Adam Torres and Roland Vandermeer discuss the UpTerra story.
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Show Notes:
UpTerra is an agriculture technology company that is leading a revolution to solve the issues of water usage, fertilizer inputs, and enhancing yields with a new equation based in natural resonance. In this episode, Adam Torres and Roland Vandermeer, Chairman of UpTerra, explore the UpTerra story and Roland’s new book, Mission Matters: World’s Leading Entrepreneurs Reveal Their Top Tips To Success (Business Leaders Vol. 9, Edition 9).
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About Roland Vandermeer
His 20 years of experience in early-stage startup investing, including taking operational roles when needed, gave him hands-on experience in building the strategies and teams to manage and grow UpTerra. he was instrumental in helping sustainable and organic farming practices manage vast regenerative agricultural assets through companies he had invested in. Some of the most important lessons he has learned came from the failures and successes he has experienced along this journey. This knowledge enabled him to recognize how pivotal UpTerra could be to creating a scalable solution for agriculture that would thrive in harmony with nature.
He recognized the personal alignment of UpTerra and decided to help bring this remarkable technology to the farming community to help solve the critical issues they have today.UpTerra has all the markings to create a new agricultural paradigm. he has arrived exactly where he wants and is supposed to be.
About UpTerra
Healthy thriving farms in harmony with nature. Dense, rich soil full of nutrients. UpTerra is doing its part by creating solutions at the intersection of technology, physics and nature, and delivering them through water, frequency, and vibration.
Maintaining our world’s health is the most critical mission we face today. They are committed to delivering solutions that work for all farms now. Their team holds an unwavering commitment to stand up to that challenge and succeed in partnership with farmers all over the world.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today is a very special episode. We’re welcoming back Roland VanderMeer, who is the c e o over at up Tara, and also I am proud to announce he’s also a published author in our most recent Mission Matters book.
First off, Roland, I just wanted say, Hey, welcome back and congrats. Oh, thank you Adam. Pleasure to be here and pleasure to talk to you. All right, Roland. So we, we got, we got a lot to cover. So first off, the title of your work in the, in the most recent release was a radical breakthrough in agriculture, just in Time.
So many concepts that you bring to light in that book. And I mean, I learned a lot and I’m sure that our readers did as well. So lot to cover on that. And I definitely wanna get into this. Farm DJ concept and a whole bunch more. But you know, you already know the drill. You’ve been on the show before a couple times.
So we’ll start this episode the way that we start them all with our mission matters minute. So, Roland, we at Mission Matters. We amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts. That’s our mission. Roland, what mission matters to you? Well, if you go to the biggest level I could go to, it’s, it’s helping ourselves and humanity kinda ascend their spiritual beings.
So we’re not fighting and creating the calamities we are around the world right now. That is the highest mission we can all probably strive for. Almost sound like a beauty pageant, but it really is the mission of all of us to kinda find peace and harmony amongst all of us. And along with that, this planet, the environment.
And that’s where I focus my energies mostly. Yeah. No, it’s great. And it’s great to have you part of our Mission Matters community and in this book, and the more that I’ve gotten to know you and also about your background. And so I, I do wanna go into your background a bit because, and when I kind of tee this up, I’m gonna be stereotyping a little bit.
So friend of the VCs out there, if you’re offended, hey. Okay. But you know, in your background, I mean, you were, you had quite a VC. C career. And you, you know, you in, in the book, you’re ta you talk about your rise and then maybe at some point having this change of heart and figuring out, like there’s this amazing story tell about, about, you know, maybe it’s not just about this money, that there’s higher purposes and higher ideals and higher beliefs that we could be striving for.
Maybe, you know, just to kind of stick in those early days a little bit and we’ll, and we’ll take some time unpacking that. Like tell us a little bit more about kind of how you got started in that buildup. Yeah, so, so, so I’m an engineer education wise. Went to University of Pennsylvania, also went to the Wharton School at the same time and just kinda threw that degree in there.
Cause I think business is more about learning than it’s about education. And as an engineer, working communications and I was very fortunate. And a few years out I got involved with Venture capital and joined a firm, a pretty major firm. At the time it was called, About two years there, we realized we had to start our own venture in communications, early stage startups.
And this was eighties about you. Mid late eighties. And and for, for context there first maybe some of our, our younger listeners, so the VC scene, you know, eighties, I mean, it’s nothing like it is now, where was kind of, it’s kind of common knowledge of these, these ideals or, you know, other things like tell us about the eighties and what the VC scene was there.
Cause I like to know. Yeah. I got the fortunate. Experience of working with some of the original VCs in the whole industry that came out, mostly semiconductor areas, you know, deep communication stuff. The guys who formed Sequoia Capital, for instance there, Don Valentine, pier Lamont, and then a whole bunch of other luminaries that were around at that time.
And the group I was with was the next generation being trained by those guys, in effect. So very early on they were operationally oriented, very much, you know, how do we change, you know, the world? How do we make things different? It rarely was about money. Okay, wow. This is really about how do we do this better and let’s create something very cool.
Really That’s interesting. I, I, yeah. And they were tough. I mean, they’re tough operating people and they really had great backgrounds and operations and not just a few years out of, you know, Industry, so to speak, didn’t have that. So I had to learn a lot very quickly. But it was a fantastic time. My mentor was an amazing human being who was having to be a communication analyst in technology and one of the best in the industry.
And he basically said, you know, he brought me on and let me run and gave me all his network and contacts and says, go for it. And I had to figure it out and I just use him as a guidepost and it was an amazing experience to have that. The store. First startup I did was I was 28, 29 no, 28 wow. Pair game technologies.
And I wrote a $250,000 check, jumped as ceo cause there was no CEO hired the first C to replace me cuz I was not a C. Yeah. And a year and a half later I had to. You know, exit him and put in a new one. Then I had to do it again, jump in again for a while. Mm-hmm. So this, we were learning a lot, but the technology was so advanced, which I found pretty good intuitive about technologies and what’s coming and what it makes sense.
And it took a while, but eventually that company goes public and becomes worth and gets sold for 3 billion, and that’s an early nineties money. That’s not in money. Yeah. Thousand money. So very different experience there. But those are the kind of mentorship I had and training I had and I was never afraid to jump into a company.
Cause I always said, if I’m gonna invest in something I want, I’d probably want wanna run it. Even though I didn’t have the skills many CEOs do, I would just jump in and get things started and make it happen. And just to correct something. By the way, I’m no longer CEO O at Aptera. I’m actually executive chairman again because I found the CEO that’s gonna take us to the next level, which was my job to do.
And that just happened within a few weeks ago, literally. So really exciting time and, and now I’m again, get to be chairman which is executive chairman, which is helpful operational in some sense, but really working at a higher level. Wow. Yeah, no, first off, first off, congrats. I mean, that’s that’s it.
So that’s when we, as we’ve kind of gotten to know each other over the years and when you at least list a year, we’ve been working with each other. Like you were, you were CEO back then, so Yeah, man, we should have had that updated. I didn’t know. So that’s breaking news here too. Congrats. Yeah.
That’s a big deal. Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s, we just closed our financing as well. So it’s, it’s very exciting times and we’re moving space at the same time, so, All this is happening and this very is so reminiscent of my first venture that I did. I said sold for 3 billion. So we’re kind of on the same path.
Ok, yeah, a little foretelling there. But you know, the most important part of my background is I was never afraid to jump into things and, and make things happen and take a risk. And it’s just what your passion, if you drive by passion. You know, sensible passion, the passion with discernment. It usually is a good indicator.
This is what you should be doing, you know, this is what feels right. Yeah. And I did that a long time. And then this is what you mentioned. So it happened and then all of a sudden there was a, like the rise and then the fall literally. When I switched to a fear, like if 2000 hit the.com bust happened, people were like scared.
There was no more money. You know, what are we gonna do? The venture industry kinda collapsed. Mm-hmm. And funny thing, when you said venture in the eighties, when you said venture capital, you said, what are you talking about? Adventure capital. What is that? A venture? That’s a good word. Adventure capital. No one knew it today.
It’s like commonplace. But then yeah, I couldn’t, you could fill out on a form they say, what you talking about? What’s that? So, But that changed. Okay, that’s changed. So 2000 things really got tough, and then it got tough again, 2008. But I, I went into a fear mode, like, how are we gonna make money? How are we gonna do this?
How can we succeed? And that begins the process of making decisions based on fear instead of passion and love, you know, and really, that’s kind of what I write about a little bit. When you’re in a what mode of fear? You constrict yourself, you constrict your opportunities. And that’s, it took me a long time to work through that a long time.
Mm. And emerging out of that now and working out of passion and, and drive and love actually. Yeah. I use the word love, not like you think gui all that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. An intense passion inside that feels really good. And, and that’s creative juices that are flowing. And when people are working in that mode, they’re really unstoppable.
I wanna circle back to something that, that you mentioned and and, and just kind of, cause I’m curious though, the, you, you mentioned in your, you know, in your late twenties, you, you know, you, you were brought in and, and you, you jumped in the CEO role, but you knew you wouldn’t ultimately be the c e you.
And you said, I think twice already, so I’m not the ceo. Like, that’s not what you wanna do or your aim like, like how did you know that so early on? Like, that’s really interesting. Yeah, I guess, you know, a a, a good CEO has so many skills. I mean, and management of people is one of operate the possible. Ability.
They can patience and patience and, and holding people accountable, which is one of the hardest things to do. Ok. To hold ’em accountable. There’s a great story, the Seven Fable of the ceo, whatever. It’s a great story. It’s about that thick. I love books that are that thick. They tell you everything you need.
Because I don’t want to read a big book. But it, it’s amazing that you know those people that have both vision capability and hold people accountable, bringing in the right people. So there’s that and what I’m really good at creating vision and ideas and inspiring people. But the accountability part, yeah, go do it.
Cuz that’s what I did. I just went and did it. And a lot of people can’t operate that way. You know, a lot of people need a little more guidance, a little more coaching, a little more hands on, and there’s training behind that. There’s people that are really good at that and, and that is super essential I found.
It’s also attention to details, which I can do at times, but not consistently. So I love working on the more inspired realm and, and. Coming out with some vision pieces and stuff like that and, and, and seeing what a good, so I facilitate a good entrepreneur, a good CEO to kind of do what they’re here to do and augment that a little bit, and that I found my best role ever.
Yeah, that, that’s interesting that you knew that at that young of an age. And obviously to see that come full circle cuz that’s, I mean, 28 when I think about that. And especially cuz you wrote the check too, you said, you know, you wrote a good size check. So I feel like most 28 year olds, especially in in today’s world where you have like the glamorized.
CEO o position of this and that. I I, I guess I shouldn’t be saying this, but I will. I’m like the CEO position’s, not like when you just said that, I’m, I think in my head I’m like, wow, should I, like, we don’t like, how do you know? Like that’s why I said I was curious. But at that age, that’s super interesting to me.
Cause I feel like 28 year olds just. Many people that watch this maybe haven’t even considered you know, on the entrepreneurial side that there’s different types of entrepreneurs. Maybe you’re a builder, maybe you’re, you know, better at the early stage. Maybe you’re not made to do the operational side as it gets to different levels.
And that doesn’t mean that you have to stop the growth of your business. It means that maybe there’s another way to think of it. So I like that you bring that out. Yeah. And, and the thing Adam, I also found is you build a, a network of mentors, not just one mentor, a network of mentors, cuz everybody brings a different skill set.
And that first venture I told you about, I put a board together of VCs that all brought a different skill. One was a really pedigree VC that knew his venture skills really well. One was an operating guy who knew how the manufacturing worked and one was a technology worked at a customer of ours. I put them on the board and it was like, fantastic.
So we had all the coaching that was. Kind of what I thought we could do, cuz I didn’t have that skill, but I did know the product side. So my skillset was knowing where the product will should go, could go and would make sense in the market. That’s what I brought to the table. The rest of it didn’t have it, so I had to augment myself.
And I always thought of that. If you’re starting a company, find the people that coach you and the skills that you are weakest in. Ok. Not the ones you’re strongest in, that’s not what you need. Mm-hmm. And, and that really helps a lot. And a good CEO will do that. Generally I find a CEO usually picks one board member to work with most closely, but mm-hmm All those board members can help in different capacities or mentors outside of that.
And now today, the, I think getting coaching outside of the board because a board is still your financial investor generally, and you’re not gonna open up everything there. Okay. So you need some outside coaching too, and that’s important to find as well.
Four or five different coaches I talk to probably once a month, once every two months, just to tune into something I’m feeling is off, you know. Yeah, I’m a big, big fan of coaching and mentoring, so it’s great. And, and people that have been watching this show for a long time know that, and I love for them to hear it from somebody like yourself.
So that’s great. I wanna, I wanna, getting back to, had, had to go on that side side tangent because I, super interesting to me still, but you’re, you transition so at some point, you know, further down the line, you know, things didn’t the shakeup we’ll say, and you. Find this like idea, like you’re looking, you’re not no longer operating out of fear.
You’re, or you’re on that path to no longer doing that, and then you figure out like there’s some higher purposes, there’s some higher callings. Like tell me maybe a little bit more about that, that point in your life. Yeah, so, so one thing I will tell you, when I was in that mode, I would never say I was operating out of fear.
I would say I would, right? I got it. This is what I have to do. It’s the market, it’s something else, right? There was no issue of fear. I would never have said that. In fact, someone said, This whole coaching on fear. I said, what am I afraid of? I’ve got it all. I know what I’m doing. Yeah. But underlying that, there’s a great quote, fear and all its children.
Okay, so fear has many, many manifestations and, and you gotta remember that it’s a beautiful line. So what happened next is I start working, looking at the environmental side. One, I was tired of communications. Two, it became about digital media. And I thought, what else could I do? And a friend of mine was working on the environmental side looking at how do you do how does men kind of live on this planet with when, you know, waste water, agriculture, all these things are in trouble right now, right?
I mean, really in trouble. And you can think of everything we’re facing right now on this planet is, is mounting up right now. And we’re in a world of heart. We don’t focus on this soon. And I’ve been saying this for. 15 years now, but that started driving me towards helping build firms and real assets, which is investing in ag, energy, water waste, you know, food, whatever.
To create projects and systems, you know, that basically can ameliorate the situation, but that wasn’t doing it either. And I have created three firms that are doing really well. And then I kind of had an epiphany and it was like a shock to the system of like, What are we here for? And I met some people that kind of coached me.
This world is about resonance and frequencies, and it had to do with the spiritual awakening almost. Yeah. Not religious, but spiritual. Like we are here on this planet for a reason to learn a lot, but we’re here to experience our bodies. We’re here to. Kind of create anything you want to create you can create on this planet.
And three, the most important part, and I say this to my team all the time, we’re here to connect with our hearts, okay? Yeah. And we’re gonna connect to people because I would never harm another individual. If you really connect with somebody, when you don’t connect with them, yeah, you don’t care. But when you do, you would have a conversation, okay?
And you see where it goes. And you might not agree, but at least you. You realize you’re one of the same, right? So once that began to happen and everything was about frequency, I thought, I started seeing the technologies that are coming out of that world, and that’s when I began to say, aha, these are the solutions.
It’s about resonance. It’s what Einstein, Tesla, all these guys were talking about. And everything has a vibration to it. Everything has a frequency. And when you tune into it and you can see some people vibe really high like you, Adam, actually vibe pretty high. You’re kinda a positive being. It’s a lot of energy.
You walk into a room, people resonate with you right away cause you’re carrying a lot of energy and people that are either sad or not feeling good or whatever, you’ll see that there’s not much energy coming out of that. And sometimes it’s systemic, but you can heal all that. So once you begin to realize this, this world is physics.
This is all about physics now. Mm-hmm. You start to look at the physics behind it and they don’t, an atom is a metaphor for something that might exist, but they can’t ever find it. Cause it doesn’t really exist. Remember the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle? It’s a probabilistic thing. Where it is, when it is.
So everything’s a metaphor. We’re trying to explain this realm to, but it’s an energy, it’s a vibration. So we, you know, I decided to focus on agriculture and water. And water is the most fundamental thing. We don’t understand. We think water is all the same. It is so not. It is so amazing. It stores information and you can look at all sorts of things like Emoto or Veda Austin of our speak yesterday.
This is incredible photography where you put a picture underneath the Petri dish of water. You pull the picture away, you freeze the Petri dish, and there’s the imprint of the picture in there. Wow. And water will give its own interpretation of that picture. It’s amazing stuff like how does water do that?
Okay, it holds information. Is it conscious? What is it doing? How water stores, it’s a liquid crystal and we know that now, and I can show you that in our lab, how we make it more of a liquid crystal. Crystal store information all the time. You, ibm, Sony, all these guys are doing amazing stuff with crystals now in storage and they have been for years.
Water can do the same thing and it’s a liquid form of it, so if you know how to play with it, work with it, you can then create different things. And what we do here is energize water called structured water. And you might Google that or whatever. And see, Wikipedia says, oh, it’s not really that real. It is very real drink, structured water.
Your dog knows it. Your cat will know it. Everybody, your cat knows it. Structure water is healthy for the bean, for the cells, so crops know it too. So we structure water, but at a thousand to 2000 gallons a minute. Okay. And that’s really fast. Versus, you know, just for a glass of water is something much easier to do.
Mm-hmm. And that’s step one. That’s just energizing it. And what we say, we can reduce the lot of water consumption because it’s more bioavailable that. Nature structures, water and bioavailable just for everybody watching, that means that the ability for the like to absorb the water and is, is higher. Is that right?
Am am I off? Exactly. Your body will take it much faster. The crop will take it much faster. It just, it’s easier to bring into the aquaporins, which is a little. Venturi tubes that the cells take the water through. Yeah. Okay. That, that’s known. And so on a, on a high level, so if it’s more, if it’s, if it’s more bioavailable, like whether you’re just easy side of things is that in theory, if somebody’s, if, if you’re drinking water and you have a higher bio availability level, then your body absorbs more, more water that you’re drinking and not, you know, expelling it, then maybe you have to drink less.
Is that, is that, am I kind of getting it? I just wanna make sure. Perfectly, perfectly. That’s it. And just like the crops, they need less water. And there’s the reduction right there. So it’s the same thing as what I just said in the body. But for the crops. Exactly, and, and by needing, and it’s also more energizing.
Number cells want to be energized, so it’s also better water. It’s better, you can even think bad water structure it and it’s okay because your vibrance of your cells is so much higher, it’ll ward off all the pestilence in there and that’s remarkable. Okay. Yeah, so B, higher charge is what your body wants.
That’s why you take antioxidants. Mm-hmm. Oxidation creates lower charge, but, and give it more electrons, donate electrons. You get charged and that’s what your body wants. Vitamin C is good for that, right? So, The water now structured is really good, but that’s just step one. And, and this is where it gets really magical.
Okay. Cause everything’s a vibration. So when I discovered there was like, wow, this is amazing, and these guys are doing this, these inventors were amazing. So I was like, I gotta help them. So we funded it, we seeded it. And we started developing, you know, the technologies to roll out to market. And as a, a punchline is we’re in over 200 farms and we’re growing rapidly now 30,000 acres.
And these are big farms. These are the traditional Midwest farmers out there, as well as the California farmers, which I said it’s a different market out here cuz it’s higher value crop. But when you’re doing corn and soy and peanuts and cotton, you gotta be right down the middle and really have a cost effective solution.
So first thing is structuring it and that’s energized water. The next thing, and this is where it gets interesting, remember everything has an energy and a frequency. Mm-hmm. A fertilizer has a certain frequencies, components to it. Well, what if we can capture those frequencies, capture the resonance of it, put it on the spectrometer.
You can see the frequency pattern of the fertilizer, and we can digitize that. And then we can impress it into the water. And the water takes it to the plant, and the plant says, I recognize that it’s nitrogen, the vibration of. Remember, nothing in this world touches. So what’s really happening is the frequencies are evolving.
So we put the frequency there, the plant recognizes it as nitrogen or whatever fertilizer we have at the time, and it says, aha, I got it. And it grows as if it was the real set thing. Wow. And that to me was mind blowing when I saw that. And like we’ve been demonstrating that in our lab for a few years, and now we’ve been in the field for three years with major, major product evaluations going on, and that’s why farmers are really excited about what we’re bringing forward.
And that’s, so that sounds to me, I mean I think you know this about me, Roland, but I’m not a farmer. So I, but it sounds to me like pretty common sense, right? So you can decrease costs while having a lot of other benefits there, like just on surface value. Like if I don’t know anything about the, let’s just say part two of what you mentioned, right?
Cause I don’t, I don’t quite grasp it. Wish I do by the way. It’s amazing. But. But even just on surface value, like for the farmers and the business side, not just that it’s right to do. And I, this is kind of where I wanna go with it next, is like, why it’s right to do it for the planet and for the other things that are, that the other implications.
Because in your, in the book, in the beginning, especially the way that you opened up talking about, you know, sustainable industry maybe comment a little bit on that, but just even on surface value for the business case for the farmers. I mean, it’s, it’s just straightforward common sense, right? Yeah, it is, and that’s where the economics apply.
They’re always looking for a yield bump, and we give it to ’em too, but we’re also looking for a cost reduction and less environmental damage because Yeah, the more we take out of the field in the lab, we grow with only water and frequency. We don’t use any inputs whatsoever. Wow. We use control all the time.
It works fine in the real world. You got a lot of stuff going on. You’ve got sun out there, you got 120 degree days that are nailing the crop. You have all this stuff. You have tornadoes coming through and washing out the crop, so you gotta be careful about that. But over time, this is, I think, the solution that we all need and we’re seeing the same thing happen with.
Remember it’s high vibe, water with poultry, all that stuff. So this is, this is what’s Dev developing right now, and I want to comment about the, you know, why we’re ultimately doing this. This is not about just building a multi-billion dollar company as Yeah, you know, you can do with this technology. This is really about bringing this to the world because we can reduce the cost of farming from hundreds of dollars an acre to tens of dollars an acre.
Wow, we have no physical costs and that’s what changes the equation. And it’s working in resonance with nature and harmony with nature, not fighting it, not killing things. Cause that while it works, short term nature is so fast. In fact, glyphosate this horrible chemical that you know, kills weeds and help farmers for a while, is now.
There are weeds out there that just get angry when you spray it. They turn redder and meaner. It’s like wild. So they become resistant, they become tolerant and they go right through it. Just like we see in penicillin, all the antibiotics, same thing. You cannot beat nature at its own game. It is so fast and so quick.
So we don’t try to, we work in harmony with it. I’ll, I’ll give you a grape for instance. This is a. Example that brings it home. So aphids, aphids are like a curse for growers, whether you’re a marijuana grower or a lettuce grower or whatever. Mm-hmm. Aphids are out there and they munch away. So how do you get rid of it?
Well, you can spray this stuff, but lo and behold, they got resistant to a lot of the stuff they get. Yeah. You know, they’ve been spraying and that’s because they, you overuse it. Okay. Everything overused. Nature will adapt. Okay. Ladybugs are either nemesis, right? Ladybugs love eating aphids. It’s like, it’s like dessert, like cotton, candy, ice cream, whatever you wanna call it.
Okay? So they hightail it out of there when their ladybugs are there, they just don’t wanna be there. So people came up with a pheromone solution and those companies have done really well. Pheromones of ladybugs, really great aphids take off. Okay. We use the frequency of ladybugs. Okay. The wow. Actual frequency and the x, what the aphids take off.
That’s a great example of how powerful this technology can be. Okay. We don’t harm ’em, we just make it an environment they don’t want to be in anymore. Yeah. And that, that’s the essence of what we’re doing here and it’s all underlie as water’s our carrier for all this stuff and it works really well. So, so we’re really excited about that.
The. Other aspect of what we’re doing in general, and this applies to all industries, this tough, we’re talking about residents working in nature, applies to all industries. And you mentioned the beginning when I lecture at any of the business schools, you can name get to do it once in a while. I talk about, and I start out with name one industry that’s sustainable today.
Name one. And there’s not an answer to that. There is none. We are extracting more than we are putting back all the time. And this earth has been benevolent enough to kind of be graceful enough to let us do this. That is stopping now. We’re seeing all the effects of that happen. And I don’t want to carve out carbon in the atmosphere cause I don’t believe that.
It’s only that problem. But you can say we have poisoned our water, we have poisoned our food, we our land, we have poisoned the air, we put chemicals in there that don’t belong. Well, what do you expect the earth to do? What do you expect us to do? We’re experiencing all the issues of our bodies because we’re all change all these in.
We focus on agriculture and water. We can do the same with water. You know, and I think that’s a really good place to start. Cause those were some of the most destructive things we’re doing. Energy would be a good one and to go after next and work in resonance, in harmony with nature. And it’s possible.
I’ve seen enough out there. It’s coming. It’s just coming way too slowly. Hmm. And so one of the things that you mentioned as well was just like the, the implications of what this can do. Of course, you, it’s already, I mean, in a lot of farms and it’s gonna continue to grow. Right? And I’m sure you, as you said, it’s un it’s un paced to do what it’s supposed to do.
Now it’s executing. But one of the things that you did say also was was international. So like the implication of what this could do international. So like does this affect, I don’t know, the farmer in, in Africa or, or somewhere else? Like in the, in, in the near future? And if so, like, like what would be your vision for that?
Yeah, so, so we’re still a startup. I mean, we’re Yep, for sure. Maybe just under 20 people right now. And we’re learning how to scale our systems right now because we’re going from hundreds of farms to thousands next year. Yeah. And this is, is a big leap. And was there. Initially in some of the bigger services companies called America Online, eBay, whatever, and I watched through cto, Google, Facebook, went through it.
Every generation of technology, when they have to shift every few years, cuz they’re growing so fast, they can’t do that. Yeah. So we’ve built a core set of systems that work for tens of farms now. We just built one for hundreds of farms and now we’re gonna up that to thousands. Ok. So that’s one. And every time I get a call from Africa, from South America, whatever, I say, can you help us here right now?
We could, but if unless we have our ducks in order here, we’re not gonna do it well. So we’ve designed the system to scale. We’ve designed the whole solution to be more like a cable TV model where you have to set top box and we broadcast remotely our systems and solutions to it. So it’s a services model.
So we’ve changed it all to a services model, so we can roll it out globally, we can scale it faster, and that’ll come next year will be our first forays into the international realm. Hmm. And some European countries, some African countries, some Latin American countries will be talking to us, and we’re gonna try a few, but very carefully.
And then the following year, I think, then we go hit it harder. Okay, so all this is happening. It, it’s, there’s so many lessons I learned from tech, like the cost of se, the consumer equipment, the con. Premise equipment. The premise equipment called that. The set top boxes of old were like that big. I mean, they were big, big things I remember of now it’s like a little, little box.
Yeah. Little tiny thing. Okay. I remember my first one, I saw that thing and it was like, I was like, wow, that’s amazing. First cable box was big. Yeah, they, they’re massive. And in communications I learned, I was in the company I mentioned. We had designed a first system. It cost $5,000 and the phone company said, yeah, we can use about, you know, five of ’em, you know, 10 of ’em, whatever.
It didn’t work, but if you can price it at a hundred dollars, we’ll buy everything. Well, the next year we got it down to 2000, which they bought a lot more. Then we got it down to 500 and they bought a lot. Then we got it under a hundred and they started going like, Hotcakes, right? Yeah. And that was for digital services to the home before internet, but it was idn.
And same thing we’ve done here. We’ve started out with $25,000 in the field. We got it down to 18,000, then we got it under 12, now we’re at eight. And Wow. And like, but. Technically it’s four and I see a path under a thousand. Okay. Within two years. So that’s what we’re, we’re doing the same thing. So we can bring it around the world and we don’t have to manufacture the equipment.
They can manufacture it. We’ll provide the service. Yeah. And then it goes to the farm DJs. So what are we really doing? Remember, everything’s a frequency and vibration. In fact, if you really want to, who came up well real quick? Who came up with farm dj? That’s a good one. You know, our team is so, or if you remember, it’s awesome one, our CTO probably said it because he’s, he’s this creative wizard who’s amazing and we were in the field that out to him, that was great.
When I saw it, I’m like, Farm dj. Come on. It’s genius. Go ahead. Sorry. Well, think. Think of, think of the person with a green thumb that has plants in their house and they’re singing to their plants all the time. Oh, for sure. The plants love it because they’re feeling the love and the song, and they like them grow in that environment.
In fact, universities run the study. You play C n N in one room, not to pick on cnn, play any of them, and then play Vivaldi in the other and put the same plans in there. Watch. They almost, they die in the CNN room and they thrive in the Vivaldi room. Okay, so what do they want to hear? They love the, the music okay.
Of the world. They love that. They love that. So we’re actually feeding music to the plants, vibrations they want. And literally, I’m like, kid, you not, while I talk about fertilizer amendments, we also play music through the water. Okay? And, and through other means too. But it’s, it’s wild to think that way.
And that is what we’re bringing. We’re bringing fidelity. So eventually, this is where this goes to. This will control the whole solution. Okay? This iPhone will be the solution for the farmer. Pick his music. For the day, for the week, whatever that he wants to play to his crops. And that’s whatever amendments and inputs, it’s a frequency and that’s what we call it.
That, and that’s where it’s going. So, so this is powerful stuff coming along. It’ll take a while to get there. This doesn’t happen overnight, but this is, of course, this is building right now and we can see the future of it. Yeah. And when you were, and when you were kind of starting out, let’s just say with those first few farms, like how did that go?
Because these ideas, and maybe this is common to maybe some, some other individuals, but to me it’s completely new. And, and in terms of like what could be done through water, like how did those, that first couple get, like done? Was that a, what was that conversation like? That’s like, cuz I’m just trying to picture it like, you’re like, listen, this is this, this, like, how’d that go?
Yeah. Yeah, it’s really interesting. So we actually had to bribe our farmers to try. They’re like, we’re in Oklahoma. That’s, we’re in Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas know. I picked on myself, Roland, I used to, when we started this show, I had to beg people to come on. I’m like, just do it. Come on. Right. No, we, we’d throw a party with some beer or something like that and they’d say, say, what?
What are you doing? Like, come on. And, and, and, but our chief sales guy who was an agronomist who also said, I don’t know what this is about, but. Pay me 500 bucks a month and I’ll service your clients and I’ll work with you. He took a device, I’ll show you this one inch, this is like a one inch device right here.
This is one of our, and he put it on his system in his yard and he grew half his yard. He, he’s an agronomist, right? Like yeah. Yeah. He does this on his yard, but he did, he divided ryegrass. He put half yes and half no. And within three weeks he’s looking at and said, holy shit. Excuse me. He says, I can’t believe it.
This is really green and this is brown and it’s the same water. It’s like a miracle. And he was like, he was hooked and then he started playing with it. Then he started telling his farmers, showing pictures of this, okay, we’ll try it. We don’t believe you. We’ll shoot. And we kid you not. Three months later we go out to the field.
We tour with 20 farmers. We went to. With pickup trucks. Farm to farm to farm in this one region, probably spent the whole day on the road. Of course, we had an igloo cooler with a lot of beer in the back. That helps, you know, and literally went down to farm and they started calling it Magic water. God’s water.
This is a miracle. Holy water. They were blown away and like we were too, by the way. Didn’t never see it in the real field, that scale. These are a hundred, 200 acre fields. Oh, you’re right. So if you’re looking at like, that’s so, so empirical and so like if you’re there, then you’re like, it’s so obvious.
Like you can’t, can you believe your eyes? That’s what it had to be. That feeling. Oh, it was, it was, it was great for us. And, and two, these farmers, salt of the earth worked their butts off. Super smart. Don’t take fools very far. You wear the wrong shoes, they look at you and they know who you are, you know, kind of thing.
And we don’t pretend to be farmers. Like, I can’t, even though my dad lived on a farm, you know, that’s, we grew up, but not me. And, and it was like, It was amazing to watch how they calibrated. They said, okay, it works. I’m gonna try it some more. Let’s put it on. I’ll pay for one next year. And some of those guys have gone to install all of all their fields, which is remarkable.
Some of ’em are just incrementing every two, every year. And now we got some very, very big product evals going on with some big names you would recognize. And if those go well, which we expect them to go well, you should see huge acceleration. That’s why we’re looking at a really big year next year. Yeah.
Man, this is it, it’s a great story and to see this happen and to see something that’s gonna be, I mean, just such a win-win scenario. And then I’ll throw in a di another win for, you know, the earth, which is one of the main reasons why you originally, and I should say the biggest win of them all right?
But, That. And then one of the reasons why you originally even got into energy, the reason why you got into water, reason why you got in agriculture was because of that trying to do something that’s more sustainable. So, I mean, it just seems like the path is set. It seems like it’s gonna continue to, to grow.
Yeah. I mean, what’s next on this as you, as you kind of go on this journey? I think, I think you, I think on our offline conversation, you said you’re working a lot of product side of things, but just what’s next in general. Yeah, so, so the, the one empirical thing that happened this year, actually, we went to the farms we were on for two years now, and our agronomist, our chief sales guy goes out there and he starts digging up the dirt and says, look.
And he has a video on TikTok. He’s all over TikTok now. It’s hilarious. I’m like, this guy’s not an actor, but he’s credible man. That’s awesome. And pulls up the dirt and hes look at these earthworms. When do we see earthworms in our corn fields? Like literally, The control group, and he says there’s nothing here.
There’s no word for it. There’s nothing going on. The soil is now richer, it’s organic, it’s sequestering carbon. It’s doing everything it should do. It happened because they applied the technology and they backed off of other things, and that’s what’s going on. So we’re seeing soil improve year over year, which is exactly what we thought would happen.
So that gives a lot of confidence. So you need less water every year, you know that’s really important. Less inputs every year. Once you get that organic mass going, you can do a lot with the soil. That’s what you want and that’s the earth reclaiming itself. Wow. And and I have to bring this one out cuz I’m grateful that you made time for us right now.
Cuz I know you’re in the middle of a move. What’s harder? A ho home move or a business move? I don’t know. You know, I, when you start operating in the fear, a place of joy and love, if you will. Okay. Like, we didn’t have a place last week, we didn’t have a place to go to and like yesterday. Signed an agreement, found some containers to move things separately, and we’re all set, like everything’s done and we’re gonna have it done.
And like, and this is one week ago, we have to be outta here in seven days, right? So it can happen if you just don’t fear and let things evolve. Yes, be smart, but ba basically trust in the process. If you’re on the right track, things will open up for you as you see. Yeah. That’s great. Well, Roland, I just have to say I, I really appreciate you again making some time for us coming on the show today and I’m so thrilled about what’s going on Aptera, and I’m happy that I got to witness, you know, some of the, some of the earlier Aptera all the way up to now and this next transition period.
And next time you come in the show, we’ll update your title. Don’t worry. I understand. Well, Michael would like that too. Absolutely. And we’ll have to, we’re gonna have to talk to him too, cuz as this thing gets bigger and bigger, I wanna definitely we’re, we’re not going anywhere. I wanna keep following and covering the up terror journey and really bringing that to our audience because it’s next level.
And to me, I mean it’s just inspiring. It’s like the, to it gives me, as an entrepreneur and as a business owner, an idea of like, okay. The way that things have always been done. I mean, there there’s other ways to approach, there’s other ways to look at a, at a problem and we don’t have to throw up our hands and say that’s just the way it is.
I mean, if you were talking to your, you know, early twenties self and if you were to say, Hey, one day you’re gonna be talking about vibrations and water and how you can, like, I don’t know what you would’ve like told that older role self, but probably would’ve been like, do I go. What, what do I turn into like, but like that crusade and that like that, you know, that evolution that we have as people, as we mature and have different perspectives.
I just think it’s admirable and I think it’s inspiring. Thank you, Adam. Appreciate that. I appreciate you and all the work, you’re doing’s remarkable and I really appreciate the mission. You’re on a lot. Awesome. If if somebody wants to learn more about Aptera, by the way what’s the best way for them to follow the journey?
Because this is one, and I know they’re gonna be hearing it more and more as time goes on. So how, how do people like follow the journey? Our website’s up and active and it’s getting a regen again. So it’s gonna keep on going. We’re gonna have a lot up there. And then we’re on TikTok and Instagram and all that stuff that’s moving along nicely.
So just follow us that way, or if you really want to know more and go deep, contact me and I’m rolling out Terra, so it’s really easy to find me. Fantastic, and we’ll, we’ll put that information, all the links to the website and that kind of stuff in the show notes so that our audience can it can just click on the links and head right on over.
And speaking of the audience if this is your first time with Mission Matters or engaging in an episode, we’re all about bringing on business owners, entrepreneurs, executives and experts, and having them share their mission, the reason behind their mission, you know, why they do what they do, like how are they out there in the, in the world and in the marketplace, making a difference.
If that’s the type of content that sounds interesting or fun or exciting to you, we welcome you hit that subscribe button. We have many more mission-based individuals coming up on the line, and we don’t want you to miss a thing. And now, Roland, until the next time, thanks again for coming on and congrats again on the book.
Thank you, Adam. Appreciate it. Take care.