This Week in Startups - E1122: Running Tide CEO Marty Odlin is helping solve the Climate crisis by using kelp to sequester carbon in the ocean, shares insights on generational shifts in climate response & more

Episode Date: October 13, 2020

Check out Running Tide: https://www.runningtide.com FOLLOW Marty: https://twitter.com/martyodlin FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis ...

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Starting point is 00:00:41 Main Street gets it back for you in 20 minutes. Get back your cash at mainstreet.us.us slash twist. Hey, everybody, welcome to this week in startups. I am super pleased to talk to the founder of Running Tide today because I care about climate change like I'm sure all of you do. I believe in climate change and solving that problem as best we can in that there must be solutions to it. But I'll be honest. I feel like a neophyte. I feel like I don't have the education I need. I trust the scientists. But as an investor and a technologist, I would really love to be able to invest in some companies and some visions and see people take some big swings and some risks and build companies around this. And my friend Chris Saka, who's a big fan or big friend of the pod, I should say,
Starting point is 00:01:36 I assume he's fan of it, but I know he's a friend of the pod, tweeted out from his At Saka account recently that Running Tide was the kind of company we're hoping we would find when we started lower carbon. Everybody knows Chris Saka retired from Angel investing. He did well enough with Instagram and Uber and decided, hey, I'm going to just cash in my chips and be done. But then he said, you know what? I want to do a carbon-based venture fund, investment fund. And he says here, bonkers scale, unreasonable ambition, massive impact on the planet during insane times. It's entrepreneurs like Marty Odlin. That fire us up. And he linked to a story about running tide. And I thought, even though it's early days, I would have the founder, Marty Odlin on the
Starting point is 00:02:21 program to talk to us about what he's doing with running tide welcome to the pod marty thank you very much i appreciate you coming on um explain to people what running running tide does and what your vision is running tide is actually a uh say we're a full full stack um aquaculture company so we're building focusing on filter feeders um which would be like um oysters scallops clams and kelp and you know we're another way to think about is that we're building and managing large-scale living ocean systems. I love eating three or four of those things. Picks out of oysters and at Scalus, not so much the kelp. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:03:05 Kelp does, you can do different things with kelp. You don't just have to eat it. But yeah, I mean, these are all like people eat kelp. I was, I'm curious. Yeah, people do. People do. It's actually a big part of, there's this really interesting professors. His name is Michael Crawford out of Imperial College in London.
Starting point is 00:03:18 He's done some studies on, you know, what diets basically. lead to like have best outcomes on longevity. And by and large, they seem to be diets that are rich in like DHA and Omega 3s. DHA is like sheathes a signaling pathways in your brain. Yeah. And it's the two best sources of DHA are oysters and kelp. So if you look at people like people in Okinawa have fantastic health outcomes at old age because they're eating so many DHA rich foods.
Starting point is 00:03:52 I actually do remember that. I think Malcolm Gladwell in one of his books talked about, I don't know if it was a tipping point. And one of them, just the Okinawa, especially the, I think it was the women in Okinawa living like, you know, to a hundred or something. Yeah. So that DHA and Kelp is a major way to do it. What does that, I wonder how that becomes, uh, what dishes that's in. Is it in soup? Is it in a pill format?
Starting point is 00:04:16 How do people eat it? Like a salad? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, for the most part, it's going to be in soups and salads. And, you know, I prefer to eat oysters. Yeah, oysters and shellfish. But, you know, the kelp can play a role in diet as well. So how do those organisms impact carbon?
Starting point is 00:04:38 Well, you know, in a number of different ways. Like, for every 100 grams of oysters, you eat, you get 12 grams of carbon sequestered in the shell, right? Shells are calcium carbonate. you know, most of the carbon on Earth is actually locked up in calcium carbonate. So it's a natural part of the carbon cycle, like the geologic carbon cycle is the carbon sequestered in shells. So, wait, carbon from the air that makes its way into the water is then formed into oyster shells. That's right.
Starting point is 00:05:12 That's right. That's one pathway. That's like one end result for carbon, like natural process that absorb. carbon from the atmosphere. And then, you know, the other one, like the one that makes oil, kind of and what you brought me on to talk about was, is kelp. So people say that oil is dead dinosaurs, right? But really what it is, for the most part, it's, you look on ancient, they're looking for ancient seabeds when they're exploring for oil. And what they're looking for is deposits of dead macro and microalgae. So kelp,
Starting point is 00:05:48 is a macroalgae that floats around in the ocean, dies and sinks to the bottom, gets sedimented, and becomes fossil fuels at some point in the future. I didn't know that. So the concept we all have from Jurassic Park and whatever, that dinosaur is equal oil is actually not correct. I'm sure in part. In part, it's correct, yeah. But it's mainly algae and kelp.
Starting point is 00:06:08 Yeah, that's right. And so what is your company doing with this observation that kelp sequesters carbon? Well, you know, we've, so let's just, there's basically 800 gigatons, well, over the next 10 or 20 years, we're going to have to remove 800 to 1,000 gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere in the oceans. That's basically what we've, the excess that we've created in the Industrial Revolution, that's what we put up in the sky. And in order to get back to a steady state, we're going to have to remove it. So that is like, think about it this way. Even if we went to a zero carbon economy where we're not producing any or emitting any XFCO2, we still have that much carbon up in the atmosphere increasing the amount of energy in the Earth's,
Starting point is 00:06:58 you know, increasing the amount of energy in these like super dynamic ecosystems and causing it and wreaking havoc. So we have to take that out. We have to take it out no matter what, no matter what. Some of it's in the air and some of it's already in the oceans. That's right. And it's a little bit alarming. as it, you know, it'll dissolve into the ocean to reach equilibrium with what's in the atmosphere.
Starting point is 00:07:19 Oh, that makes sense. That's where ocean acidification comes from, right? So it's like excess CO2 in the ocean over steady state because it's going to try to balance the, um, concentration with the atmosphere. You're going to acidify the ocean. That's absolutely terrifying for everyone on Earth. Um, there's a professor named, um, Ray Hillborn in University of Washington. And he talks a lot about how important.
Starting point is 00:07:44 just the amount of protein and calories produced by the ocean every year. And if that went away, what would have to do to land use? And essentially, there's not enough land to replace what could be lost in the oceans if the oceans acidifies. So it's like, you know, where are we at in that path to the oceans having a cataclysmic event? And what is the likelihood of that? It's, I mean, it's, oh, it's, it's likely. I mean, you can, it's, it's going to happen if we don't do something. Like, you know, all these problems, uh, they're only going to get worse unless, like, none of this is going to stop unless we make it stop. Got it. So, you know, like I've done on, I've been often on researching this for, you know,
Starting point is 00:08:25 my entire professional career. And basically, um, I don't think it really, like timelines don't really matter at this point because even 10 years, 15 years ago, the worst case scenario is that people were imagining in terms of sea ice collapse or increasing temperature. etc. We're already seeing worse than worst case scenario. So there's a bunch of negative feedback loops that are kicking into gear right now where forests are burning,
Starting point is 00:08:50 releasing carbon into the atmosphere, permafrost is melting and releasing methane, etc. It's like a lot of bad news. I don't really like to rehash it because... Well, I mean, I think part of confronting it is just sort of... Part of solving it is confronting it. So in a way what you're saying is,
Starting point is 00:09:07 hey, the global warming that's happening, it melts the ice caps, that creates these heat waves. The heat waves burn all these forest fires in California. That, in turn, releases more carbons, which starts this, you know, let's call it a debt spiral here. Let's call it what it is. It is a literal debt spiral for our planet. And there's, yeah, so, I mean, if you want to confront it, like, that's what it is.
Starting point is 00:09:33 And, I mean, we talk about this. This is, like, hurting people right now, you know? I mean, this is in my life, like, I'm from a family of fishermen and grew up working on the waterfront. And, you know, just like this, there's been a huge reduction in opportunities for people in my community on like what fish are around to catch. Where were you? Where's your family of fisher? Portland, Portland, Maine. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:10:00 And just going out in Portland, Maine, you saw a distinct difference in what you were able to catch when we get back from this break. I want to talk about what you saw firsthand in that regard. regard when we get back on the week's service listen up everybody lincoln is going to give you one hundred dollars in ad credits towards your first lincoln campaign wait till the end of this ad read and you will get that hundy over 78% of b-to-be marketers rate lincoln as the most effective social media platform for reaching objectives why i think you know why there are 62 million decision makers on lincoln and they mean business i know this because we market angel University, founder university, remote demo day on LinkedIn, because we get a great response.
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Starting point is 00:11:57 LinkedIn.com slash this week in startups. You've got to type in all those letters and terms and conditions apply. Thanks again to LinkedIn for supporting. independent media like this week in startups. Okay, let's get back to the show. All right, we're back on this week in startups with Marty Odlin. He is on the Twitter, Marty O'DL-I-N, CEO and co-founder of runningtide.com, which my friend Chris Saka invested in and tweeted about, and I thought, hey, this is a really
Starting point is 00:12:25 interesting company in the early days. Hey, when your family was out there fishing, what did you see when you were a kid versus what you see today going out in Portland to go fishing? I mean, it's just, it's like any number of different species have changed their geographic distribution related to ocean warming. So, you know, you can see that the center of biomass of lobsters, for instance, which are the first boats that I worked on, that's like my mom's family is predominantly lobstermen, some people on my dad's side as well. But, you know, the center of biomass is moving north. So in other words, where lobsters used to be centered, it just keeps moving
Starting point is 00:13:05 north because they keep trying to find cold or water. That's exactly right. So like there's places like, you know, Cape Breton Island, which is off the eastern tip of Nova Scotia, and that's just having like phenomenal lobster catches where they didn't really have a lot before. And then you have places like Long Island Sound in New York
Starting point is 00:13:20 who had a decent industry and now it's gone. So you can see that moving. There's a collapse of the macro fishery, the somewhat modulated, but collapse of codfish industry. Northern shrimp no longer, like we no longer have a season in Maine. There hasn't been a season for five years. There probably won't be forever.
Starting point is 00:13:43 Wow. And so it's just any number of these. And so it's like, it's not, and it's just, there's unequivocal evidence of this at every stage. And like the probability that, you know, climate change is real. And climate change is going to like drastically change how we live our lives. It's like, it's approaching 100%. Like, I mean, some people can find some doubt somewhere, but it's like every single day.
Starting point is 00:14:05 A point is coming out of the same. No reasonable person can look at the statistics, can look at the outcomes and say it's not happening. They can only debate what the ultimate impact. Yeah, what you do about it or what the ultimate impact will be? And if you, do you want to kick the can down the road or as Elon says, running this incredibly dangerous experiment? I mean, I dove the Great Barrier Reef a couple years ago. It was on my bucket list.
Starting point is 00:14:26 And I, and I'm almost reluctant to say how bad it was because I don't want to make the people there feel bad or have a negative impact on the tourism industry. but you know you would go down and you would look at the reef and I kid you not you'd see this incredibly beautiful coral come around a turn and the um the antlers you know this kind of coral that looks like antlers would be white and it would be floating and moving around and it's like wow what's that and it was dead and it was all broken and just floating in the middle of the bottom of the ocean I mean it was one of the most disheartening things I've ever seen no it's incalculable loss incalculable loss.
Starting point is 00:15:02 And can't take hundreds of years to reverse. So let's talk a little bit about what does it take to plant kelp? Is this a difficult thing to do? Or is it easy? Nothing in the ocean is easy. Explain, yeah. Educate me. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:15:18 Well, I've been working around the water for most parts of my life. And it's a really hard place. I know they say space is hard, but the ocean's really hard. It's just giant acid bath that wants to eat everything you put in it. So, you know, the, I would wager to say that nothing's easy if you're doing it in the ocean. But how the whole process works is you hatch, you hatch kelp in a hatchery. You know, we built a hatchery for our, that was like one of the first things running tide did was we built our own hatchery outside of Portland, Maine. And we, so you see, you basically seed kelp to line.
Starting point is 00:15:59 And then what our concept is, is we'll take it out into the middle of the ocean. We'll deposit it in the ocean and it'll float along ocean currents until it reaches, you know, until it reaches full maturity. And then we'll have timed plugs in our buoys at floating these little farms. And when the ocean will eat away at it over with like a somewhat well-known degradation. and then after a certain period of time, the plug and the buoy will get eaten away. It'll release the air and the entire works
Starting point is 00:16:37 will get sunk to the deep ocean floor. Wow. So brilliant. You came up with that idea? Bits and pieces were in my head for a really long time, but I mean, I have to give full credit to my team. We have like just a phenomenal team of super geniuses. And they're the ones that worked it all the way out. Just to recap, I'm trying to visualize this.
Starting point is 00:16:57 you are basically making little seedlings of kelp in a hatchery off somewhere in Maine. And basically the kelp is on a string of some kind with a buoy at the top and a weight at the bottom, I guess, of some type. I guess the kelp weighs something. The kelp, yeah, that's right. So at a certain point, maybe it's a year or two. Six to eight months, six to eight months, yeah. So six to eight months in the hatchery, then you, you. No, no, no, no, it's in the hatchery for 40 days.
Starting point is 00:17:30 Put it on a boat. Bring it out to the deployment location. Wow. Drop it off into an ocean current. Let it go. And it'll just float. And, you know, we've modeled this all out. It'll float out into the deep ocean and sink at a predetermined time.
Starting point is 00:17:47 Got it. Because the buoy itself has some material in it that will break down over time. When it does break down, the weight just sends the kelp to the bottom of the ocean. That's right. Right. And if you do a number of days? Yeah, it'll be, yeah, it'll be on the order of days. It'll be meaning it'll be six months plus or minus days. You know, and then.
Starting point is 00:18:09 Why six months, I'm just curious that rather than just drop it to the bottom? Well, you get maximum growth. So we want, you know, one thing to think about, well, okay, yeah, I'll just finish describing this. Yeah, let's describe it. Really is fascinating. So the idea is that it'll grow for a given amount of time. and when you'll reach like a peak,
Starting point is 00:18:31 a peak growth where you actually start the fronds of the kelps start to ablate, like so they start to break off. And, you know, that's great. It'll still sink to the bottom and be sequestered. But, you know, for us, what we're trying to do is create a system where we have like discrete units that we're able to verify how much carbon is contained by them and then sync that at a given time. So what we want to do is we'll be, we want to sync completely.
Starting point is 00:18:56 kind of micro farms with long fronds. When those are up on the top of the water, are they sequestering more carbon? Is that the idea? Is that the top of the water? Yeah. They only work, right? They only work when they're when they have access to sunlight. So you're looking at like the top 30 meters of the water column.
Starting point is 00:19:15 So when they sink to the bottom, do they die when they get to there? Yeah, they die. So think about it this way. What we're doing is it's just a natural, it's a nudge of the natural. process. So we're just kind of, we're like, we're nudging a natural process. Yes. Trying to accelerate it to the point where it'll, you know, it can like, will absorb the excess that we've done. But like, one thing to think about is that like the scale
Starting point is 00:19:41 that this has to happen at is absolutely tremendous. And I think people like, the one thing about carbon sequestration that people really need to get their minds around is like how enormous this challenge is. Okay. And how much it's going to impact, it's how much it's going to impact all of our lives. And I mean, we're seeing it. If you see like a company like beyond meat, like the multiples that beyond meat gets are because of its climate story, right? You mean the multiple on the value of the company? Yeah. Like consumers are shifting their shifting habits. Like a lot of people really care about this, thankfully. And like they're shifting their habits in response to climate change. And it's going to affect everything.
Starting point is 00:20:16 This is the thing I couldn't believe about those impossible foods and all these fake foods or these alternatives was I thought that they were a non-starter because it was so expensive. It turns how consumers are more than willing to pay twice as much for something that's not meat than, or three times as much than for something that is meat. I mean, it's, they're not, they're doing it because they want the world to be better. Because they're smart. Yeah, because people are smart. And they don't, they don't want, I mean, it sounds like silly, but I mean, it's the truth. It's like we have climate change is a monster. It's like it's burning down for like California, right?
Starting point is 00:20:55 What is it? Like five percent of California is on fire or was on fire this year. Like, you know, there's towns getting destroyed. There's resources are getting stolen from us. Like this, it's like an enemy that's acting against us and people want to stop it. So there's only, this is a very bright, uh, this is a just a tremendous observation and bright light, I think, in this whole battle, which is the individual consumer actually really cares deeply about this, and they are radically changing personal behavior.
Starting point is 00:21:29 Absolutely. So the failure of our governments, the failure of our leadership to act in a coordinated fashion is now being challenged by individual behavior. When we get back from this quick break, I want to know how long are these, you know, these kelp things. I'm sorry to just keep trying to visualize it. And then how many would we need to do to just sequester the carbon we're using today when we get back on this weekend startups? This week in startups is brought to you by Silicon Valley Bank.
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Starting point is 00:23:03 Thanks again to SVB for supporting this week in startups. Let's get back to the show. Welcome back to an incredibly important episode of this week in startups. I want to do my part. I want to start investing in more carbon companies. If you have a company that's doing something to fight with, little warming. I want to hear about it. I want to get involved. Jason at calicannis.com. Email me. And as part of that today, kicking off, I want to have every company doing something
Starting point is 00:23:25 important in climate change on this podcast. We had zero mass water on doing important work in water sustainability. And we're going to just keep pulling this thread and figure out what great entrepreneurs are trying to solve the problem. We're going to give them a ton of exposure. And today, Marty Adlin is on the pod talking about running tide. So how long is this kelp, you know, sheath or a tree stock that you're building. How long did they get? 30 meters. 30 meters, three, that's about 100 feet. 100 feet, you got it. Wow. So it's a third of a football field, yeah. Yeah, I mean, they're tall, but they're not big, right? What we're talking about,
Starting point is 00:24:03 we call them micro farms and we make them as small as makes sense. Because, you know, that way you have, we're trying to spread them out as much as we possibly can. You don't want to what you don't want to do or what causes people problems in the past in these types of industries where you like try to concentrate everything together. You know, it's just like thermodynamics tells you it's like much, it takes less energy to go like this with stuff than it does to like make things come together. So yeah, trying to spread things out as much as possible, keep things at low density. Let me ask a, let me ask this, and it maybe take a minute for you to do the math. As a consumer, let's say I drove, you know, a car every day, like a Prius or something. So I burned a little
Starting point is 00:24:43 bit of fossil fuel, and I lived in an apartment. I burned a little bit of, you know, oil, as it were, an average American, how many of these stocks would I, as an American, average American, need to put in the ocean to just be carbon neutral? Would I need to put 100 stocks, one stock? Okay, great question. Let me work it out really quick. This is actually my nightmare when I was talking about coming on this. Coming on the pod is actually doing like real time. I really shouldn't ask it this way. It was kind of a jerk way to say it is how many stocks would it take for the entire planet to be carbon neutral? Yeah, I'll tell you that. I have that figured out.
Starting point is 00:25:21 Tell me that one. Okay, well, this is interesting. The average carbon footprint for someone in the U.S. is 16 tons. 16 tons. Wow. Yeah, and the global average is four tons. So we're 4x worse than the average. Okay.
Starting point is 00:25:33 So we went to eight tons as a global, you know, if we or whatever. Well, like that, I mean, we know, I know exactly how many buoys it would take to get to 40 gigatons. Okay. So that's 400 billion. Okay. So that's a lot. That's a huge amount of effort. But it's possible, but it's possible.
Starting point is 00:25:50 The possible and the ocean can absorb it. This is the most important thing, right? We have, there are only so many places that you can take this carbon that's in the atmosphere and put it where it's out of the carbon cycle. So you can plant it into trees. You can put it into soil. Those are like somewhat temporary solutions because, you know, they're still in the carbon cycle where people could go cut down the trees or burn down the forest or like.
Starting point is 00:26:12 like over till the land and release the carbon. So those are great. We need to do those as fast as possible. We need to plant trees. Yeah, we do need to do all of that. But then there's also this other type of carbon sequestration, which you call like permanent removal from the carbon cycle. And that's critical because that's what we have to do to get back into balance.
Starting point is 00:26:32 And so we need permanent removal. So, you know, you can divide up the climate work into like three parts. You have behavioral change. so we release less carbon. Right. Like, eat oysters. They're really good for you. Low carbon footprint.
Starting point is 00:26:48 Fantastic thing to do. It offsets potentially, you know, more carbon-intensive protein sources that you could be eating, right? So those things are important to do. And you said scallops too? And scallops as well. Yeah, absolutely. Those are all super important things to do. And we need to do those.
Starting point is 00:27:08 Then the other bucket is like pulling climate down or pulling carbon down out of the atmosphere. And then you put it in, and you want to do it into permanent places. So permanent places would be turn it into rock or like calcium carbonate, where it's going to be super stable and it's not like, it'd take a ton of energy to get it out. So it's unlikely people would do that in the future. Then you have, you could turn it back into oil or like a gas and inject it deep underground.
Starting point is 00:27:31 So there's some really interesting companies like charm industrial that are doing that. And then finally, you could sink it to the bottom of the deep sea, which we're doing. Yeah, and it doesn't harm the ocean to put that carbon down there. No, I mean, it's a natural process. No, like, once the carbon gets down there, it's down. And when you talk about harm, like, one of the things we have to be, like, super disciplined about is, like, we have to acknowledge that, like, no matter what level of effort we do into reversing climate change, there will be externalities, but what's the option?
Starting point is 00:28:04 What's the option? We let the ocean acidify and die. Like, that's insane. No, that's completely not an option. Yeah, right? So 400 billion to sequester everything in there or just to be neutral for the year? That's neutral for the year. So you have to do that.
Starting point is 00:28:17 Plus you have to decarbonize. And if we decarbonize and do that, then it would take us 20 years to get it all down. I mean, it's like conservatively it's going to be, you know, and this is like a huge number, but it's like people talk about like $40 trillion to get the carbon out of the atmosphere down. And doesn't actually seem like an impossible number. I'll be totally honest. Seems possible. It's possible.
Starting point is 00:28:42 It is possible. The technologies are not fully baked. No one has this fully baked. Nobody has this dial. Nobody's like, hey, you give me $40 trillion. This is done. You know what I mean? We're not there yet, but we need to get there really, really fast.
Starting point is 00:28:56 So what would it take? What is the cost today to drop a stock? Is it $100? Is it $1,000? Yeah, I mean, it's on the order of, I mean, you know, it's on the order of like $150 to $200. Oh, per stock. I'm sorry.
Starting point is 00:29:19 Yeah. I was talking per ton. But per ton is interesting, too, to look at it. Yeah, I mean, let's do per ton because then it's apple to apples when you have other people on board, right? So, yeah, we're looking like $150 to $200 a ton. We think, like, as we scale, you get some economies of scale. We get better at this. We're better at our selection of species, et cetera.
Starting point is 00:29:39 we get better at our deployment locations. We refine our models. It's totally reasonable for us to get under $50 a ton. I think $50 a ton. And how many tons did an average American use? Did you say before? 16. Okay.
Starting point is 00:29:51 So it's not a crazy amount. I mean, that's a lot of money. If I gave you $2,000, I could be carbon neutral with this. I don't know your lifestyle, but yeah. Actually,
Starting point is 00:30:00 probably got to give you 4K. I'm not flying on private jets, but my house is big. Yeah, totally. So, I do drive Teslas, but you know. Yeah,
Starting point is 00:30:07 that helps. That helps. But I'm not making any judgments. But yeah, I mean, you have to be careful. No, I think we do need to make judges. I think everybody needs to be judged on this. Yeah. I mean, you know, it depends on what you eat.
Starting point is 00:30:16 You should, uh, yeah, that's a bit of a challenge for me. Eat a lot of shellfish and, uh, um, yeah, you know, in robots and, you know, automation, I would think if we really took this seriously building or taking an old oil rig rig or an old platform that's already in the ocean and having robots build and do this work, and just throw it over board. I wonder if that would work too. Or barges doing this on bar. Could you take an old oil tanker
Starting point is 00:30:45 and make that into a, you know, greenhouse to build this stuff? So it's just permanently out there? Oh, okay. Is that the roadmap? Yeah, there's a lot of ways to scale this type of effort. I mean, what we're doing, I don't want to like, there's a lot of sophisticated modeling
Starting point is 00:31:07 that's going into this in terms of deploying in certain locations that are able to have the correct nutrients and the biogeochemistry of the ocean bottom where you deploy is very important. So there's a lot of like, you know, there's a lot of like ocean knowledge and ocean data that gets crunched in order to make something like this viable. But yeah, I mean, there's a lot of ways that we can scale this up. And I think that it's, we have to. And, you know, one way, 400 billion is not an insane.
Starting point is 00:31:38 It isn't because like think how many coffee cups get made or think how many trivial things that get made that don't like aren't necessarily going to like, you know, for lack of a, to not be too over dramatic, but like you could potentially like have a huge impact on the future of civilization. Like I mean, Elon Musk says all the time, right? Doesn't he say like climate change is one of the filters? It's like one of the great filters. If you're, if civilization can't get control over its atmosphere and the concentration of
Starting point is 00:32:06 gases in its atmosphere, then it doesn't pass the great filter. Yeah, and what we mean by great filter in this sense is the filter of does your species make it to the next level? One of them is like, can you not kill each other with war? There's one filter. Can you build a society where warring factions don't destroy each other, nuclear weapons? That's one, fusion, nuclear weapons, whatever. I guess, you know, being able to contain pandemics like we're in the middle of right now is
Starting point is 00:32:34 another one. when we get back from this final break, I want to understand where you will place these deposit sites. And I'm just curious because I remember reading that, if I'm correct, the Mariana Trench, which is the deepest part of the ocean, I think, was considered as an even a nuclear waste disposal site. So I'm wondering if that plays into this when we get back on this week. If you're a founder, the IRS owes you some serious cash. That's right. But the only thing stopping you from claiming your cash is the single most detrimental thing to business productivity. Paperwork.
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Starting point is 00:34:30 Mainstreet. We need to us slash twist. More details and a priority onboarding call with Mainstststst, Street's team members are waiting for you at Main Street. Dot U.S. slash twist. Hey, welcome back to an important episode of this week. It's one, which I want to make a big focus of this podcast in 2021. You as a fan of the podcast can help by emailing myself and Nick at launch.
Starting point is 00:34:53 And dot co and Jason at Calacanis.com. You can email me and say, hey, here's an important topic for you to cover. If you're a PR person, there's no need to email us or a marketing person because you will not get your client on the podcast. If you do email us, we will put them on the penalty box and not put them on the pod for at least a year. So don't email most suggestions if you're a PR firm. We take offense, unless it's Masayoshi-san, in which case the PR person should email us
Starting point is 00:35:20 because I'd love to interview Masayoshi said. But in all seriousness, the fans drive who's on the pod, as do our co-investors that we invest in at launch. And one of those is Chris Saka, a longtime part of the This Weeks, family. friend of the pod. So running tide is our amazing guest today, Marty Odlin. And I'm curious, is that Mariana Trench a great place to put carbon sequestering? Because it's so far down. Would this stuff even make it all the way down? I wonder. I don't know. I've never, we've never modeled it out that deep. Never been to the Marianna Trench. No, never been. Never been.
Starting point is 00:35:59 Talk to Jim Cameron. I think he's the other person who's really been there. Yeah, I'm sure he has some stories about it too. But the, yeah, I think that depth is critical. You want to be deep enough that the physics come in your favor and sort of like compressibility of the gases. And, you know, you don't want, you don't want carbon or methane to be like coming back up. But there's a little bit more to it than that where we also want to make sure that we're, you know, at least in our model, we think that the best way to do this is to spread it out over a large area that has the appropriate biogeochemistry to like kind of encourage the formation of kind of like deep carbon deposits. So it's, it's, there's some specificity to where you put them, at least in the model that we're
Starting point is 00:36:45 trying to kind of, uh, would creating oyster farms also help with a sequestering problem? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That's like, is that on your plan? I spend every day. No, no, no. That's, that's actually how we started. We're like predominantly a shellfish company. And then this, this kelp was always on the roadmap, but we started to pull it forward as we saw the market start to develop where there's all these companies. So actually, what we started with is figuring out ways that we could harvest shellfish and using sensors and data systems and robotics to harvest shellfish in the most efficient way possible and develop the highest quality product.
Starting point is 00:37:25 The goal is to refine all of these systems so that they're scalable and we're able to meet the enormity of the demand coming, right? How do you fund the kelp farming and this distribution of kelp? Is this something you think governments will pay for or you'll get carbon credits for this and then be able to sell them to the car companies who won't make, you know, EVs? Yeah, I mean, I think that there's a bunch of different mechanisms right now. we're operating in a voluntary market where like most of these super, you know, the progressive companies, um, the progressive companies with a lot of cash are making, uh, commitments in response
Starting point is 00:38:09 to consumers. Um, and, and, and their own ethical, you know, in the, you know, the ethical guidelines of the CEOs or whatever, or management teams, but they're, uh, they're making commitments to be, uh, zero carbon. And, you know, a lot of that is like buying renewable energy and like, establishing renewable energy for their facilities, but a lot of it is going to have to come through negative emissions. So somebody like Apple or Google who've made the Amazon, who've made these commitments publicly to be carbon neutral by 2030, they're not going to get it. That's where we're starting.
Starting point is 00:38:38 Yeah. They're going to need to give money to you. They're going to need to give you 50 million a year, 100 billion a year to go ship some kelp out there and sequester some carbon. That's right. And that's like a first, that's great that these voluntary markets exist. I'm super happy that there's that level of interest out there. And I think that, you know, as as time goes on, you know, when you look at the level of effort required, this is going to look a lot more like a, you know, a World War on Carbon.
Starting point is 00:39:07 And so, and it's going to be a, it's going to require, I think it's going to require governments to step in and to, you know, accelerate these efforts. so that we can, you know, to do permanent carbon removal at scale, it will probably require government intervention. I'm curious, and you know, not to make this political, but just on a factual basis. Yeah. What trajectory were we on under the previous eight years of the Obama administration in terms of if you were to rate them,
Starting point is 00:39:46 either a letter grade or a scale of one to ten on their focus on climate or carbon and then this current one. And do you feel this current administration, you know, have they set us back or have they, is there in a way some perverse way in which their just absolute, you know, ignorant, you know, denial of this has inspired your generation, you know, millennial, I believe you're a millennial, but I'm not certain of that. But millennial generation, generation Z seem to look at this as a key component of their operating system going forward. Like every young person I meet, for them, you know, prior to Gen X, that climate change is just top of mind. Absolutely. They would care more about the climate than their own personal careers, let's say. Absolutely. I mean, like, who doesn't?
Starting point is 00:40:39 I mean, you'd have to be crazy. Well, I don't think boomers do. I mean, literally think boomers don't. Fair enough. I think that's part of the, and I think Gen Xers are kind of 80% in, 20% maybe denying. Okay, well, I mean, well, one, anybody that wants to do a lot of really hard work and doesn't come, give me a shout and we'll get to work. I got plenty of work for people to do.
Starting point is 00:41:03 You know, you're asking me to do math and you're asking me to talk politics. Well, I mean, just in terms of politics, I'm just curious. Look, look, like, it's not like, I'm going to be real. It wasn't, it's not like they were. who, no, barely anybody's redressing this except these like super forward-leaning tech companies. At this point, like that's, that's the reality. Like, like the, you know, okay, you sign the Paris Accords, great. Like, what are you going to do about it?
Starting point is 00:41:29 Parcichord seemed to be all on fire, right? Like, we're all going to try our best, but it didn't seem like it actually had goals on it. The forests are on fire right now. The fish are swimming away right now. And that's with the carbon that's already up in the atmosphere. atmosphere. So what are we going to do about it? Like, that's what it comes down to. It's like, and why in 2020 are companies like running tide or charm or whoever just, just getting into this? Like, why, why hasn't, you know, the time to, you know, it's like, I mean, it's the Chinese proverb.
Starting point is 00:42:04 When was the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago? The next, next best time is today. So, I mean, I'm glad we're doing it, but like, I don't want to, I don't think anyone's off the hook on this. You know, like I don't think that's, I don't think that's the right way to approach it. I think we just have to be like, look, this is real, this is happening right now, and we have to get after it. And do you feel like the investment community sees this like Chris Saka? Do you see a change? Because you've been at this for a couple of years.
Starting point is 00:42:32 I think the company started in 2017. Have you seen any change in the last three or four years? And I know you went to Columbia's Center for Sustainable Energy, or engineering, rather, in 2009. So maybe it's just over the last decade, what have you seen in terms of the finance communities and the entrepreneurial communities embracing of this as an opportunity, as a business opportunity? Yeah, I think that, I think that on the consumer side, like on the consumer and the demand side, I think that it's really that I think people, people believe in this, you know, like, there's a lot of support for people to be like, okay, let's get, let's get super healthy, low carbon proteins. Like,
Starting point is 00:43:11 let's figure out how to do that. And I think that there's a lot of, of investment in that space. And I think that's really exciting. And like, you know, we're one of, we're a beneficiary of that, you know, a little bit more on the natural food side than some of the other cultured meats. But like, you know, I think that that's that helped us get off the ground. When you want to talk about like direct carbon sequestration, I don't think that's really kicked off. But I, you know, where it needs to be. I think that I think it's as important as anything, you know, short of like stopping nuclear weapon
Starting point is 00:43:49 proliferation. I think that pulling carbon out of the skies is one of the most important things we can be doing. So like, I mean, you know, the question is, you know, what role does capital have to play in that? I think it's a pretty important role. So yeah, and just in terms of humans belief in climate change, the share of humans saying they think climate change is who believe the climate is changing and human activity is mainly responsible. 71% of people in India believe this.
Starting point is 00:44:26 69% of people in Spain believe this. Great Britain, it falls to 51%. And then when you get to the United States, only 38, this is in 2019. 38% of people believe that. Saudi Arabia and Norway 35% of money. I bet it's way higher this year than last year. I have a feeling where it's really interesting. It's like, we are such schmucks that we like scientists show us this.
Starting point is 00:44:47 And we need to have 10 or 20 smoke days in the Bay Area for the world to actually believe it. It is a really bad aspect of human nature that we have to see things firsthand to believe them sometimes. Yeah. And I mean, it's a shame. I think a lot of it comes from people not seeing available solutions and not seeing like a, and I think that now that they're starting to be solutions out there, whether it's food, which I think is super critical. If it's, you know, electric cars are starting, you know, you start to see them all the
Starting point is 00:45:26 every day now instead of one, or at least, you know, once a week. Yeah. When you see an electric car, you don't take out your camera and take a picture of it because it's so unique. I mean, when I had literally the 16th Tesla ever made, the roadster, I had serial number 16. And I could not drive the thing in Santa Monica without, I kid you not, people opening the door and asking to take a ride. I literally would have people open the door out of valet and say, can I get in? I want it to sit in it. I haven't driven in a roadster.
Starting point is 00:45:55 I'd love to even today. It's in my garage. I think I'm on the wrong side of that country. but yeah, it's so cool. Yeah, so there's availability of solutions now. So I think that as more solutions pop up, I think people are going to start to like amazingly start to believe that we can do this, right? So I think that, you know, when it's hopeless.
Starting point is 00:46:18 You're hopeful. Yeah. It would have to be to go work every day. Yeah. I mean, I mean, I get it. I wake up every day. I get up really early and I'm fired up. I mean, I have an amazing team of people.
Starting point is 00:46:31 they all believe in the mission. They're trying to grow the healthiest, lowest carbon footprint food possible. We're, you know, we're, you know, you're trying to like remove carbon from the sky and the ocean. Like, that gets people fired up. So I have no problem going to work every day. You know, I just hope there's, we just need more of this effort. And it just needs to accelerate and people need to be, you know, lean into it harder. You know, I mean, so, yeah, I think that's, I am hopeful.
Starting point is 00:47:01 I am hopeful because I don't think we're going to do it. I guarantee we do it. I think humanity is going to do it. It's just a matter of how much pain we go through before we get after it. Interesting. We're really engaged, you know, because are we going to wait for like a super hurricane to wipe out, you know, the Gulf Coast? Like, are we going to wait for instead of 5% of California burning, 15% of California
Starting point is 00:47:23 burning? At some point, it's going to be too much, right? At some point, we're going to stop and say, we need to solve this problem. Let's put our best minds, our best capital, our best money, and, you know, make a national effort at this. So I think that it's going to get solved. It's just a matter of what we have to go through to get there. Do you feel what we saw during the pandemic in terms of, and it was a weird kind of observation that nobody expected, but when everybody had to shelter in place, we got to see what a world with, you know, almost, you know, I don't know if it was 80 or 90 percent less oil being burned in cities.
Starting point is 00:48:00 what that was like, when all the cars were off the road. All of a sudden, you know, people were seeing the Himalayas from, you know, around places they had never seen them, but they were there. They just couldn't see them in India or wherever it was. And then people couldn't see, even in the Bay Area, it was a very weird experience for me to look out on the sky in the Bay Area and say, wow, you can see more stars or the air is cleaner before the fires. During the pandemic in the spring, it was like, wow, the air is noticeably cleaner.
Starting point is 00:48:29 Yeah. No, I think it's a, it's, I agree with you that the pandemic caused a pause and maybe cause people to take a look around them, slow down a little bit, take a look around, look at their natural environment, look at the built environment and change slightly their relationship, relations to it. And I think that's really important because, you know, one of the things we talk about a lot at running tide is we try to talk about like, okay, listen to the ocean, like look at the data, do the math, listen to the ocean.
Starting point is 00:48:57 It's going to, you know, that's going to tell you everything you need to know. And I think that when people, and then we do that and then all these opportunities open up. You just look like the ocean is this huge, super powerful thing. We need exponential functions to change the world. And the ocean can like absorb and power those exponential functions, whether it's food or climate or whatever. And I think that when people take us pause and like look around at their natural environment and start to listen, like you can actually, you know, there's not to sound too out there,
Starting point is 00:49:25 but there's a lot of, there's a lot to learn by doing that. And I think that the pandemic gave people that pause. It's going to take a long time to get solar panels out there. Obviously, you know, putting them on every building. It takes time. We're getting there. But nuclear, we haven't invested in here in the United States in a long time. We haven't had a new nuclear reactor since the early 70s.
Starting point is 00:49:47 France is primarily powered by nuclear. Japan stopped nuclear after Fukushima. And Germany, in a very reactionary way, shut down their nuclear reactors, although they've had days where they've had 50 percent. of their energy provided by renewals, so they could afford to do that because of their investment. But putting all that together, would it not make sense? And I'm wondering if you would be in favor of a really urgent deployment of hundreds or, you know, dozens of nuclear reactors so that we stop burning fossil fuels in the United States and other places.
Starting point is 00:50:23 What's your position on? And especially for India and China as well, because China is making dozens of them. They're doing it. So what's your position on nuclear as a bridge to get us off of fossil fuel? Curious. You know, it's not something that I've done a ton of research on, so I don't want to like prognosticate. But I do think that it's nuclear gives us the opportunity to do direct air capture in a responsible way. Like direct air capture is like these giant fans or whatever that suck CO2 out of the atmosphere and inject it deep underground or turn it into bricks.
Starting point is 00:50:56 And it's a really interesting. interesting technology and if it runs off, but... What was the name of that technology? D? Yeah, so there's different types of carbon capture, right? There's, there's Dax, which is like direct air capture. There's Bex, which is like bioenergy. So like burning biomass and then taking the leftover carbon and burying that.
Starting point is 00:51:18 There's like what I call direct ocean capture, like what we're doing. So there's a variety of different carbon capture mechanisms. Now, the careful thing, the thing we have to be careful about is like this concept of additionality. So is your, if you're, even if you're putting solar panels out and using that to pull carbon out of the atmosphere, you have to compare that to just using the solar panels to prevent carbon from going up in the first place, right? So if you're, if you're robbing Peter to pay Paul, if you're pulling off the renewable energy grid in order to pull carbon out of the atmosphere, you have to, you have to, you have to, you have to, you have to do the analysis of like, is the carbon I'm emitting from like the natural gas plant to replace the energy that's coming out of the renewable grid?
Starting point is 00:52:07 Does that balance how much carbon I'm pulling down? So it gets really complicated. And that's why like ultimately it's going to require some sort of governance that's going to wrap all this up and like, make sure all these things are balanced. Because if we do it in an ad hoc way, I really worry that we're going to lose some of the higher quality carbon sequestration techniques will be given. So in relation to nuclear, if we were to create, let's say, in the United States, some of these small nuclear reactors are now much safer.
Starting point is 00:52:38 If we were to create a hundred of them and we could get over the nimbism of where to put them for a second, which I think if you told people in California right now, we can start reversing climate change if you approve some nuclear reactors. People in California who are dealing with the smoke issue would be like, yeah, Let's do it. Right. Much rather have a couple of nuclear reactors and deal with that risk. And the new nuclear is so much safer than Fukushima, which was a disaster.
Starting point is 00:53:03 They knew where they put it was below sea level and they took that risk anyway. And they kept that risk for 30 years. It was just really dumb. No offense. Yeah. I mean, I've read a bit about like how some of them now they fail safe, like they're fail safe. So if anything, any system fails, it shuts down. Yes.
Starting point is 00:53:19 I think that it would be. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Well, no, I just wanted to know how direct air capture related to nuclear. where you're saying the nuclear reactor is there. And so it's throwing off so much energy, you could actually have DAC going on when it's got excess energy. Like,
Starting point is 00:53:31 I'll be honest, like I've done a lot of modeling and thinking about how to use the ocean, right, for different things. Like, that's kind of where my focus is. I feel like that's where I bring, like, some sort of,
Starting point is 00:53:43 like, a unique skill set. When it gets to that, I just don't understand the risk curve. So, like, I don't want to tell you that I think that's, like, a fantastic idea.
Starting point is 00:53:51 I think that from, from, from, makes a lot of sense, but I don't have the information to be able to, like, balance out the risks of this, of nuclear energy. I think that people are probably not looking at the risk when they're against it, right? I bet that people aren't really digging in on all the risks associated with it. And I definitely think that the status quo or, like, doing nothing about carbon in the atmosphere is, like, completely unacceptable and will be looked on us, foolish.
Starting point is 00:54:23 So like what do we have to do? What tools do we have? That's a tool, right? Let's assess it. If through sequestration and through conservation not putting more carbon in and, you know, just if we start going in a negative amount of carbon in the atmosphere, you said it might take 20 years or 30 years to sort of get that out at a major cost. So let's say that we start trending in that way.
Starting point is 00:54:51 What would we see happen? the, would we see the climate, would we see the temperature on go down again and not have these crazy heat waves and not have these dust balls? And would we see that or would it take time for that to occur? I'm curious. Or do we not know? Well, okay. I don't think, I don't know if the models are sophisticated enough to really see that. I mean, we're basically the models are, have all been wrong and everything's worse than they thought it was going to be. So let's be careful. But remember, like, what happens in spring or summertime, or spring or fall, when the sun starts to go down, right, like June 21st, when the sun starts to go down, it still keeps
Starting point is 00:55:31 getting warmer, right? So it's going to, even if we started to bring carbon down from the level that it's at today, and we started to bring it down, it's still going to keep getting warmer. It's still going to keep warming warmer. The rate of acceleration will probably slow, but we're still going to see it get warmer. So no matter what we do, it's going to get warmer. It's going to get warmer for a while. And that's what's terrifying. And they talk a lot about like, oh, we can accept like a 1.5 degree C increase. And that's kind of like where people have already baked that in. Like, that's the best we're going to be able to do. That's terrifying. Because if it gets warmer than it is now by 1.5 degrees, like, things are not looking great right now. So I think like the,
Starting point is 00:56:12 just, I mean, I understand that there had to be some acceptance of some level of rise. But it's also like, you kind of wish someone would step up and just be like, you know, one of these, one of these leaders or politicians would step up and just be like, no, like, it's not okay. Yeah. What does it take to stop and like bring it right down as fast as possible? And I think that that would be like, you know, but I think consumers are doing that. Yeah. I think that consumers are driving it. I think like that's, I think that that's why, you know, you can see it in food because that's where people consume every day and they're able to make changes in their life. They can make these changes with food. They don't have, people don't necessarily have the power to change the energy grid.
Starting point is 00:56:52 Right? Like, they don't, like, any individual doesn't have any, it doesn't have enough power to do that. But like, with food you can and you see it every day. And like, you see it with, you know, I see, like, there's, you know, the rise of pescatarianism, veganism, vegetarianism. It's all a response to climate. It's what people have power over. So I see leadership coming from just the mass, you know?
Starting point is 00:57:13 We just haven't had that, that, that transformational leader to step up. I think this is generational. I'll be totally honest. I think these boomers who are thinking about their 401ks more than they're thinking about the environment and sustainability. You know, they're, you know, we've got 70 some odd year olds, you know, running for president. I think that their time is a decade away from being over. And then you start having, you know, the oldest members of Gen X starting to take positions of power. And they've got Gen Z kids, millennial kids. It's just kind of hard for them to sit and have. have a conversation with their own kids about what they're not doing, whereas boomers can kind of talk to Gen Xers and, hey, you know, there's reasons we're not doing it. I think it's becoming unsustainable for those leaders to take this position. And Gen Xers just are cut from a different cloth than the millennials super. When they get in office, the AOCs of the world, like, they just, this is their number one issue,
Starting point is 00:58:08 right? I mean, it's, how can you know, I mean, it's climate change is going to take, like, I'm kind of, you know, I live, I live, I live. I live in Maine. I like being out. How old are you? I'm curious. I'm 38. Yeah. So, I mean, I live in Maine. I like, I like to be outdoors. I like to surf and fish and, you know, like, that's all the good stuff for me is provided by free from nature. Like, that's what I like. I just like to be out there. And climate change is taking all that. And it's making it. And that's going to, it's going to make it so I can't fish in these old fishing spots. And I can't, the surf breaks are,
Starting point is 00:58:43 are they even going to exist? They're going to get eroded away and like move, like, wherever. So, like, like I'm looking at my kid's life and I think of the life I live and it's just like it doesn't line up. I'm not going to be able to pass all these traditions or all these things down to my kids and that's like something that's super concerning. Yeah. The most disturbing moment I had in this whole discussion was two times when I was in Japan for my book tour, two different really educated people said they asked them if they had kids. They said, no, it's immoral to bring kids into this world. And I was like, well, kind of brought three into the world already. Thanks for telling me now. But that literally felt it was immoral.
Starting point is 00:59:17 because of global warming, because of the environmental collapse, like, why would you bring a child into this? Which is, I mean, that to me is heartbreaking. It is hard. I mean, that's just. Soul crushing, right? Yeah, I just want to get back to work right now. Exactly. I mean, just literally people who believe that the human species needs to be half the footprint it is.
Starting point is 00:59:36 I mean, that's the other. I mean, that's in a way what nature is telling us is, you know, maybe you guys overplayed your hands and maybe they should be half as many humans. Maybe we'll just burn all your houses. and maybe that's what Gaia and Mother Earth is telling everybody, like, if you don't fix this, we're going to fix you, right? I mean, it's kind of the message. What makes you hopeful? Because I know that you have a lot of contemporaries in the field.
Starting point is 00:59:57 When you see other, we'll end on this is when you see other projects going on, which other projects inspire you and make you hopeful that are going on there? Obviously, foods. I think, yeah. I mean, food, I think, is number one in my mind. I see a lot of people, you know, changing how they eat and focus. on where it comes from and how clean it is, how well it suits their body, the carbon footprint, etc. I love everything I'm seeing in food, not like I think obviously Elon Musk and Tesla, like,
Starting point is 01:00:29 I mean, how can you not? This guy's thinking like absolutely from first principles and in building huge industrial systems. Trust me, there's a whole cobble of people who are shorting the stock who are rooting against it, which is literally a direct line for rooting against the planet. It's crazy. I know, it's insane. But who are these people? I mean, how do you wake up in the morning, just to pause up this for a second morning. Can you imagine being so cynical you wake up in the morning and say, you know what, stock? I want to short, the one that's trying to save the goddamn planet and get us off fossil fuel. I don't know. I don't have it in me. So I can't even, I honestly don't understand it. I mean, it's like, I mean, literally those people should
Starting point is 01:01:03 just go buy a car, go buy an EV. Like, that's what they should do. Yeah. Like, they should be rooting for him to invest another 10 billion or 20 billion in making factories. Yeah. I mean, I couldn't agree more. I think, you know, project-wise, you know, I think this charm industrial, I think, I mean, I've never talked to them, but I think what they're doing, but I think what they're doing is beautiful. I think, like, Shopify, who gave us some support, I think I'm so inspired. I'm so happy that they're out there pushing the envelope and looking for these emerging, like, direct or like carbon capture programs.
Starting point is 01:01:40 Stripe is doing that as well. Amazon Microsoft. You know, there's a bunch of companies that I think are really lean to this. As much as tech has been maligned for being so successful, what you see is very conscientious capitalism as far as those companies are when it comes to climate. They are actually leading. They're the tip of the spear for the climate revolution, aren't they? Look, you know, I was outside of the tech world. like an insider at all. Like I never, my, the, I knew one person in venture capital when I started
Starting point is 01:02:17 on the running tide journey and like I had one introduction. Like, and I've built all of that, all of those, that network's built over the past few years. You know, you heard a lot of bad stuff about it like before I got into it. I listened to a lot of podcasts, but, uh, and, you know, you read a lot of criticism. But once I got into it and every single person or like by and large, almost everybody I've talked to, all my investors, they're all just like amazing people. super forward thinking, trying to make the world a better place. And then when I've had contacts with these larger companies, like the people from Shopify, they've been brilliant and beautiful people.
Starting point is 01:02:52 Toby's a great hearing. He's a pod. Oh, really? Yeah. They're trying to do the best they can. And I appreciate it. And I haven't seen anything bad come of it. Like, you know, obviously, I'm not going to like, there's a lot of downsides.
Starting point is 01:03:08 I'm not saying this isn't like a whitewash of anything that could. that could be happening. But yeah, I haven't, I'm happy that they're doing the right thing on climate. That's all I don't care about. Yeah. But I mean, I do think it's a great pause, which is, you know, it's very easy to malign the secondary impacts of a lot of these tech companies, whether it was Amazon or Facebook. Obviously, when you build these very large at-scale companies, they can have problems. But when it comes to climate change, to be clear, you know, the leadership on climate change coming out of the tech industry is second to nobody. I mean, and the investment. is second to nobody.
Starting point is 01:03:42 That's, you got to give people credit for doing good things. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, like, I'm...
Starting point is 01:03:47 Bezos is giving $10 billion to climate change. Good, good. We need it. I don't know if it's given you any yet, but... No, but that's, it doesn't matter.
Starting point is 01:03:54 Well, listen, he listens to the pod, Jeff. Jeff at Amazon. com. Somebody email them right now. Send him a link to this episode and this timestamp.
Starting point is 01:04:03 You guys have his email, Jeff at Amazon. com. Go ahead and email and say, listen to this part. Jake, how blew you up. You got 10 billion you're given.
Starting point is 01:04:10 And I'm going to say right now, give Marty 100. 100 million. You know, there's a 50-50 that he's going to get the message. And there's probably a 10% chance he'll send you 100 million. Because, I mean, you're doing it. You're doing it. It's legitimized and it's working. So you're hiring now.
Starting point is 01:04:25 I know that. Yeah. Tell us what positions you're hiring for. Where would these people work? And let's get you to fill those positions. What positions are you filling? Yeah, absolutely. Where can people go to see the job postings?
Starting point is 01:04:35 And obviously, your first name at your company name. But, yeah. Yeah. What are you looking for? I'm looking for engineers. Yeah, I'm looking for engineers across the board. You know, mechanical, material science, electrical, and software. So looking for all of them.
Starting point is 01:04:57 We're looking for a director of biology. Director of Biology, there you go. That's a good. That's a good role. Where would they have worked previously? You know, I'm pretty open, I'm pretty open-minded. Like there's going to be, whoever, we bring in, I want to be comfortable with running a lot of experiments at the same time.
Starting point is 01:05:16 Okay. So we got to be bold, experimental, detail-oriented. We iterate super fast. We build super fast. We, like, I, you know, I'm not- Embrace change, embrace. Yeah. Experimentation, yes. Yeah, exactly. And like, you know, the team, my team is absolutely incredible. I have some of the best people you could ever imagine. They work incredibly hard. And, like, it's very clear to me, like, we work, we build as much in six months as most people build. in years, you know, in three years, four years. At another job, like, we just work really quickly and iterate as fast as we can gather as much data. So, you know, the engineers, biologists, yeah, I mean, I'm very keen to get as many people, as many high-level people as we can,
Starting point is 01:05:58 but also, like, there's a lot of opportunities in the entry-level space for us as well, because there's just a lot of work to do. So if you're an engineer or you're in biotech, I'm sorry, in biology. That's right. They got some opportunities here. And you guys, the offices in Maine, yeah? The office, yeah, we have an office in Portland, Maine. Nice.
Starting point is 01:06:19 And beautiful, beautiful place. Some nice living out there. Some nice living, nice living out there. Well, listen, I really appreciate you come on the pod. I know that you're not like necessarily going on tons of pods. And I really appreciate you the work you're doing. Sincerely, just, you know, from one human to another, one founder to another. I really appreciate you and what you're doing, and I wish you great success with it.
Starting point is 01:06:42 And if anybody's listening to me, if you're really smart and you're considering taking that max offer at Facebook to go optimize ads and trick people into clicking on them and increasing by six basis points, you know, how efficient Facebook's, you know, inane, you know, completely boring ad network is. Go do something meaningful with your life like working for Marty, because that's more important. There's all this brain drain of incredibly smart people taking $400,000 to work at Facebook on their goddamn ad network when you could take a little bit of a pay cut, maybe, but work on something you can be proud of. So go do it, everybody. All right, listen, Marty, continued success with running tied. Congratulations on getting my pal, Chris Saka on board. That's a real good get for you. He's a tremendous investor in a human being as well.
Starting point is 01:07:37 So everybody running tide.com And we can't buy anything from you yet, but at some point you should put in. No, no, I mean, I'm selling, we're selling oysters, we're selling clams. Okay. Yeah. So go buy some oysters and clams if you can get there.
Starting point is 01:07:52 But I really think, you know, with this, when you start, oh, you can order them online, really? Oh, look at that. 100 count bag of oysters. So everybody go to Running Tide and get some oysters. But you can also. it would be also great if when you do this kelp stuff, like if I could,
Starting point is 01:08:12 you know, buy 10 stocks as a gift or like this Christmas, if I could give a stock to everybody and give carbons, the gift of carbon sequestation to people, instead of sending them, you know, chocolate bars or whatever,
Starting point is 01:08:25 I send them nice chocolate every year, or I could do both. That's kind of a cool gift, you know, like kind of give people that gift. That's a great idea. Yeah. Somebody did this thing,
Starting point is 01:08:35 and I saw Toby and Elon and everybody did it where this person was like planting trees and they did like a tree planting competition and everybody just gave a million bucks over and over again. It was pretty amazing to watch. Yeah, that's incredible. I mean, we'll be... Well, I mean, hopefully we'll be scaling up our efforts
Starting point is 01:08:52 across the board and people can help us out. Be super appreciative. All right. Buy 100 oysters right now. Buck 25 an oyster. Great deal. At running tide.com. Thank you so much, Marty, for coming on the pot. All right. Take care. Thank you.

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