“Regenerative farming has the capability not only to create healthy soil, healthy plants, and healthy people, but also to sequester carbon and address the legacy load, which is part of the solution to climate change.”
Julia Collins is CEO of Planet FWD, a company on a mission to tackle climate change by expanding regenerative agriculture adoption. The company is building a software platform for regenerative agriculture alongside a climate-smart snack brand.
Climate change is the most important and pressing issue facing our planet and the food we eat plays a significant role. Regenerative agriculture represents an environmentally thoughtful approach central to combatting climate change. Between the 1940s and 1970s, the Green revolution introduced new nitrogen-based farming practices that helped boost crop yields, but simultaneously destroyed soil. “Regenerative farming has the capability not only to create healthy soil, healthy plants, healthy people, but also to sequester carbon and address the legacy load, which is part of the solution to climate change.”
Moonshot snack brand is the first explicitly climate-friendly snack brand. On top of launching crackers as its first snack product, Moonshot helps other companies shift their operations towards a more planet-forward approach. This includes offering data and tactical recommendations other companies can use and implement in their production.
LISTEN AND SUBSCRIBE
SPEAKER
Julia Collins
Founder & Chief Executive Officer
Planet FWD
MODERATOR
Anthony Scaramucci
Founder & Managing Partner
SkyBridge
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
John Darsie: (00:07)
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to SALT Talks. My name is John Darsie. I'm the managing director of SALT, which is a global thought leadership forum and networking platform at the intersection of finance, technology, and public policy. SALT Talks are a digital interview series that we launched during this work from home period with leading investors, creators, and thinkers. And what we're trying to do on these SALT Talks is replicate the experience that we provide at our global SALT conferences, which we host annually in the United States and abroad. What we're trying to do on the talks and at our conferences is provide a window into the mind of subject matter experts, as well as provide a platform for what we think are big ideas that are shaping the future.
John Darsie: (00:51)
And we're very excited today to welcome Julia Collins to SALT Talks. Julia is a serial entrepreneur who realized that food was her calling as a young girl in San Francisco, where it was the epicenter of her community. She spent her career building food companies, having launched brands such as Mexicue, Murray's Cheese Bar, love Murray's Harlem Jazz Enterprises, which is the company responsible for the award-winning restaurant The Cecil. She later went on to co-found Zume Pizza, where she became the first black woman to co-found a unicorn company. When she became a mother, she knew she needed to find a way to bring delicious food to people in a way that helped heal the planet for everyone, including her son.
John Darsie: (01:35)
Today, Julia leads Planet Forward, which is a company on a mission to tackle climate change by expanding regenerative agriculture adoption. The company is building a software platform for regenerative agriculture, alongside a climate smart snack brand that will be bringing its first product, a cracker, to market later this year. I look forward to feeding that cracker ... We were talking before we went live. I have young children as well, Julia, so looking forward to that. In addition, Julia serves on the board of Black Girls Code and sits on the advisory council for Launch With GS, serves on the all-rays operating committee, and is an EIR for Cleo Capital, which our host Sarah Koontz founded today. She's an active angel investor focused on funding female entrepreneurs and BIPOC founders.
John Darsie: (02:25)
A reminder, if you have any questions for Julia during today's SALT Talk, you can enter them in the Q and a box at the bottom of your video screen on Zoom. And hosting today's talk, as I mentioned, is Sarah Koontz, the managing director and founder of Cleo Capital. And with that, I'll turn it over to Sarah for the interview.
Sarah Koontz: (02:42)
Thank you. Awesome. I'm so excited to have you here today, Julia. And I know you well, but as we jump in, I'm going to start with having me tell everybody who doesn't know you as well, how'd you get here? How did you discover regenerative agriculture? How did you discover food as a career? Tell us everything.
Julia Collins: (03:04)
Yeah. Well, it's also nice to see you, Sarah. So my journey here really begins with my grandparents. They migrated from the Deep South to the Bay area during the Great Migration to create a dental practice, actually, serving the black community during segregation. But the thing about my grandpa is he was so good as a dentist, and frankly, he was such a sweetheart, that everybody came to the practice, everybody from every race and every walk of life. And so I really grew up in this context in this family where we believe that not only was everyone equal, but everyone was worth serving.
Julia Collins: (03:43)
And as you could imagine, this kind of vibe, we were really a come one, come all kind of a family. And so say if you came to my house after high school, you would just walk right in the door. We didn't lock the door. And before you could get two feet, someone would offer you something to eat. So food has always been central to me as a medium for connecting with other people, as a medium for talking about important things, understanding of other cultures, I've always been obsessed with food. So it was very clear as a kid that I would be here, but the journey in between Korean was a bit circuitous. And I at one point thought that I would be a scientist, went off to study biomedical engineering.
Julia Collins: (04:22)
When it all actually came to a really perfect point for me in terms of clarity was, post business school, having a chance to be an intern for Danny Meyer when he was just building Shake Shack and understanding that I could actually merge my love of food with my love of technology to create a career for myself.
Sarah Koontz: (04:41)
That's amazing. That's amazing. So tell us a little bit about kind of what is regenerative agriculture, right? We'll start there just to sort of set the scene for a lot of the fun stuff we're going to get to talk about today.
Julia Collins: (04:56)
Yeah. So, so I'm going to get there, but I'm going to frame this really within the context of climate change, because I think it's such an important connection. And so I would argue, and I think many would agree, that climate change is the most pressing issue facing humanity. Social justice, racial justice, economic justice, everything is mixed into this idea that we have to take action on climate change. And so the reason why I got really excited about this field that we now call regenerative agriculture is that there's actually a relationship between the kinds of farming practices that we can use under this regenerative system and our ability to decarbonize and also draw down carbon.
Julia Collins: (05:41)
So what is regenerative agriculture? This is the term that we use for an approach to farming that helps to rebuild the health of soil, soil that's been degraded because of decades of dependence on heavy machinery and nitrogen-based inputs. And these were some of the technologies that were put forth during what we call the Green Revolution, this period between the forties and seventies, when we attempted to significantly boost yields, crop yields, and we did, to feed the planet, but we did so at the cost of our soil. So this approach to farming helps to rebuild the health of the soil, and as it does so, it helps to rebuild soil organic matter, which means that in the process of making the soil healthier, we're also drawing down carbon.
Julia Collins: (06:26)
And this is why folks get so excited about this kind of farming, this regenerative farming, because it has the capability not only to create healthy soil, healthy plants, healthy people, but also to sequester carbon and address the legacy load, which is part of the solution to climate change.
Sarah Koontz: (06:44)
And talk a little bit about .... really kind of geek out with me for a second and talk a little bit about carbon draw down, what is this? What does this mean and why does that matter?
Julia Collins: (06:56)
Yeah. So when we think about sort of the magnitude of the problem, 25 to 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions are coming from our food system; we've talked a little bit about why: heavy machinery, over-reliance on nitrogen-based inputs. Nitrogen is-
Sarah Koontz: (07:14)
Is it because the cows fart? I heard that. I read it on the internet.
Julia Collins: (07:19)
Yeah, absolutely. Livestock is absolutely part of it, but soil-based agriculture actually emits twice as much greenhouse gases as even livestock, the way we're currently farming, nitrogen as a soil amendment, fertilizer, pesticide, herbicide, fungicide. This nitrogen, when it's overused, starts to create nitrous oxide, and nitrous oxide is actually almost 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide. And so we absolutely have to address the issue with livestock through regenerative grazing or lessening our dependence on meat as a source of calories. But we also absolutely have to make huge changes to the way that we approach soil-based agriculture so that we can decarbonize.
Julia Collins: (08:07)
So the idea behind this is so powerful because not only does it create a framework where we can use our food systems to actually be agents for positive climate impact, but in rebuilding the health of the soil, we're also making the soil more resilient. So it isn't the case that we can completely stop climate change, nor can we undo everything that's happened. We will have to adjust. We will have to adapt as a society. But healthy soil, for every 1% increase in soil organic matter, you actually increase the holding capacity of the soil by 20 gallons per acre. So the soil becomes more spongy and resilient to the kind of extreme weather that we're seeing as a result of climate change.
Sarah Koontz: (08:53)
That's amazing.
Julia Collins: (08:54)
Was that nerdy enough?
Sarah Koontz: (08:56)
I love it. I love it. No, this is so helpful. And it's interesting because regenerative agriculture is something that we can't really see necessarily in our food, but Whole Foods last year said that one of their top trends for 2020, they did not weirdly have pandemics in there, but they said that one of their top trends was going to be regenerative agriculture. So talk a little bit about kind of how and why the broader sort of food world has gotten on board with this. Like, this isn't just a fringe idea of like crazy farmers.
Julia Collins: (09:34)
No, it absolutely isn't. I mean, when you ... I've looked at some recent surveys, including one that was co-sponsored with the Nature Conservancy, and when executives of top food companies are surveyed, they cite climate change as the single biggest threat, not only to their own health and their customers' health, but to their supply chains. And so most of the large food companies understand that they need to take action. What's exciting about what I see happening in the market, for example, General Mills making a million acre commitment to regenerative agriculture, Whole Foods naming regenerative agriculture is one of their top trends for 2020. And the examples go on. What's so exciting about this is we actually need the power of these very large companies modifying their supply chains to accelerate the kind of work that we're doing at Planet Forward, which is to also help smaller companies be able to create climate friendly products.
Sarah Koontz: (10:30)
I love that. So one more question about regenerative agriculture, and then we're going to talk about Planet Forward. So what do people do at home? Obviously this is an issue that primarily is about huge farmers and food companies. But if you have a backyard garden and you are like, "Oh no, I use fertilizer, that's bad," what do you do instead?
Julia Collins: (10:54)
Yeah. The mindset or the way to think about this is really to ... or if one wanted to do some research, really researching indigenous principles of land management, the kind of farming practices that have been used by indigenous populations around the world for centuries, that's a really good place to start. If one wanted to take a more academic approach, and in my world, we actually do soil testing in our backyards to see what's the best thing to grow. Growing food at home is really important. Another super important thing to do at home is to reduce food waste. Food waste, a friend of mine, Christine Mosley at Full Harvest, says food waste is the stupidest problem that we have on the planet, right?
Sarah Koontz: (11:37)
It's so American.
Julia Collins: (11:37)
It's wild. And something like 40% of all the food that's grown gets wasted. And you can imagine the carbon impact of all of that wasted food. So trying to reduce your food waste, growing a little garden at home, and really making plants the foundation of your diet, those are some of my best sort of climatarian tips.
Sarah Koontz: (11:58)
Yeah. I love that word. Wait, tell us about climatarian. The first time you told me that I died laughing, but I love it.
Julia Collins: (12:04)
Yeah. Well, when I gave birth to my son, I wanted to update my relationship to food and think about how food could be not only healthy for my body, but actually create a healthy climate. And I used to think of myself as a plant-forward eater. I started to think of myself as a Planet Forward eater, and that's where the name Planet Forward came from. But a climatarian is a lifestyle choice. It's someone who makes their consumption choices in alignment with the kind of climate that they want to live in.
Sarah Koontz: (12:31)
I love it. Climatarian. That's awesome. So, so Planet Forward, you kind of, walk us through ... Like, when did you start learning all of these things and how did ... Tell us about what Planet Forward is and how all of the stuff that you were learning in your journey there kind of led you to say, "Hey, this is a solution"?
Julia Collins: (12:53)
Yeah, there was something ... And I know a lot of people have experienced this, not just as a result of becoming a parent, but any major inflection point in your life where you just decide I actually really need to rethink my relationship to just about everything. Like, why am I on the planet? What am I doing? Why am I here? And for me-
Sarah Koontz: (13:14)
The small questions.
Julia Collins: (13:14)
The small questions, right? And for me, it became very clear that I needed to take action on climate change in order to be even just a moderately responsible parent. How could I leave a world to my son that was not as healthy as the one that I grew up in? That seemed crazy. So the first thing is I just became obsessed with climate change. The second thing is my obsession led to a tremendous amount of research and listening. And then I started to actually design action maps to climate action. That seemed like a good idea. So it was first that, Sarah. I just thought, yeah, I'll create a climate-friendly food movement. And then as I researched the problem, I realized that there were big opportunities around engaging consumers and then creating reliable data. And so that's where the company has begun to build from.
Sarah Koontz: (14:02)
I love it. So tell us about the snacks.
Julia Collins: (14:05)
Oh yeah. So we're launching a brand called Moonshot. This is a snack brand. It is the first explicitly climate-friendly snack brand, meaning on the front of the pack it says climate-friendly crackers. And the reason why we're hitting it so squarely on the nose is we really want to get consumers excited about this idea that they can be climatarians, that their food choices can help tackle climate change. So we're beginning with the line of crackers that are just delicious, but they're all sourced. They're sourced from ingredients that are grown using these regenerative practices that we've been chatting about.
Julia Collins: (14:43)
We also measure the scope one, two, and three emissions associated with producing the product, offset anything that we couldn't sequester, and the product is carbon neutral. So this is a carbon-neutral food product. And what's nice for the consumer is they now get to enjoy something that's delightful and delicious while also taking action on climate change and beginning to awaken into this more climatarian kind of living.
Sarah Koontz: (15:07)
That's awesome. And I mean, I think that's so important. It's awesome. We're both investors in a company called Zero that does something similar around sort of zero waste and grocery shopping, and by something similar, I mean, it makes it easy, right? We can all ... I was road tripping the other week across some of the US and I was struck by ... It's impossible to drink water on a road trip and not buy plastic bottles of water. You can buy glass bottles, but usually they're the wrong size to actually fit in your car, right? And a car accident, seems like it's probably not great for the climate either.
Sarah Koontz: (15:47)
And so it's just crazy how hard it is to make some of these better decisions. And the thing I love about Planet Forward's crackers is that it's going to make it easy. I can buy crackers and snacks literally all day long. And if that is fighting climate change and it is now my sacred duty to snack all day long, and I'm happy to do that. So that's what I love about it is most people want to help reverse climate change, but we need the support of companies to sell us products that do that because most of us, we don't have a green thumb. We can't go back to an agrarian society where we grow our own wheat with regenerative agriculture methods and then mill ourselves, and then turn it into crackers. Maybe we'll do that during season two of COVID this winter, but most of us don't have the time.
Julia Collins: (16:44)
Yeah, no, it does need to be easy and it does need to be accessible. And that's why we started with snacks. Snacks are a $605 billion global market. Something like 94% of consumers in the United States report snacking every single day and snacks often make up the bulk of our calories. So we started with something that was so accessible. But this idea of making it easy is so important. And this is why we actually decided to create software. So the initial idea was something very simple that I would have funded myself, which is let's create a climate-friendly snack brand. But I realized it was so hard, Sarah. It was so hard even for an entrepreneur who was very focused on it. And I thought, if it's this hard for me, how is anybody going to create climate-friendly food? And what was missing was this data. And so that's why we decided to actually create a tool that makes it easy for other brands to create climate-friendly products by giving them access to data and by giving them recommendations and tactical recommendations, actionable recommendations for how to improve.
Sarah Koontz: (17:47)
So if you're watching this and you are building a food brand you're distributed in a few different ... your local sort of Whole Foods or your local specialty grocers, what does this mean for you? Right? Where our food brands are vegan, we try to be climate friendly, but hey, we don't actually know. Right? What will the platform mean for those people in terms of actually being able to figure this out?
Julia Collins: (18:17)
Yeah. I mean, the question that you asked is really important, which is how am I doing in the first place? What's my baseline. And so the first tool that we're launching with the platform is this carbon assessment tool where you can actually get, at the menu item level or the product level, a very clear understanding of your current greenhouse gas impact and some other sustainability metrics. And then the next step is to say, okay, here's how I'm doing. How do I improve? And that's where we actually connect brands to ingredients that are lower carbon to packaging materials that are lower carbon to ingredients that are also grown using better sustainability practices and just really creating a playbook so that folks can move the ball forward.
Sarah Koontz: (18:59)
That's amazing. So we had a great question come in that my might refer to farming practices that predate even indigenous, and they mentioned, are some of these practices sort of on the micro scale, especially let's say similar to sort of some of the kind of biblical edicts around plant a field every seven years. Like, was Jesus the original climatarian?
Julia Collins: (19:25)
I mean, all of this wisdom is the wisdom that existed on the planet before the Anthropocene, you know? And much of the damage that's been done from the perspective of agriculture has really been done between 1940 and today. It isn't that since the beginning of time, humans didn't know how to farm. We did and we forgot, and now we need to relearn it. So whoever answered that [crosstalk 00:19:54]-
Sarah Koontz: (19:52)
... between that and plastic, maybe World War II should have just ended the planet because we have just ... like, the innovations that followed, while totally understandable in the moment, right? Because when you think about it, and I forget, and I'm sure you know, there was for a long time, a very real fear that by this point in time, there would be mass deaths from starvation because there just wasn't enough food. And so now I think sometimes it's easy to sort of go to a big box retailer and say all these big brands are what's wrong with the world, but your GMO's, they were created because there was a real fear that we were all going to starve to death.
Julia Collins: (20:36)
That is true. The wisdom of the day said that we needed to boost yields in order to feed the world, and that if we didn't, we would have massive, massive, massive extinction from starvation. That is absolutely the wisdom of the day. But now we have new wisdom and we have to act on it. Just as swiftly and decisively as we acted during the green revolution, we need to act now. And we absolutely can.
Sarah Koontz: (20:59)
So talk about that a little bit. Like, are we all going to starve to death if we start doing regenerative agriculture?
Julia Collins: (21:06)
Absolutely not. Even with a billion more people on the planet by 2030, absolutely not. The thing that we all worry about is that if we don't implement these kinds of agricultural practices, that we will starve because of desertification. If we continue to deplete the soils beyond the point that they're farmable, then where will the food come from? And vertical farming is a solution for some segment of some populations, but will not feed the entire world in the time that we need to get it done.
Julia Collins: (21:37)
What is so beautiful about this method of farming is that healthier soil is often more productive. And the reason why I say that is a healthy soil system creates a healthy crop, which is more nutrient-dense. What's the names we see these GMO, nitrogen-riddled crops that are huge and they look beautiful and they're very big, but they're nutrient-poor and so they're actually not giving as much nutrition to the humans that are eating them.
Sarah Koontz: (22:02)
It's like the giant strawberries and the giant blue ... I am a sucker for a giant piece of produce, and then you taste them and you're like, this kind of tastes like literally nothing. But it looks good on Instagram.
Julia Collins: (22:16)
Yeah. And sometimes you might even have the experience that you're still hungry after eating something that should have been so nutritious and filling. And it's because it's nutrient-poor and it's not grown in healthy soil. So all these things are solvable. I think they're sometimes so obviously solvable that people wonder, why hasn't this already been done yet? Yeah.
Sarah Koontz: (22:36)
I love that. I'm also going to use that as an opportunity to switch gears a little bit. So you're building an amazing company, an amazing space, but you're building it also in the tech industry with venture capital. And so let's start talking a little bit about that. So what was it like to raise money for a company like this? Were you spending a lot of time ... Some investors like me tracked you down at breakfast and said, "I don't care what you're doing next, take my money." But was everyone that smart? Or how did you explain regenerative agriculture to Silicon Valley?
Julia Collins: (23:17)
Yeah, it is very much the case that most of the folks that I talked to during my seed raise, and this is back in October, really this time last year, were not as aware of regenerative agriculture as a term or the field of climate tech that was related to agriculture. A lot of folks were focused on impossible foods and some direct air carbon capture and even some aforestation and reforestation companies, but not ...
Sarah Koontz: (23:46)
Yeah. We're going to colonize Mars. We don't even need this planet anymore. It's fine.
Julia Collins: (23:50)
Right. I actually just finished raising again, and this time almost everyone that I spoke to had heard of this. And so I think there's been a huge increase in awareness around the field. For many of us, that it is often the case that when you're pitching an investor, their evaluation or their framework might not include some things that are really important to you. So if someone doesn't have a pattern to match or a framework to work with to say it makes sense to make a bet on climate tech, then that often is a pretty tough pitch.
Sarah Koontz: (24:31)
There were a lot of kind of memes that went around earlier this year during COVID season one about all these people who were like, "Oh, I buy guns to protect my country." And it's like, "No, just wear a mask. We don't actually need your guns. You just need a mask." Sometimes the most impactful thing doesn't feel as dramatic, right? Like, asteroid mining to save climate feels really important. Bombing the ecosystem to create more range feels like very, wow, Iron Man. And then you're like, "Great. I just need you to eat these crackers." So is there sometimes a cognitive dissonance for people when you're like, "No, it actually just is as simple as this?"
Julia Collins: (25:09)
Yeah. It is wild. And one of the framings that I sometimes use in meetings is to imagine that the plants are robots. You say that carbon sequestration is related to plant photosynthesis, people just sometimes fall asleep. But if you say, imagine that there's a robot, that's commercially scalable, low cost, can adapt to any environment, that can actually suck carbon out of the air and bury it in the ground. They're like, "Really? What's that robot?" And you're like, "It's a plant."
Sarah Koontz: (25:40)
I love it. It's like the memes of like, "There's a miracle drug to fight COVID. Just kidding. It's a mask. Wear it." Right. I mean, it's Ockham's razor or whatever, right? Sometimes the best solution does not necessarily involve bombing the atmosphere to cause thunderstorms.
Julia Collins: (26:01)
It is sometimes the case that an investor invests based on your idea. In my experience, it's often the case that there are so many other factors that lead to the investment decision. And so even if somebody has to come along with you on the journey toward more climate awareness, if they believe that you're a founder that can get the job done, attract capital, build a team, that your timing's right, that your solution makes sense, then sometimes you can still get those deals. And I often still get those deals.
Sarah Koontz: (26:26)
Yes, you do. That's amazing. And so somebody else asked a really interesting question. How do we get multi-billion dollar corporations, who ... I'm a Baked Wheat Thins and Cheez-It person. This isn't sponsored content, I just have trash tastes in food. How do we get those big snack companies to pay attention to this? Are they paying attention to this? Because Planet Forward, Moonshot, your snack brand is going to be amazing, but it won't be the only crackers people eat. So how do we get other people to pay attention? How do we get big pretzel to care?
Julia Collins: (27:01)
Absolutely. So the consumer piece is really huge in this area and getting consumers just as excited about climate-friendly food as they are about organic food. So that's one. The other huge forcing factor or ... If I could wave a magic wand, I'd love for every major retailer in the country, from Target, to Walmart, to Kroger, to Amazon, and everyone in between to make commitments to a certain percentage of all of their inventory being certified climate-friendly or a climate-friendly buy. When we see those two kinds of things happening in the market, then I absolutely believe that even the legacy food companies will catch up. We do see [inaudible 00:27:42] at General Mills and Known and Unilever, so I don't mean to say that there isn't already a groundswell happening, but we need for everyone to get on board.
Sarah Koontz: (27:51)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you've looked at the variety, the mind-blowing variety of Doritos lately, it is clear that if consumers will buy it, they will make it for us. So I agree. That's awesome. So talk to me a little bit about fundraising in general. You are a black woman who's raised more money than any other black woman almost combined for your last company, and then now you're doing it again with this company. And so obviously the fundraising landscape for women, for people of color in our industry is not what it should be. But what are you seeing? How has this year kind of made you more hopeful, less hopeful? Is it all the same? What's going on?
Julia Collins: (28:46)
So when I put my investor hat on, I'm much more hopeful. I have the privilege of being a scout for Cleo Capital, as you know. Before I joined your program, I did a little bit of angel investing on my side. When I look at the incredible founders that are coming up right now, the deals that come across my desk ... my laptop, I don't have a desk. The ecosystem of BIPOC founders, female founders, intersectional founders is I think stronger than it has ever been. There's so many more venture-backable, highly scalable companies coming up right now. So with my investor hat on, I'm highly optimistic.
Julia Collins: (29:32)
Then I put my founder hat on and I heard so much talk around funds making big commitment commitments to wiring and hiring, but I'm not sure as we close the end of 2020 that many funds have made that commitment. I think there are many that have, but many more still that need to catch up or should catch up, or I hope will catch up. I haven't seen the data from this year, but coming into the year, it was something like less than 0.2% of all venture activity was related to founders who identify as black and female. 0.2, so almost zero. And so I just continue to beat the drum of asking the venture community to do the same thing that you're doing with your fund and so many of my investors are doing, which is to actually support BIPOC and female founders by investing in them, not create [inaudible 00:30:33] for them, but by actually investing in them.
Sarah Koontz: (30:34)
Yeah. Yeah. I was sitting with a very well-known female billionaire once who does stuff in this space. And she was like, "Do you need mentorship?" I was like, "No, I need money." And she's like, "Do you need education?" I was like, "No, I need money. I need money." You'd be shocked at how hard it is to pay your rent with mentorship. It's that? So make the wires, then the hire is our friend, Tiffany Bell says. That's awesome. So tell me a little bit about some of the companies you've invested in. I mean, I know, but tell everybody else.
Julia Collins: (31:03)
Well, we talked a little bit about Zero, this incredible online plastic-free grocery store. Just imagine as a result of the success of this company what impact will be able to have if everyone in the world had access to their groceries with zero plastic. [Asaleka Strazia 00:31:24], the founder, she is an absolute force of nature and just incredibly gifted. And so that is one of the companies that I'm tremendously excited about.
Julia Collins: (31:37)
There's another incredible company called Hamama, which is all about growing food at home. And the novel approach that Hamama took was actually to create technology and IP around a home garden. This is this genius team coming out of MIT led by Camille Richmond, who actually created a patented technology for a seed quilt, something that you could put in your house and you water it once, and all of the sudden, micro greens pop up and now they're expanding into scallions. And I love ... I mean, first of all, the business is growing like crazy and it's so well run, but the idea that we could engage consumers in this idea of growing food, health food at home, I think is incredibly powerful.
Sarah Koontz: (32:18)
Yeah, I am so bad at growing my own things, even though I'm obsessed with the idea. My mom's an amazing gardener and Hamama sent me some of their seed quilts and even I managed to do it. And the joke I always make about that is it really is kind of like a Chia Pet. You just put the seeds on and water it and it grows. And so if you had a Chia Pet growing up, you've already practiced in-home gardening.
Julia Collins: (32:48)
Yeah. I think it's actually impossible to not grow food using their system. So-
Sarah Koontz: (32:56)
One time it didn't grow, but it was because I didn't follow the directions and I didn't add the right amount of water. Another time I let it grow too long and it just kept growing and growing because I was traveling. But those are user errors because I'm really, really bad at it, but I still got some great micro greens to go on my salads. And it was so easy, and it's sort of a gateway drug where now I'm moving outside of the city of San Francisco, and I'm looking at my little backyard and I'm like on Next Door trying to find a gardener who can grow me kale. We'll see how it goes. Yeah.
Julia Collins: (33:30)
Well, let me know if you need help.
Sarah Koontz: (33:32)
Regeneratively. Thank you so much for joining us today with Julia Collins for our SALT Talk. We're here pretty frequently, and we're super excited to have you come hear from some of the top thinkers, investors, and people around the world. Special thank you to John, Anthony, and the team at SkyBridge. And we'll see you soon.