in different ways, but I think we all need to become more holistic to get on the path where agriculture is generally more self-sustained. Through the source of its inputs and the use of its outputs. 29:00 Speaker C: I mentioned before, you are a truly global citizen and your product is across 45 countries. How, how and where was the fastest adoption of Regrow solution and how do you expand globally and how have you been able to do that so well? So quite a few questions there. 29:22 Speaker D: Yeah, so we have a few solutions and some of them are globally available and some of them are offered to key markets. Um, so the way that that would work is obviously to get the solution out, we are considering how can we make it so scalable that we don't have to put too much effort into calibrating it and adjusting it to every single environment. So agronomic decision support tools, they're more crop related, and if we're able to get the global soil and weather data. Plus of course the local remote sensing, we're able to do a decent job in translating the information to a locally suitable context that then means that people in 45 countries can use it. Some of that is achieved through global partners. So we would make partnership with a global organization that wants its group of customers that are agronomists and farmers to have access to these solutions. And that's how we would access that scale through them. Usually as a business, we try to often always stay in line that we are the strongest in. So if we're really strong in delivering our solution in science, this means that we should really try to leverage the existing channels that agricultural market has built or the food market that has built that we can be a part of because we are delivering the value. To the company that's initially built that channel and built that distribution network. So that's, that's one angle to it. And the other angle is some of the solutions do require more calibration and validation in local markets. And in those cases, we— Work with our biggest customers. We also look at our company strategy and look at the impact that we can make and try to really frontload those areas, those markets, those ecosystems where we can make the most impact within our lifetimes. And the ability to scale the technology is again, through partnerships with those global agro-food companies, with the groups of growers that they can really spread the tech. You kind of, as a startup, you need to know what you're good at. And as a scale-up, you really have to play that card. You really have to say, this is what we're committed to. And this is how we work with our— partners in go-to-market. For us, it means really leveraging them to go through their distribution channel as opposed to trying to get in the door everywhere by ourselves. There's not enough of us and we wouldn't be running the most, you know, efficient and sustainable business as a result. And we want to be true to our mission. 31:55 Mick Liubinskas: Love it. That's awesome to see so much global growth. Bringing it way back to Spot, there's enormous ambitions and momentum you've got. For you as an individual working in this climate space, is there something you've done in your life that like supports positive climate action that you maybe is an interesting one that you want to share or an important one? 32:18 Speaker D: Very interesting perspective, but it's not very obvious. I have a very personal way of supporting climate action or being able to get in a place where we can live. Close to the land. We have a little piece of land and my mom practiced regenerative agroforestry because they knew what— before I knew any of those words and getting her out of Ukraine and to live with me in the US now and giving her the ability to do that again and in a different way, in absolutely harsh conditions is really the best learning lab for me to continue to be very grounded in. how hard these things are, how timing plays a really important role, but how you can make monumental changes if you're dedicated, even over a short series of steps in a short period of time, you can really make a big impact. Of course, it's easy to get impact when it rains and it recently rained a lot. So a lot of visible change. So it's a very personal climate action opportunity where even everything from the household gets used into that, in that regenerative system outdoors. And I think it's something that many people probably have more access to through community gardens that they know they can really be part of this small solution that can be practiced and worked into their daily routine. 33:44 Speaker C: I couldn't agree more. I love, I love using my old vegetables and growing them again. The kids get such a kick out of it. Like, look, the celery's now growing again. And that's my tiny micro level of regenerative farming. 33:57 Anastasia Volkova: It is. 33:57 Speaker C: So tiny. Anastasia, you have such a wealth of knowledge in terms of climate solutions and climate facts. What is an interesting climate fact that you didn't know but were amazed to find out on your entrepreneurial journey? 34:12 Speaker D: There is a number of facts that I think are just incredible that enumerate the current impact of what we have. I would generally. Recommend reading Bill Gates's book, How to Avoid the Climate Disaster, because it dives into some really awesome new solutions for certain industries. I don't think it dives as much into agriculture outside of livestock specifically, but generally it's a really good book to understand what a green premium is. And then when you start combining these concepts that we need to remove 51 gigaton of CO2 equivalent out of the air, which I didn't know that there was such a specific number. And of course we can say, according to different accounts, that number may change, but I think we as people are wired now to think that if there's a goal, we can set the goal and we can make the path to the goal. It's very empowering. And being able to answer the question of what is the percentage of those 51 tons you can take down, it's very important and very motivating to look for really impactful solutions and climate Thanks. 35:20 Mick Liubinskas: That's, I agree. I think also I would encourage people to look at Drawdown, the combination of Drawdown, the book, because it does go into the actual value of silver pasture and regenerative agriculture and that the importance of that as well. I think both those combined I found really, really compelling. You've been on an incredible journey as a founder and as a scientist. Is there advice that you'd like to give to entrepreneurs who are pursuing climate solutions that might help them in their journey? 35:48 Speaker D: The advice that I would give like a younger self would be to get on with the inevitability of the need of climate action sooner. When I was 16, I was thinking, okay, but the world seems to be on fire. The adults don't seem to be noticing what is going on. And there is no path for me to even work on this. I need to go and get a technical degree so I am suited to work on challenging problems in the world because I think that's how we'll arrive to impact. And eventually it happens, but I'm just amazed at the fact that now, you know, not that many years later, we got to a point where we actually have an emerging climate tech industry as a part of startup segment of industries. And the ability for people to choose to work on climate and choose the career in climate is, is urgent. It is an option right now. I think the ability for climate founders to really see that and use that to attract the best talent into the space to work on these solutions to these existential problems is really an advice and encouragement I would give. You know, there's so much good startup advice that good books give, of course. that I can just refer to, those— The Hard Thing About Hard Things, you know, in that book, there's many more great things that I would come up with, but I would say, you know, read great startup founder books that seem authentic to you. There's definitely enough of them, but also in the day to day, know that we can get more people working on climate solutions than ever before. And tomorrow it'll be more than it was today. 37:32 Speaker C: You clued onto the climate crisis earlier than, than most when you were 16. What today gives you hope, Anastasia? 37:42 Speaker D: What gives me hope is that we finally are not running away from the fact that it's a problem and we are very proactively and thoughtfully starting to invest in the solution. I think seeing those solutions really take place, seeing the EV revolution, the electrical cars on the, electric cars on the road. After not that many years of them being in development and adoption. I really hope that we learn from decarbonization off the grid, from those investments we already made, from decarbonization of transportation, what we can advance and apply to all the other industries. And it gives me such an immense amount of hope and encouragement that these are the solutions that we can use today. We can electrify our home, we can go off the grid even. relatively easily in the countries that we're currently sitting in, and likely people are listening to us everywhere in the world indeed. Yes, there are challenges, there are places where it's more challenging, but just seeing how available these solutions are and remembering how they weren't even a mainstay, they weren't a piece of conversation that a new homeowner or someone buying a vehicle would consider because it wasn't an option. And now— it's almost not an option to consider something else. I just find it so encouraging, and I think we can get more industries to join this new status quo to be climate positive by design. 39:06 Mick Liubinskas: Great. I love it. You touched on something about hiring great people into your team, and, and I know that can be both challenging and rewarding. Some people talk to Climate Salad about, I'd love to work in climate, but I don't understand sustainability or climate science, like, is, is that a necessity? Do you need all kinds of skills? Can you talk about hiring a great team into, into Regrow? 39:31 Speaker D: One of the great sustainability leaders, Gina Owens, who recently was at Danone and she is now on a new adventure. I saw her posting recently and she said, you know, every job is a sustainability job. And I just love that. And I think you can find a mentor, it's like Tina, out there who've dedicated decades over decades of careers in their life to really enable us to stand on the shoulders of them as giants and to really make a difference. And now we got to a point where we need all sorts of skills with, you know, even Regrow employs more software developers than scientists right now, right? It's just how it is when you're building software. I do need to know climate science to the T to be able to build software solutions that are great and reliable and are cloud-based. To an extent, you will learn it if you're going to build those. But also there's a lot of solutions that are emerging that actually look a lot more like mainstream tech. And I was just citing that to the team and to our board recently earlier this year that I'm so glad that we, as a part of the industry and specifically as a company, got to a place where we are enterprise SaaS. Yes, it's great that we have an impact, but we don't have to have such specialized people come and work for us. Of course, we will always hire soil scientists. We'll always hire great agronomists. We'll always hire radar satellite imagery experts that are going to lead the charge. But we also are building product and building cloud software, just like any other company out there, supporting customers using it with great materials and marketing and customer success. And I'm just giving that as an example because I believe other companies in climate tech actually are growing right now. Like how amazing it is in the times of greatest layoffs this year to be able to say that this industry can afford to grow and grow into something that truly builds the resilience of, of the sectors of the economy. I think that's a great job search to be able to rely on the decorrelated trend. That is more resilient and is certainly having a positive impact. So all sorts of skills make for sure. 41:49 Speaker C: And I love that it's to fight climate change. We talk about degrowth, but actually in this sector, it's unapologetically growing and getting bigger because the impact is bigger and more positive. Anastasia, it's always such a pleasure to delve into your mind and hear about your solution and hear about your journey and, but particularly about the farmers that you're empowering all over the world to be climate change and climate positive action warriors. Farmers often get a bad rap with climate activism, but you are definitely changing that for them to be the solution owners. 42:26 Speaker D: I would just like to, to share that I think people often see the spokesperson, but I just really want to acknowledge all the real doers. And changemakers, the team at Regrow, the board of Regrow, and most importantly, those farmers that are producing the food, the companies supporting them. Those are real climate activists, and I'm just so privileged to, to really serve them with my relentless energy wanting to get this solution through and out to scale. 42:58 Speaker C: We thank you for that relentless energy. Please Keep it up. 43:02 Mick Liubinskas: Yes, please keep it up and please keep sharing. You've been, again, a wonderful support for all of the entrepreneurs in Climate Salad who are building these climate solutions. Keep growing your inspiration and it is about the whole team and it is about a collaborative effort between multiple companies. There's not one big solution that's gonna solve everything for everybody. So thank you so much for sharing again today. It's been great hearing the update. And hopefully we'll see you back in Australia soon. And thank you so much for sharing your story today. 43:31 Speaker D: Thanks so much for having me and cheers to more people working on climate. Listen to the Unfunded podcast brought to you by the Day One Network and hosted by me, tech writer Joan Westenberg. We're sharing the no-holds-barred untold stories from entrepreneurs who have decided to build a business on their terms. I'll be interviewing successful founders and operators on the grit and ingenuity it takes to build and scale independent startups without the support of traditional venture capital funding. Subscribe to the Unfunded Podcast now, wherever you get your podcasts.
