How Grow New York Turns Food System Ideas Into Investable Start-Ups with Jenn Smith

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

All right. Today I'm back with my special guest co-host, Kristen Shaner. Kristen, say hello.

Speaker 1 0:07

Hello.

Speaker 0:08

And today we have the pleasure of speaking with Jen Smith, who is the director of. Well, you know what? Why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself? Because I looked at your title and and it's uh it's a bit of a word salad, and I don't want to fumble it.

Speaker 2 0:21

So please, is it? Hmm. I, if it's a salad, it's a composed salad. Uh it's I'm I'm Jen Smith, and I am the director of food and ag innovation programs at Cornell University's Center for Regional Economic Advancement.

Speaker 0:39

I definitely would have tripped

Meet Jen Smith At Cornell

Speaker 0:41

over that. 100%.

Speaker 2 0:43

I can unpack it if you need me to.

Speaker 0:45

Uh yeah, take it, take a minute and just kind of, you know, I would like people to have an understanding of who you are and what you do, et cetera, et cetera. So please, floor is yours.

Speaker 2 0:55

Thank you. Um, yes. So I work for Cornell University. I lead programs that come from a variety of different funders, but my biggest program is a New York State-funded food and ag startup competition program. And um, I administer it on behalf of the state through Cornell, and it is for startups working anywhere in the food system, from the furthest upstream, soil health technologies, all the way down to a food item that you or I would pull in off a shelf in a grocery store. The idea being that by drawing innovative entrepreneurs' solutions to food systems challenges into upstate New York, we're making agriculture more stable as an economic driver in the region, which it's been forever. So I work in economic development. My area of special focus is food and ag, and I do it in the context of New York state-funded programs administered through Cornell University.

Speaker 2:06

Makes sense. So uh Grow New York, tell us a little bit about the organization, what the goal is.

Speaker 2 2:16

Yeah. So Grow New York is this state-funded program that I've been talking about. We uh kind of convene the existing resources in the region: innovation, research, uh, farms and food businesses. And we are using kind of the weight of those resources to draw new startups in. We run it as a business accelerator and competition. So you apply, we accept you, we put you through a 10-week remote accelerator where we help you connect into the capital, the operational, the human resources

How Grow New York Works

Speaker 2 2:56

that are available here, strategic partners, that sort of thing. Uh, and then at the end of that 10-week period, you pitch how you can grow your business and grow the regional economy. Um, at a live event, it's a summit where we bring together members of the ecosystem for you know provocative conversations and some networking in addition to the pitches themselves. During the pitches, we identify a $1 million top prize winner, two $500,000, and four $250,000 prizes. So it's a big kitty, right? We're giving away $3 million a year. We're not giving it away, we're investing it. So we take an equity stake in exchange for this investment, and then we work with you to help you accomplish those goals over the next 12 months. You know, we work with 20 startups a year, seven win investments. Our hope is that the accelerator program has been rewarding enough that the 13 that don't take home investments are still in some way going to engage in the region. And we're not looking for startups to fully move into the region because we know that where you get your mail and where your kids go to school is A, you know, probably the product of a rational choice. And B, not necessarily an impact to your ability to make a difference in the region by bringing in solutions to common problems that we see in the food system, by creating jobs, by connecting with our research institutions, those kinds of things. So that's that's the program. And our applications are open now. They're open until May 15th, and we're looking for startups from anywhere in the world that are, you know, formal entities, have a product or service that's ready to go and that are looking for support to grow big.

Speaker 4:48

So anyone around the globe can apply?

Speaker 2 4:52

Anyone around the globe can apply if you have a formal entity, right? If you're a corporation, if you're somebody who can take an investment or your company can take an investment, and you have, I use this phrase a lot, you're more than a science experiment, right? You're you're you're a company that's ready to be in market selling

Who Can Apply And Why

Speaker 2 5:13

or giving whatever your business model is, your good, your service out to people. But we work, I have a number of different companies in our portfolio from Europe and Australia. We have a couple from Argentina. And we are, you know, the solutions to the problems we have here. A lot of the problems we have here are unique. A lot of them are pretty general, right? Everybody is figuring out how to cope with the climate crisis. And you see that show up in agriculture in particularly profound ways. And almost everybody is dealing with the challenges that labor provide. In the United States, we've got the challenges that labor provide, and we've got some immigration issues that that compound that. So, you know, technologies that make farming or processing farmed food or distributing it or storing it or getting it into the hands of consumers easier or more sustainable or more affordable. Like those, I don't care if they're coming from the moon, as long as they are something that is viable, that's been validated, and that you're ready to kind of put that in market and go.

Speaker 6:35

Okay. So working in manufacturing, obviously, you know, the the balance between automation and we'll say unskilled laborers uh is a constant uh in in my business. Uh, I know you know Kristen deals with it as well at at Wexler, where you know you may have operators banding product together at the end of a packaging line. Well, you're limited by the rate at which those operators can work, and those operators work a set shift and they need breaks, and uh, you know, there are laws around all of that, um, and rightfully so. And by looking at adding automation,

Automation Meets Farm Labor Reality

Speaker 7:17

you are able to improve throughput, maybe reduce waste, but at the end of the day, you're you're costing someone their job. So it it it sounds like you know, food and ag obviously, in in in your part of the world, uh in your part of the market, I should say, uh, dealing with the same type of issues, right? Where you run out of uh you have a lack of the human resource, and so companies are then forced to look into automation options.

Speaker 2 7:43

That's right. There are social and cultural challenges that make it difficult for farms and food businesses to find labor or retain labor. And there's also uh, you know, kind of growth opportunity limitations that can sometimes make it unappealing as a career path. Although I think that also ties into some of that social and cultural. I think there's as much a lack of understanding about how you might be able to have a rewarding career working, you know, entering as a not a knowledge worker and entering as somebody who's doing manual labor and that there is a path forward for you. And um, you know, and there's a need to recognize the margins that farms and food businesses are working on are whisper-thin, right? So if there's an automation that can help ensure that we're getting the product that's made as much of it as as possible to the consumer rather than losing through waste, unintentional, natural, right? If we can optimize with computer visioning or AI some of these tasks, um, that's great. And part of the reason, you know, this this ties in, and I don't want to go off on a tangent, but part of the reason that we're not seeing uh robotics take off quite as quickly as maybe five years ago we we would have thought, given uh, you know, the ag tech kind of boom and investment that that that was happening in, you know, the the uh late teens, early 20s, is we aren't, you know, the strawberry pickers. Everybody's look trying to figure out the robotic straw strawberry picker. And the fact is, nobody's come up with one that's as consistent or fast as the human who knows how to do this, right? And and so, yeah, I I'll stop there. I was gonna go into a little bit of a tangent about, you know, and and and where packaging might integrate into that, right? Where that might be an advantage um, you know, that that automation would have over the the human laborer is being able to integrate that that packaging on site. So you're again losing less commercially viable product. I'm thinking here of strawberries, where if you, you know, if your automation equipment had the packaging itself, and the packaging had integrated, you know, materials that help to minimize the release of gases that are going to cause food to decay faster. And you were doing that all in one go, right? So that the strawberry was never left to the elements, um, meaning that this incredibly valuable commodity, right? Strawberries are are um again, high price point, low margins. Um, if we could get more of them into market, everybody would win.

Speaker 1 10:56

That's one of the things Matt and I were talking about yesterday in a totally different market is the cost of goods, right? So what I notice sometimes is uh at Wexler, we work with a in a lot of different industries and food and agriculture specifically is something that we're seeing our partners in Europe have a lot of success with. But here in the States, we're still kind of struggling to get that market share. And that's pretty standard. They have successes there, and then it'll slide across the across the pond, if you will. But it ultimately a lot of times comes down to what is that automation going to do initially to the cost of goods. So we often use the word repurpose labor, right? So you take labor from X and you move it to Y. So you're not getting rid of those really, in this case, they are skilled because they look at a strawberry and they know exactly what that strawberry needs to look like or what it shouldn't look like, right? When it's ready to be picked, they have that eye because they've been doing it for so long. And you could move them maybe to a blueberry or something, you know, you can move them somewhere else, something in here in New Jersey. We have so um, we have so many blueberry farms down here in southern New Jersey. But but when you talk to a farmer or somebody in that space, the idea of investing in that piece of automation is is it's a it's a reach for them because it really is a big capital investment unless you can show them soup to nuts, this big swing in where they're gonna have a huge labor savings or a huge, like you had said, the gas. That would that, you know, that would be an awesome way to extend the shelf life or something like that. But I have noticed in my world specifically that that seems to be a barrier of entry for automation, is it's just it's a big price point for these farmers to say yes to when sometimes it's just easier to throw more labor at it, you know? And it that's a little short-sighted because you're looking at it from, you know, maybe a year or two years, but everything's got to make sense financially because, like you said, I love the whisper thin. I wrote that down. Actually, it they're working on the margins are so tiny. So it has to make sense, or else it or else their business could go under due to a poor decision from a capital purchase.

Speaker 2 13:10

Well, and I'm gonna build on that. I agree with everything you said, and when you know, to call it short-sighted, I mean, maybe if you knew that the five years it was going to take you to make good on that investment, we're all gonna be years where there wasn't a catastrophic uh mini-burst quasi-tornado event that rips all of your, let's say it's a a blueberry farm, right? That rips all of your shrubs out. So now you've invested in this equipment

Climate Risk Makes Tech Bets Hard

Speaker 2 13:53

and you have no product to sell at the end of the year. And it's these things are not that unusual. And yes, there are insurance programs out there, there are specialty crop insurances out there, but it's just, I mean, when you think about technology and you think about iteration, right? Most farms have one swing at it a year. That's pretty scary. It's actually quite strategic to say I've got something that works okay. This fairly unproven technology that would put me potentially into a debt spiral that maybe not be the best strategic choice. Now, I'm a person who works in innovation. I want farmers to connect with tools that help relax some of the pressures that are on them. And I think there are ways to do that, but it it really is. It's it's it's more complicated than just this is new, it's worth the money. In the long run, it'll pay off, right? There's there's a lot of risk there.

Speaker 1 15:01

Well, like you had said, the outside, sorry, Matt, the the outside elements literally that you cannot control. If you, like you said, if you knew for the next five years that that was gonna run and you were gonna get your money back. But if studies show that, you know, once every five years or once every three years you don't sell due to whatever, then it is that you really do have to think about the other pieces of the puzzle before you say yes to something.

Speaker 15:28

Yeah. So my my EHS friends are gonna love this next statement. But, you know, when you talk about automation, one of the biggest things that automation introduces is the uh elimination of the human repetitive motion, right? And and how many injuries uh and uh work lost time accidents and long-term disabilities come out of that repetitive motion. The downside of that is automation is very inflexible. Once you automate a process, you are very limited as to what that machine can and can't do. So as a farmer, I go out and spend, let's just say it's a half a million dollars on a brand new strawberry picker, and it's machine serial number 0001 off the production line, and this thing is the best, and it does everything I need it to do, but then all of a sudden I have to pivot because an act of God just came through and took out all my strawberry plants. Is that machine adaptable enough that I can repurpose it somewhere else, like Kristen said, where I can take human labor and say, all right, I'm going to reassign you, now you're gonna go over here? So I can imagine for the small, mid-sized, privately owned farmer or farm system, that can be very daunting. Is do I really want to lock up this much money into an asset that is only going to address a very specific need? And if as my needs change, that asset becomes uh non-value added until I'm I'm able to get back to the original intent of why I bought it.

unknown 17:02

Yep.

Speaker 2 17:03

And again, I am somebody who is pro-innovation, and I do think a lot of these solutions are we're talking about this field crop, field uh specialty crop example. And we could pivot to like butchering and meatpacking, and I would be a uh would be able to be a lot more um positive about it. But but but yeah, when when we're talking about field crops, we're talking about equipment that needs to have a high level of ruggedization and often needs repair. And is there is there going to be somebody we all know from driving our own automobiles, it's very hard with with my like I drive a Chevy Bolt. I love it, it's super fun, it's an electric vehicle. I I can do a little light coding. I couldn't get in there to do it though. I I wouldn't know how. And you know, we're

Repairability And New Ag Careers

Speaker 2 18:03

the mechanical accessibility of the world around us, you know, is retreating. Even if it's just the hardware, uh, you know, are the farmers allowed to work on these automated solutions? If they're allowed to, are they able to? And if not, how long do they have to wait for someone to come and help them out? Which I actually think is a, you know, if we if we were to approach this with a a little more of a strategic perspective, right? Some of the workforce development opportunities I see are where that need for ruggedization and need for um talent and knowledge around repair, both hardware and software, for these tools, that's an amazing job opportunity, right? So so training people young to think about the technology that's on farms and the to me, it's um it's quite a potentially I don't want to say egalitarian, but but it's like forever and ever, it's pretty much been unless you had some pretty deep resources to play around with back to the land. If you were in farming, it's because your family wasn't farming, right? That's how that was your pathway. Therefore, if you were not in farming or you didn't grow up in a farming community, agriculture was not an option for you. And I think those barriers to careers in agriculture can be reduced through workforce training programs that acknowledge that that there's untapped technology potential for things like automation.

Speaker 20:02

Perfect example of that. I remember learning in uh a history class about how there was an entire market, a global market built around transportation by horse. Uh, and the explanation as to why the brownstones in New York City all have about 10 steps from the street to get to your front door, it was to get you away from the horse waste, right? So you had uh an entire business environment and and market built around horses. So there were the the veterinarians, there were the guys that were building the carriages, there were the guys that were cleaning up after them. And then all of a sudden the automobile was invented, and that market disappeared. But what it did create then was it created new jobs, more technologically advanced, where now you have mechanics working on the cars, you have uh skilled laborers building the cars. So my previous statement about eliminating labor was probably not as accurate as what Kristen was saying, where it's now repurposing the labor and taking it from maybe an unskilled laborer to a skilled laborer, or just moving skilled labor from one bucket to another. So from that perspective, I I fully get behind the automation. And that's really where I start to um uh as as Kristen likes to say, geek out uh over finding ways to automate relatively manual processes. That's kind of my my sweet spot.

Speaker 1 21:29

I'm gonna pull a Matt Mulvey and and make a a TV reference here. Have you ever watched this show Clarkson's Farm? No. No, it's it's kind of silly. I I I don't it's HBO or Netflix or something, and it's this it's this really rich guy in the UK who who've heard about this, yes. And and and it's it's very like cheeky UK humor. So you know it's a good watch, it makes you giggle. And he you watch him go through. The not having knowing anything about a farm, he's like, let's buy sheep, and then not knowing what that let's buy pigs, let's let's make this soil, you know. And he's got a couple younger kids, and and this made me think of it because you talked about the barriers for entry from a um career standpoint. And he's got a couple young kids that that come and work for him, and they are so smart and they know so much, and they can like open the tractors and they're in there. And this guy's like, he knows nothing about nothing. He's a businessman, right? But it it was I liked the show, it's fantastic, so you should watch it. But um, it was cool to see these younger kids, probably in their 20s, maybe early 30s, be really, really excited about farming and really, really excited about the industry and you know, planting a new crop or doing something unique to what they had done, but using the knowledge from a previous experience or something like that. Like I thought that was pretty cool. And because Matt and I work a lot with ruckers and sort of in the same vein as what you're doing, really try to mentor some of these younger students that are that are moving into the workforce. And it's cool when you get to see their minds start to go and you can watch the the clicks and they start to get it, and you can see that on the show with some of these younger, younger farmers. So that was totally a side tangent, but Matt always likes to pull in some pop culture and TV references. So I felt obligated to to mention that.

Speaker 2 23:25

I love that. I I have heard about that show and I I should watch it. He's supposed to be quite funny and yeah, yeah, anything that's going to kind of platform the idea that we think of farming as if we're thinking about it at all, which frankly people should be thinking about it more, but we talk about it in terms of unskilled manual, right? It's low wage, it is not unskilled. You know, it is it is essential, and it is oftentimes to go to what we were talking about before, it's kind of um, I don't know if there's probably a labor phrase for this, but it's it's like generalizable, right? It's it's not necessarily fully specialized in the same way that you know we knowledge workers, desk workers get into really specific silos. When I think about the ingenuity and the practicality and the problem solving and the pivoting that go on every day in the field, it's it's hard for me to reconcile that with the un with the notion of unskilled.

Speaker 1 24:40

Yeah. But that's in manufacturing, though, too. Like you had mentioned I have so many customers that started as a line worker and they never got a degree. They maybe they went to a technical school and and got a certificate or something like that. Um, and they worked a line and then they became a line supervisor, and then they became a shift supervisor, and now they run the plant. And they and they know more about that plant than than anybody because they've ran every line and they've opened up every machine and they've and that's like to what you had said previously, where there is a trajectory of growth in manufacturing that I think sometimes people don't see, but you have to want to work, right? You have to want to be a sponge and you have to want to learn and find a really good mentor that you can latch on to. Um, but I see it every day. Uh, plant operators, general managers of major, major, major plants that never step foot in a classroom. And to me, that's awesome. I love I think that's just it's it's a really cool story to be shared.

Speaker 2 25:51

Right. It's, you know, to call America a meritocracy is to be way too general, but sometimes you see flashes of it, right? Where people are able through hard work and showing up and being curious and um to to work their way through the system and and and and move into positions of responsibility and you know, solid compensation, and and yeah, when there are sectors of the economy where that's more likely to happen, and it's sectors that recognize that that actual skill at doing the job matters far more than credentialization.

Speaker 26:34

So I need to take a step back for a second, Jen, and I'm going to thank you for for checking me on the the unskilled laborer reference. Oh to be completely honest with you. I wasn't checking you. No, no, I no, you I I whether you meant to or not, I that is the I've been checked and and may I call but that that term unskilled labor has been part of my vernacular my entire career and came from I I don't I'm not gonna blame it on any one particular person because I don't recall, but it's just always kind of been there. But no, you're absolutely right. It's not a matter of skilled versus unskilled, it's it's the there's a better term to be used there, and so um as a self-improvement goal, I'm going to work on eliminating the term unskilled laborer from my vocabulary. So thank you for that.

Speaker 2 27:18

You know, language is a living thing, and yeah, that was absolutely not to call you out. It was it was simply to to reflect on on that. And you know, you can't you can't watch somebody like if you've ever been in the field trying to keep up with somebody who picks fruit for a living, wow, that is a skill I don't have, you know.

Speaker 27:43

Totally agree. So I I would like to get back to the the Grow New York, I guess we call it a competition. Since there are winners, would you kind of give us uh a a rundown on maybe some recent winners uh or or some memorable competitors that maybe didn't win? And you know what stands out in your mind in in recent history?

Speaker 2 28:05

Sure. Well, I I mean I I do want to talk about our our winners, but I also want to uh you know be cognizant that some of your audience is is really thinking about that that sort of downstream um packaging, packaging materials,

Winners With Packaging And Shelf Life Tech

Speaker 2 28:25

and the role the packaging plays in distribution, that that kind of thing. I mean, our most recent million-dollar investment um was uh is into a company called Brecklin. Uh they're from New York. They have a biodegradable foam coating that can their their initial product, their go-to-market product is it acts as insulation uh in frost events, and their their first market is is grapes. So they're doing a lot of work in western New York and the Finger Lakes, right? We have a lot of grapes here. They're also doing some work in France. They're looking to do work on the West Coast too. So if you know that there's going to be a freeze event, you can go and spray this product. It's biodegradable and it lasts for three days. So that frost that that otherwise would just totally decimate your crop is now salvageable. There are other inputs that could be put into the foam and the the foam creation and distribution that that is their technology. So, you know, other other things, things to address, different kinds of pests and pathogens. So that's that's pretty exciting. Over the years, we've had a few different companies come in that are working in more explicitly kind of packaging areas. I uh, you know, we have this company, they're uh South Korean. Uh, they won $250,000 of investment funds from us back in 2020. That it was our virtual competition that year. It was our second competition. And they have uh technology that extends shelf life and improves food safety by decomposing ethylene gas, as well as some molds. And and so this can be worked into packaging to extend the shelf life of the avocados that are basically like coming on a slow boat up the coast of South America to get in, you know, whatever port that they're going into and then get taken by truck over land so that I can enjoy guacamole, you know, at Wegmans, kind of kind of thing. That's pretty exciting. And I think it's it's especially great to hold them up because they are international. We, you know, we provide a foothold for international companies in the in the northeast. If they're looking for a North American entry, the program can be really helpful for that. They also they won one of our lower prize levels because they were still pretty early. We really liked the technology, we really liked their case for it, we really liked their team, we liked what they were doing, you know, they were they were um they had some trials in uh in different countries in Europe and Asia. Um, but you know, we we so you know, we've just seen them grow over the past six years, and and you know, having that sort of steady growth from just past science experiment to, you know, company that's that's doing well is is so exciting for us. We have a lot of different kinds of dairy technologies, um, although, and we've worked with finalists that are, I'm I'm thinking here of a company called Heat Inverse. They have not won an investment from us, but they're a great part of our network and they're doing work. Uh, they have a cooling film that can be applied to any kind of material. And so if when it's applied to the interior of trucks, it boosts their refrigeration capacity. It it um reverses heat absorption of the materials that the film is applied to. So, you know, whether it's the tank that the milk is going into or the truck that is, you know, driving the milk uh across across New York State, you know, it's it's a it's a fantastic way to passively cool surfaces. So you're using less energy, you're reducing costs that way. You know, some pretty far out solutions. We had a company called SoFresh. Their technology is still out there, although they have closed the company. Sofresh has a different kind of film. It's a film that reduces the decay of baked goods. And, you know, they were working with Bimbo to integrate the film into Bimbo's packaging of their baked products. So what normally has on your supermarket, maybe a two-week shelf life, now has a six-week shelf life. Um, and it's, you know, food grade and and and non-toxic and you know, a terrific way. Food waste is an issue that I care a lot about, as is hunger, and like being able to make sure that the food that we have is eaten by the people that are hungry. And and so whatever technologies are going to make sure that we're making the most of what's grown, made, processed, and distributed makes sense to us.

Speaker 33:45

Sounds like you've got a lot of exciting things going on with Grow New York. And and just listening to you speak about it, and obviously you I personally hear the passion coming through when you talk about this. It it it it emboldens me. It makes me want to get involved somehow. So uh I appreciate you.

Speaker 2 34:00

You are involved, you're part of the conversation now. Yes, we are. No, we would we would love to have you at the summit this year. It's going to be in Rochester. It's November 12th and 13th. It's a Thursday and Friday. So, you know, right now we're accepting applications. We'll pick the finalists, we'll work with them, and then the live pitch. And please, both of you, mark those dates. Come as our guest. We would we would love to have you come and check it

Summit Invite And Why It Matters

Speaker 2 34:25

out.

Speaker 34:25

Thank you.

Speaker 1 34:26

I love Rochester. It's one of my favorite little cities. Oh, that's great to hear. It really is. I'm not just saying that to promote New York, but it's a gym. Um, it really is a fantastic, great little city with great shops and restaurants and all that good stuff.

Speaker 2 34:40

So really great restaurants.

Speaker 1 34:42

Yeah, really, exactly.

Speaker 2 34:44

You know, Matt, you asked about the companies we work with. And I I'm even gonna kind of plug a specific company that we haven't worked with, that I've encountered over the years that I think is doing such exciting stuff. And I I kind of intimated, I was, I was thinking about it early in our conversation. It's a it's it's a company called Marble, and they are it's meat packing, meat processing technology, and it's like the which is such dangerous, difficult work, right, for the the laborers, and also so high risk around food safety. And they're automating processing and packaging. It's that full integration that we were talking about. So, you know, it doesn't remove the need for any human intervention at all, but it makes it safer and more consistent and eliminates a lot of potential fail points when you have a system that is safely cutting, packaging, putting into boxes that are, you know, traceable, getting them efficiently into the right climate control, et cetera. I just think what they're doing is so super exciting. They're a little too big for our competition, honestly. That's that's why we haven't worked with them, but they're still in startup mode. We work with early stage, right? Which means, as I said, like you you've got something there, you're ready to grow, but there's an implied valuation. I'm not a I'm not an investment, you know, uh expert. Uh I I run this fund, but I rely on the knowledge of my team in particular. I've got advisors that are fund managers, and I know just enough to to talk the talk. Uh, you know, they this company is has raised so much money that our million dollars doesn't make sense for them. Yeah. Right. That's a nice problem to have. Yeah, exactly. Nice problem to have is your company is is worth more on paper than you know, a million dollars makes sense for.

Speaker 36:51

So you guys what I'm hearing is you guys are the the shark tank of food and agriculture in in New York State, is basically what you guys are. That's what I'm picturing in my head.

Speaker 2 37:02

It's yeah, yep. We don't have uh who's the mean guy? Kevin O'Connor. Kevin O'Leary. Kevin O'Leary.

Speaker 37:09

Yeah.

Speaker 2 37:09

Um to me, he's the guy from Marty Supreme. Uh, but anyways, yes, we are we are very much a shark tank. Um and you know, our goal is to we want to reduce barriers in the region, right? We want success to be not divided by county line. We want to recognize that the ag system doesn't recognize county lines or state lines, right? Like this is we need solutions. We want to work with these companies to make sure they're able to grow in a way that is sustainable and get these game-changing solutions into the hands of consumers, whether those consumers are farms or food packagers or you and me wanting the right kind of macro mix in our, you know, in our uh snack cracker, whatever, you know, whatever it is. These are companies we believe in. All of the finalists are companies we believe in, and then the ones we invest in, like we're in it with them. We want, we want to help them get where we know they can go.

Speaker 38:19

Okay. We are getting close on time, but I am not letting you, I'm not wrapping up this episode without touching upon one thing that I read in your questionnaire response that I absolutely have to know. Uh apparently your most valued professional skills were learned by tending bar, and I would like you to expound upon that, please.

Speaker 2 38:44

Sure. Well, uh, you know, in many ways, my role is I, you know, I'm a project manager, I am a coalition builder, I help, you know, help develop big ideas and make them actionable. And all of that work rests on being able to meet people where they are

Bartending Skills And Social Capital

Speaker 2 39:13

and communicate clearly with them, right? And like your job as a bartender, yes, is to serve drinks, but it's also to put people at ease. It's to help people understand what they need when perhaps they don't even understand what they need. It's to create a safe environment for a productive event, right? And you know, in the case of a bar, it's like you're coming in, you want to have a good time. Maybe you're sad and you want to be elevated, maybe you're celebrating and you want to feel lifted and toasted, right? Whatever it is, I need to understand that and help you accomplish it. And that is like if I have a uh a secret strength, it's that it's being it's being able to kind of connect with people around what it is that they need and and help them figure out how to get it, even if they don't exactly know how to ask for it.

Speaker 40:16

That's great. I actually tended bar briefly uh when I first graduated college, uh, I needed to augment my salary. So I got a job as a part-time bartender at a country club here in New Jersey. And uh the perks were that I got to play the course every Monday, which was great. But uh it was also a lot of fun and uh and I enjoyed that, but uh quickly outgrew it. And I have a funny maraschino cherry story to to tell, but uh not gonna have time today, so we'll have to share that another time.

Speaker 2 40:45

Uh a tease.

Speaker 40:47

Tease teaser out there for anyone. Listen and I'll I'll work that into a future episode.

Speaker 1 40:52

I also bartended for a little bit at Applebee's, which you know, hot spot. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But um, but everything you said is really true. I mean, you said it so eloquently and made bartenders around the world seem way more elevated than some of them are, but it really is true though. And one of the other things that we had talked about, I know we're up against time, but I just want to mention this is uh you had said this before, and Matt and I are gonna take it from you is that social capital. And I think being a bartender gives you the foundation to learn how to have social capital, right? You have your regulars that come in and you rapport with them, they bring friends in, you meet new people, and you kind of develop a team around you of people that become valuable. And when your regulars are there, you there it feels different when you're tending bar, when you know the guy at the corner. Um, and I think that's a cool, a really cool way to explain that and and how important that is, you know, going going in the rest of your career.

Speaker 2 41:53

Yeah, yeah. Social capital, this idea that like we're building credit with other people, right? Exactly.

Speaker 42:03

And that's a transferable skill anywhere.

Speaker 2 42:06

Absolutely. Absolutely. I love it that all three of us spent time. The Brits would say behind the stick.

Speaker 42:13

Oh, is that the phrase?

Speaker 2 42:14

Is that the phrase? Yeah, because you're you know, mostly just you know, pouring so 10 behind the stick.

Speaker 42:21

All right. Final thoughts uh before we do wrap up, Jen, one more time. When are applications due?

Speaker 2 42:27

Applications are due by May 15th at I think it's 5 p.m. Um, and it doesn't cost anything to apply. And we will give feedback to anything that is like a legitimate application that's that's not just some AI bot mess. Um, we will let you know whether you're advancing or not. And if not, we're happy to share kind of feedback on why not. Uh the idea is that startups, a couple of the most valuable things they have are, you know, time and and funding,

Deadline Details And Where To Apply

Speaker 2 43:02

right? And and so we're inviting people to apply for this funding and we want to be respectful of their time and at least if they don't get selected, pay back that time for application by telling them what they could do next time and what we're looking for that we didn't see. Okay.

Speaker 1 43:20

And where where can they apply, Jen? Is it what's the website?

Speaker 2 43:22

Where's the it's yeah, it's GROW-ny.com. And we have so much information on our website. We, you know, also have regular uh information sessions over the course of the application window. So my my colleague Sarah leads those and it's live sort of overview of the program and QA. And you, you know, you can book time with us to talk about your, you know, your questions if they can't get answered in those info sessions. We want to make sure people are equipped with what they need in order to be able to put in a good application.

Speaker 43:58

Well, I will make sure that. That website is also included in the transcript of this episode. So for anyone that is listening, uh, you can head to the transcript if you didn't quite catch that website, GROW-NY.com. It will be in the transcript for your access.

Speaker 2 44:14

I appreciate it.

Speaker 44:16

So that being said, uh, I do want to wrap up with uh a random trivia tidbit, and it does have to do with food packaging. Uh, did a little bit of homework online. And uh were you aware that archaeologists have discovered ancient honey pots approximately 3,000 years old, still intact, and the honey inside is still edible.

Speaker 2 44:39

That's right. Isn't that so cool? Yeah, it's like the oldest food in the world. I I just love that. But if they wear, Matt.

Speaker 44:47

Uh I want to say the article was it was the archaeologists were from Holland. I don't know if it was discovered in Holland. That wouldn't make

Ancient Honey And Closing Thoughts

Speaker 44:56

sense to me.

Speaker 2 44:56

It was like in a tomb in Egypt or something. So yeah.

Speaker 45:00

So maybe maybe maybe the they the archaeologists were from Holland. I'd have to go back and research that. But I focused more on the fact that it was 3,000-year-old honey. Now, granted, honey is a very shelf-stable product, very low uh moisture content, high sugar content. So makes sense. But as long as those, and I would assume they were ceramic jars, but obviously the sealing technology must have been amazing for for it to survive 3,000 years. So thought that was pretty cool.

Speaker 2 45:27

Incredible, super cool.

Speaker 45:29

All right, listen, Jen, thank you so much for your time today and sharing everything. And uh, for the listeners out there, hopefully uh at least one of you out there is gonna apply for the Grow New York competition May 15th. You have a little bit of time left, so please get your applications in. Kristen, as always, a pleasure. Thank you so much. Both of you take care.

Speaker 2 45:49

Thank you.