Paul Shapiro: Welcome friend to the 101st episode of The Business for Good podcast. I appreciate all the kind comments listeners made about the hundredth episode and hope you got a lot out of hearing. Billionaire investor Steve JSONs thoughts on a wide array of topics. If you didn't hear episode 100, I highly recommend going back in listening, but do that after you check out this episode.

Since this two is a very cool one. It's cool because Grant Canary has found a way to make money by cooling. With trees in episode 98 with Maddie Hall. You may recall that we [00:01:00] learned about how her startup living carbon is bioengineering trees to grow faster so that we can refor the planet more quickly.

And in this 101st episode, we're going to hear about a different approach to reforestation. Every year, millions of acres of forest in the US burned down and the number of acres burning is increasing annually. Sadly, when you know that trees not only provide critical wildlife, But they're an important part of keeping carbon outta the atmosphere.

Yet literally billions of trees burn up in wildfires every single year. Regardless of how fast those trees may grow, just imagine how much time it would take to hand plant enough seeds to replace billions. Of burned down trees enter drone seed. Founded in 2016, the company is now raised to over 30 million from venture investors to essentially automate the reforestation process rather than planting seeds by hand or even randomly from the air, the a hundred person startups, drones, survey, the burned land, plant, the mission, and then strategically drop pucks filled with seeds [00:02:00] and the nutrients, those seeds.

To grow in areas they're most likely going to take root. The company is already selling carbon offsets to companies like Shopify, proving that sometimes it can be more profitable to grow a forest than to cut one down. As I said, it's a cool story and one I think that will be inspirational for you. I now bring you drone seed CEO, Grant Canary.

grant welcome to the Business for Good Podcast

Grant Canary: Hello

Paul Shapiro: great to be talking with you it's funny because I did not know about your company and I was talking with this one investor and he was like Yo you've got to know about Dr Seed You need to meet Grant This is like totally up your alley And I was like Okay cool I'll check it out sometime And then lo and behold I am at Climate tech investors event on a boat in Italy and everybody's going around doing intros and there you are And I'm like Oh my God I've heard of this guy before It was so funny the stars aligned to bring us together not in our own home [00:03:00] country but across the world

Grant Canary: And I'm deeply grateful cuz you told one of the best in your presentation that I still remember today and get a small chuckle out of ha happy to connect and very excited

Paul Shapiro: Do tell I don't remember the joke but now you've gotta let it out of the bag because people are gonna want to know and they're gonna know if it's true that I actually told a good joke

Grant Canary: I think I think the punchline had to do with a mushroom guy and a fun guy

Paul Shapiro: Yeah Yeah I make a lot of fun guy jokes That's true I there's just e even in a short talk like that which was like supposed to be 10 10 minutes I had too much room for the jokes I think so that's cool I'm glad that you're into Fungi I know that you probably love my so networks because they're what help keeps for or help what helps keep forests healthy but we're gonna be talking more about getting those forests even started in the first place here because of what you are doing So before we learn though Grant about what drone seed is actually doing and it seems pretty self-evident based on the name there's a lot of acres that are burning down I'm in California right [00:04:00] now and there's huge wildfires I can walk outside of my home in Sacramento and I can smell the fires you're just raging and every year the fires get bigger and bigger So how many acres are we losing to fire in the United States every year do you have any idea about the statistics

Grant Canary: Yeah absolutely can talk through some of those And then I wanna give a little bit of an idea the name Drone Seed very specific to one aspect of the business but I wanna give us some things to unpack we've got drone seed and then we've got Silver Seed which we acquire in 2021 So we are Kinda what we do is a one stop shop for reforestation our vertically integrated business silver seed does seed it we've expanded to become the largest private seed bank in the west which is a big deal after those wildfires Where is that seed coming from and then we grow millions of seedlings and then we get 'em out to site utilizing heavy lift drones the seed itself and seed vessels And then we follow up with the seedlings six to nine months And then we pay for it all carbon offsets So that's the two businesses combined doing four [00:05:00] products to do vertically integrated reforestation after wildfires the wildfires themselves what's that number for the US we're looking at a 10 year rolling average of about 2.5 million acres burning between 82 and 90 Fast forward to present day That number's gone up to 7.5 million acres is what's burned in the last 10 years Kinda rolling average And that's a 5 million acre jump It's about the size of the state of New Jersey It is if you're in the forestry sector that's about five warehouses worth of reforestation It's our estimates that they do about a million acres of reforestation a year and that is a lot And basically the large takeaway is with that significant increase both natural regeneration or forest burn forest regrow is in significant decline and the supply chain from the human side is completely overwhelmed so first on the natural side and then I'll pause here so that we can you you could take us where we need to go But [00:06:00] on the

Paul Shapiro: Yeah

Grant Canary: what Yeah go ahead

Paul Shapiro: Why so you what basically what you're saying is that the rate of burning of American forests and of course forests around the world but here we are in the United States so we're talking about this has dramatically increased and my understanding is that it's not necessarily that there are more forest fires but rather they are much bigger and more severe And so why is it that we have so many more of these really big forest fires than we did even 20 years ago

Grant Canary: Yeah so we see a couple Causes things to think of trying to start a campfire If you've ever done that and done it with Wetwood it's a lot harder to get that campfire to start how do you dry out wood You think about a kiln for ceramics or anything like that The longer you have a dry season The drier and drier that wood is gonna be And so what you're gonna see is bigger more severe fires and that affects we see with climate change longer summers longer periods of drought more severe heat and intensity and so that's a lot drier [00:07:00] wood then we see what happens with natural regeneration is high severity fire They burn the sources of seed in the soil and in the tops of the trees Whereas low severity fires they came through a think picture like aru brulee you blow towards the top right And then there's all that yellow gooey tasty stuff underneath in my metaphor here that the yellow gooey bits are the sort of several inches down in the soil That's where the seeds are Low severity fires Historically they didn't burn all those seeds High severity fires like blow torching the entire crume There's no delicious yellow bits left It's all just crisp blackness And that includes the top soil and the seeds same thing with the tops of the trees for trees low severity fires They burn the middle of the tree that those big bushy parts and they don't really get up to the top third high severity fire It's like a Loony tunes tree struck by lightning It goes all the way up to the top completely black no cones left and so there's no seed source And then you put it over 250,000 [00:08:00] acres a million acres or more for a complex And that's a very large distance for seed to travel from other seed sources And then you look at what's happening on the human side you got Tom Porter on 60 Minutes a year or two ago talking about how a 10 to 50,000 acre fire used to be a once in a career event for a hotshot firefighter now it's not it's barely newsworthy We've got a million acres of burn in Alaska and it's it's almost touching the news cycles depending upon what you're paying attention to and what your feeds look like So industry used to have 10 years to respond to a 10,000 acre fire Now it's got multiple hundred thousand 200,000 acre fires going on often And there's so the supply chain is very much overwhelmed which means seed is in short supply seedlings in grow spaces in short supply labor and then the money you pay for it all So that's where we work on all four fronts

Paul Shapiro: Okay so according to my own research here it looks like [00:09:00] there are well over 10 billion with a bee 10 billion trees that are getting burned down every single year on the planet And trees are basically the OG of direct carbon capture right They're basically sucking carbon from the air and sequestering it in these tall columns of carbon basically And so this is really It's bad for

Grant Canary: Millions of years of product sprints

Paul Shapiro: Yeah That's right And it's bad for wildlife diversity too wildlife need places to live and obviously they have a very diff most of 'em have a very difficult time living in our cities and a lot of them have a difficult time even living in our agricultural fields but because they're mono cropped forests are a place where they can eek out an existence even on a human dominated planet And when the forests are all burning down it makes it very hard And so this is a problem both for climate change and for wildlife diversity and frankly just for wildlife extinction And so the question is because of climate change we're gonna have these more and more severe fires So what can what can we do to actually try [00:10:00] to heal some of the damage that we are inflicting on the planet And you had this idea so when did it come to your mind Grant that maybe we should be trying to reforest not by hand but by drone

Grant Canary: the so I went through a lot of bad ideas first and I know that they were bad ideas cuz I went through week or month long sprints working through them and realized I put them in front of other people and people would tell me like No don't spend five years of your life on that I I don't want that product I don't want that in my life and complaining about that to a friend and they're like I guys are gonna go plant trees And I had participated in a very large tree planting project as an external consulting consultant in Columbia the country And was looking at a project that existed there for 20 years and there was Group of investors that wanted to have a single source of carbon offsets in a very large scale the size of Denali National Park all in in one operation So we looked at that and I was impressed with [00:11:00] the level of automation going into the planting operations there Started asking some of the same questions question in my home country here in the us and was Very surprised about the lack of automation in reforestation And there is a whole community of people that have dedicated their lives and decades of scientific research and we are very much behold to them and one of the things that came up as I talked to folks about what had been tried what what did people look at before What's worked what's not worked as far as like making this a more scalable process Cause it was very clear to me We need more trees to be that OG of direct air carbon capture Like how do we get more of them faster and what are the big obstacles And one of the big things that came kept coming up again and again was And what had been tried in the past was helicopters and other C one 30 transports and seed bombing and dumping things out and whatnot But they were incredibly inaccurate And so where we got started was well flying [00:12:00] and navigating that terrain quickly But then also drones have this ability we fly drones that are about eight feet in diameter carry 57 pound payload They can very much precision target where we're dropping the seed vessels And so that became the focus of the company for and remains the focus of the company Although we've expanded because there are other bottlenecks in the reforestation pipeline

Paul Shapiro: What were you doing before though you're talking about how you were thinking about starting this company to reforest the planet but what was what were you doing that you would even have the idea that oh I should start my own company so few people do that

Grant Canary: Yeah everything I've ever done has been in sustainability and I had a as it often occurs I had a high school English teacher that helped me figure out what was my reason to exist what was my purpose to borrow from the Broadway Play Avenue Q and I looked at it and I was like like I I see Climate change is the problem that all other problems report to[00:13:00] it's the first order it's the thing that there are so many problems that are super important that we work on that we could all agree on And the people working on them whether they're in medicine whether they're in autonomy and democracy And how do people collaborate as a society et cetera they're not gonna get any more time on the clock To solve those problems if we don't mitigate the worst effects of climate change And so that became to me like where I started to look and go Okay so I started I worked in US Green Building Council a couple other home energy certification companies I worked with Vestus Wind Energy who sent me around the world to China Denmark the United States doing change management projects working in construction working in spare parts and repair working in sales like really doing a Hey what does this look like How does this build business grow And then very non traditionally did my master's degree I university I did less Iana in ota and built a company there taking food Feeding it to maggots so I hold that [00:14:00] distinguished title of Maggot Farmer and turning it into industrial protein for fish feed because on the one hand we my master's thesis was looking at we're overfishing the small fish populations and what's the economics of that the in elasticity et cetera And we're utilizing it to feed salmon Which are the most fish being one of the most efficient forms of food conversion other than plant based And that price is gonna go up Could we do that with food waste which is a waste product for good and bad reasons and Create something that we would have more food supply and a more sustainable balance And built a pilot facility imported the equipment hired the research teams in Bogota the sort of the reason and the philosophy of why I started to get going and then also my path and hopefully that's helpful to others as they're looking at things and I think I think I just followed that as my reason to exist over and over I look for what were the options for me [00:15:00] to do something on sustainability and then leading that that company really wanted to do something to focus How what like how do we remove carbon from the atmosphere Cuz we've already put so many emissions up there that even if we were magically all net zero tomorrow we'd still go through all the effects of climate change cuz there's so much pollution already in the atmosphere So that's for me where how my path there

Paul Shapiro: So let me ask you something Grant So you're very concerned about climate change You're very concerned about all the That are in the atmosphere and so you decide that you want to reforest Is that enough is reforesting sufficient to deal with the emissions that we already have emitted or do we need something more than that

Grant Canary: Oh absolutely not Trees are not a silver bullet so lemme just go on record and like I get so frustrated when people want to be mad at people working on trees we are it Reforestation Protecting existing trees is not a silver bullet for mitigating the worst effects of [00:16:00] climate change Absolutely We have to decarbonize first stop emitting things and then get into how do we remove And one of the things that's appealing about reforestation and trees today is It is scalable it is scalable it is cost effective it is an evolved product through I made the joke earlier through all thousands millions of years of product sprints by nature to evolve one of the most efficient organisms that not I've made this joke earlier but if I told you had a robot that would self construct and then self re While doing its function you'd be terrified you'd be starting to think about Terminator or otherwise but that's what a tree is doing and that's a very efficient way to capture carbon And so very excited about that But we do it is an all hands on deck like we need all of the options for both decarbonization as well as what are all of the ways to remove carbon outta the atmosphere whether they be mechanical whether [00:17:00] they be biological or otherwise

Paul Shapiro: Yeah and there's non climate benefits as well they do provide a lifeline for wildlife as I mentioned earlier it's yes it's climate change mitigating but it's also providing somewhere for for wild living animals to exist So there's many benefits to having more trees for sure so let

 Grant you had an earlier You had this successful exit from it and then you were thinking Okay what can I do to refor the planet And you have this idea that look it's taking it's gonna take forever for us to do this by hand and helicopters aren't gonna be able to do the trick either And so you came up with this idea about basically having drones do this but what did you do first Like you'd already been through one entrepreneurial rodeo so presumably you knew something about running a company but what was your first step Did you just go out to investors who had invested in your previous company what did you do when you actually had the idea and then decided that you wanted to execute on it

Grant Canary: Yeah I think it it was a it wasn't a light bulb moment It wasn't[00:18:00] it wasn't a Oh this is what I'm doing in some weird regards it's Oh this is really cool But I had a number of ideas and I was reading Eric Rise Lean Startup quintessential product management book listening to hard thing about hard things which the entrepreneurial journey there really resonated with me it's hard it's not easy and I was I think I just started kept waiting deeper into it So where I got started was okay talk to everybody that I could find in my network that had anything to do with forestry and ask 'em everything I could to put together the ideas and then start to look at all of the like research that I could put together about If I have to make the case that to myself I'm I'm thinking about myself as my first investor I'm gonna spend five 10 years which I had in the last business nine building this business I've gotta convince myself Some of the basic things that investors are gonna ask as well am I gonna be able to do this What's the capital required what's the market look like And thinking [00:19:00] about how am I gonna present this information and construct a case that this is where I should pursue and this is where I should go And then also running into some of the litmus tests as like a person of one here in a company Can we build this thing can I get this off the ground are there some obstacles here that from an engineering standpoint are breaking laws of physics or otherwise going to cause a lot of Difficulty that's gonna cause this business to fail And so starting to look at a lot of those working out basic prototypes of what is a drone what kind of what's capa what's capable in the drone space This is not a I'm a drone guy looking for a problem This is very much like I have a problem and I'm looking for what's the best way to solution to to create a solution for more scalability Based off of all of the people in this community who have already spent their livelihoods building the body of knowledge and how can I add to it and then if I identify it great here's how I think I can add to it how do I how do that[00:20:00]

Paul Shapiro: Very cool Very cool So you've done a lot of testing you guys are not just dropping seeds randomly from drones as you alluded to I know that you guys have several steps in the process So what is the actual process that drone seed is going through It's not just like you put a bunch of seeds in a drone and just go willy nilly dropped them and they might fall on asphalt or rocks or anywhere else where they're not gonna grow

Grant Canary: Yeah it's a three step process so I think let's start at the very beginning with wildfire with wildfire we Land manager whether it's a timber company whether it's a nonprofit like the Nature Conservancy whether it's a tribal nation small family forest state and federal agencies all land managers all affected by fire The first thing they're gonna be looking for is okay do we have seed Do we have we have a space to work grow it et cetera So we receive a lot of web inquiries after fires from those line managers and What we do is we do a series of evaluations start to put together the economics but on [00:21:00] the and then really what we wanna do to get to the drone part is we wanna get out there and we want to first survey with a step one of three survey the area survey with a smaller aircraft utilizing Lida or utilizing multi spectral imaging will build a 3D terrain And that terrain map what it's what we're doing there is first don't run into things existing trees that are burned on site the contours of hills et cetera And number two where are things gonna grow the areas that things might grow well are might be obvious to us but we've gotta create a comprehensive map very quickly so let's avoid any existing Blackberry bushes that may have survived the fire We may wanna avoid gravel patches erodes other things step two take that and at about a third acre scale remove all those areas that we don't like and create all the pre-programmed flight paths for our aircraft Step three go out to site two trucks two trailers six aircraft and what we're [00:22:00] doing is we're flying two to five aircraft at a time So heavy lift swarms and the aircraft are they're about eight feet diameter carry out 57 pound payload to seed vessels which we've manufactured in Seattle And what we're doing is we're flying those pre-program route And dropping those seed vessels they would come back land the aircraft and then we swap out the batteries swap out the payload for the seed vessels as fast as possible nascar pick crew style and and then get 'em back up in the air And so that's really where we've shine and developed a lot And then one of the one of the critical insights that that we identified was there is an insufficient amount of seed because the supply chain is completely overwhelmed And what are we gonna do about that And that's really where we got into silver seed

Paul Shapiro: So yeah you mentioned that you had acquired Silver Seed and we can chat about that but I wanna know what's in these pucks that you're dropping Is it just seeds what are you actually putting in there Is there something else that helps them to make sure they have a better chance when they start out in life

Grant Canary: Yeah they're about the size of a [00:23:00] hockey puck so let's start there they're dry natural fibers and they're seeds and they're almost like a little pocket of soil and the two things that kill seeds are desiccation drying out so those natural fibers absorb moisture Help retain it so it's available to the seed And then the other thing that kills seeds are predators squirrels mayas birds And so we have some deterrents there that are natural that one we've disclosed one of 'em in the Mark R video which is an awesome watch and it does a great job at explaining our business but also carbon capture by trees And That one of those ingredients is super spicy pepper so that's an example of something that if you're familiar with Scoville counts and the measure or scale of spiciness super high you think Ghost Peppers Carolina Reapers blended together that's that's a nasty reaction if you're not looking for it And for a squirrel or mouse that's the intent there They have that same reaction it's not a perfect solution It reduces the amount of predation

Paul Shapiro: And it's a pretty interesting thing because birds [00:24:00] evolved in such a way that they do not taste that hot spice And so you'll even notice like in some commercial bird seeds they are laced with cayenne pepper to prevent squirrels from eating it or other mammals from eating it But the birds don't mind it And so it's pretty interesting like that if you put hot pepper in there that you can at least prevent some of the animals who would eat these tree seeds from eating it Although I guess not birds I guess But you can prevent some of the some of the mammals from eating it

Grant Canary: Birds spicy or so not so spicy sweet and sour

Paul Shapiro: So Grant I know that they're you're you have this whole team of drones They're going out they're surveying they're making sure they don't drop any seed pucks in the wrong place but the company is not that old So there's no mature for us yet Where your drones have dropped their payload how do you know what impact you're making Like how do you know these trees are actually growing up where they are intended

Grant Canary: Yeah we start off we come back after the [00:25:00] summer ideally but sometimes before the summer as well and Basically utilize old school forestry and create sample plots why not just measure every tree that's thrown because across 500 acres or more that's a lot of trees And so you want to create sample plots And then also you wanna see you wanna have those sample plots be randomly assigned across that acreage et cetera So how many sample plots per a hundred acres or 10 acres or whatnot And this is just good old fashioned forestry so we do that We measure how many trees are in kinda a 10 meter circle or otherwise and go from there And that's one way to get it Now with carbon offset projects it gets a lot more there are it's a lot more robust We utilize climate action reserve and their methodology And so for a carbon offset project What we see is that they require a third party to come out which is a credited forester under them And it's a minimum of one year later which is important cause the trees have to survive a summer that I mentioned earlier [00:26:00] Drying out is one thing that kills seeds it can also kill established seeds that have turned into baby seedlings so they come out a year later it's gone through a summer They do the same type of sample plots and they issue a report goes to Climate Action Reserve and Climate Action Reserve then issues the offsets The other thing that we do for offset projects is there is a hundred years of funded monitoring And so what that looks like is as part of the project set up costs There's an endowment just like a university endowment and it goes into goes to a nationally accredited land trust and there's a conservation easement placed on the property and that means that they have the right to do an annual report and a five year site visit or they can do more than that But that's generally where they land And that's for the next hundred years And so when Climate Action Reserve uses very conservative models to forecast how much carbon will be removed outta the atmosphere by trees growing over the next hundred years they're able to have funded [00:27:00] monitoring reporting and verification of that And then the last piece as far as assurance for For a purchaser like Shopify which is bought a which is announced that they purchase a significant quantity of offsets from us They know that if there is a fire or beetle kill or other reversal all of the projects under Climate Action Reserve's methodology will Be in a future The right now we're the first of eight projects There's an insurance buffer pool like cars other methodologies that will be established that then each of those projects contributes in a portion of the offset So just like auto or health insurance you contribute in offsets And if your project is one that's affected by a reversal fire otherwise the off all of the offsets are retired from the insurance pool So that way Shopify has assurance that it's coming from us or it's coming from the insurance pool And that gives them a lot of trust in the methodology So there is a hell of a lot of work that goes into good reforestation Haven't even talked about the natural parts of[00:28:00]

Paul Shapiro: Yeah let's just talk about how you're making money then because obviously it seems like a cool idea to take a bunch of drones and have them strategically try to refor areas that have been burned down but you mentioned that Shopify is paying for these carbon offset So just very briefly grant for those who aren't familiar with the carbon offset market like why would Shopify when it has no legal reason to do just pay money to refor the planet

Grant Canary: Two words competitive advantage we the like any new technology they're always here's the initial use case And then oh wow there's all these other cool use use cases or product managers calling them user stories And so with Shopify first They're doing the good work net zero company So decarbonizing getting carbon emissions out of their daily operations but then they're going further than that and they're buying these offsets specifically to simulate how do we get carbons outta the atmosphere But also they are now funding their Planet app And so that app is they're a point of [00:29:00] sale they compete with all of the other services that could charge your Visa card or set up a storefront for their online merchants So it's an app in their marketplace that you can basically Utilize and it makes them more competitive against their comp against other point of sale providers because you can offset all of your shipping And they've done all the hard work of making sure that the carbon removals are following a protocol that they're very high quality and That app you can subscribe What it does is it reviews at the end of the month how much money's been spent on the shipping and then you can pay money towards nature based systems nature and tech or nature tech and then some And so that's a that's an exciting thing to offer to customers not require And that makes some store More competitive in selling their products by just by virtue of that So that's one user story is in the point of sale There's a whole bunch of others in everything from [00:30:00] real estate to airlines maritime shipping Tech with competing for talent both internally and competing for customers that's the one I think most people are familiar with but if you're an Apple Google Facebook or otherwise just involved in Tech one you've gotta compete for the best talent And there and That is being more a more sustainable company There's a number of surveys out there that people will take a lower paying job to have a bigger impact on the future And sustainability they will take a five to 10 K pay cut and that's a big deal Not that they should have to In fact I think in some cases you're seeing a go the other direction and then the other is that they've they're selling watches cars rockets whatever They're selling a vision of the future And while we may be suspicious about marketing et cetera there's a reason that when we think of a soft drink we usually think of one of three brands one of them being Coca-Cola It's cuz of all that marketing If you're selling that vision of the future that vision of Future has to talk about climate change [00:31:00] regardless of if it's for a watch or a car or whatnot And if it's not really a really true vision of the future And so that fits within their branding how you view or perceive them as a meta brand of When I think of a company what do I think of And so that's they're competing for customers on the real estate side if you'll just let me keep going for one more I think that one's exciting as well where what we see is that you can see better interest rates on lending for building more housing or otherwise because there is a stronger appetite for green bonds me saw this with getting shipping containers or ships for 12 new shipping container ships rather they got a better Because the fuel source was cleaner and there was an appetite for green bonds And then you see that in the opposite side of things with home and housing development And then you also see it with tenant rates Do the work on the hvac do the work on what's the carbon footprint but there's gonna be some sticky stuff like transport et cetera that's gonna be real difficult to eliminate the emissions from today And so that's where the offsets come [00:32:00] in And if you can communicate that effectively to your tenants you can get a higher premium rate on the the apartment or the condo or whatnot that you're leasing by renting selling et cetera And so that's exciting so those are things that are pure competitive advantage and then the thing that I'm most bullish about is the s e c proposed rule where all publicly traded companies Must disclose their emissions for Scope one and two we'll see maybe three And then follow the same methodology so it takes it out of the marketing department And puts it into s e C compliance so securities exchange compliance department And so CFOs all of a sudden have to learn what are the methodologies for carbon and accounting and everyone has to follow the same one and disclose which at present day you would think with all the announcement that every company does this most don't disclose And I'm looking forward to seeing and hearing some earnings calls where we're looking at it and saying Dear ceo [00:33:00] cfo whatnot why are you more carbon intensive than your adjacent competitor doing the same business And all of a sudden there is an interest in decarbonizing reducing your exposure to climate change fuel pricing hikes et cetera And we've seen this in a Harvard Business Review Ryan Air in the compliance market very on its earnings call it had bought a bunch of offsets in advance The price had gone up significantly and one analyst an estimated it saved them about 10% on their profits for that period So that's a that's where I see things headed and very excited and bullish about that in both incentivizing people to decarbonize and remove the source of emissions and then also for those sticky parts that are gonna be very difficult to get rid of to purchase those

Paul Shapiro: So the carbon offset are basically where you are Of revenue is coming from and in in the future there may be some public policies like what you just mentioned that could also accelerate that So that's why venture capitalists have viewed the company not just [00:34:00] as a good deed but as a good investment as well And so how much money grant have you raised to date for drone

Grant Canary: I'll share and give people an idea We've raised we raised 36 million in our series A And very pumped about those investors coming in in that round you mentioned earlier the source of revenue coming from a part carbon offsets That's a that's a big driver of it But we also grow millions of seedlings and collect a lot of seed and process it and make it available for communities affected by fire So those are baseline revenues and existing businesses That's really exciting as well So the baseline and then we ramp up really significantly in in the carbon offset that's where we've been at with the raise and our investors there's too many to name but you can see the Tech Crunch article with that list if that's helpful

Paul Shapiro: Sure We'll link the Tech Crunch article about your series A in these show notes at business for good podcast.com But yeah it's pretty amazing You think you know that reforestation is not just something that is gonna be good for the world but Hopefully [00:35:00] even good for your investors and obviously for you as a founder and for your employees as shareholders in the company So you got 36 million burning a hole in your pocket Now Grant what are you gonna do with it what's the primary use of funds for that $36 million

Grant Canary: We've been expanding and this is really what the supply chain needs which is how do we take seed out of critically low inventory levels How do we increase the quantity of ceilings available in the market How do we do automation and provide better tools for reforestation for folks out there doing that so that it's less calorically intensive it's about the caloric equivalent running two marathons every day at work for manual tree planting and there's white papers out there to show it and then really what's been the Thing that has changed the economics significantly as the carbon offset market and being able to to fund the reforestation most of the offsets that we've heard about Are for protecting existing stands of [00:36:00] trees which is good We wanna do that but there up until recently with the Climate Action Reserve Protocol it was incredibly difficult In fact so difficult pretty much nobody did it to fund reforestation with carbon offsets and Climate Action Reserve protocol changed that And now we see Vera Gold Standard ACR also creating similar reforestation protocol in the last two years to fund reforestation at scale so that's what we're up to is is expanding on all of those fronts simultaneously

Paul Shapiro: Nice And how many folks work at the company now

Grant Canary: Yeah we're up to about 112 drone seed and silver seed combined

Paul Shapiro: Nice Wow it's a large group of people who you're working with now Granton for a company that has been around for a single digit number of years if when you were sitting around thinking about dropping seeds from drones did you envision that it would become a workforce of over a hundred Was this something that was on your mind or did this happen in a way that was surprising

Grant Canary: [00:37:00] I think it's I it's a one step at a time I think like anybody's ever gone on a long journey I've lived 10 years abroad you don't Necessarily go and plan to like I'm gonna go live 10 years abroad some people do that was definitely not my experience I thought Oh I'll go do this And then I was like Oh And then I followed the path and Oh I'll go do this And I started off and went to Italy and then continue my masters in Bogota and then got acquired and in between had a lot of travel with Fes wind And so I think like this is very similar with drone seed which is Get it started get it up get it running Like how do we get this funded Okay cool Now I can hire people oh now we're doing all these things here What are our what are the metrics What are the things we care about Oh now get it funded again And so yeah I think that's the that's what happens As far as as far as the journey in my mind it's been very much Keep focusing on the next milestone and don't get too attached to the kind of and let the path take you where it's gonna take

Paul Shapiro: Let me though ask you you've now done two companies[00:38:00] one from which you had an exit and another that so far at least Seems to be going pretty well I presume as a serial entrepreneur that you have many ideas about things that you wish existed that maybe you or you would like to do but don't have the time to do or maybe you just hope somebody else would do that would do good for the world do you have any suggestions Granted there's anybody sitting here listening thinking Ah I really love what this grant dude is doing I think it's so cool that he started this What ideas do you think they should To what should they pursue in order to make the world a better place

Grant Canary: Hey I look at what's happening in my home country the US here And I look at what's happening to the threats to democracy and I would could not have heard thought in 2016 that democracy would be one of the things challenged in advance of climate and I would be looking at what could be done in the political space And one of the things that I look at is [00:39:00] call it civic tech or whatever you wanna call it It is it does not seem to me to be very expensive in the scheme of things To get a ballot measure onto the state ballot And that to me is like a state in some ways that's crazy scary in some ways that that is but you can literally look it up like how many how many dollars per signature how many signatures required to get a thing onto the state ballot I'd be looking at opportunities to on the consumption of news media I'd be looking at the opportunities on democratic reforms I'm a huge fan of rank choice voting in no world do I believe it should be like a you can either have a candidate that that you truly believe in and matches But if you're wrong You end up with someone that is the complete antithesis of what you're looking for It's like asking somebody to go for ice to go to the store can kinda get some ice cream And they ask you what flavor you want and you're like I'd like chocolate And they're like Okay cool But if you don't get chocolate you're gonna end up [00:40:00] with dog poop flavored ice cream And that's just like the worst And there's so many opportunities to fix that And that's where I'd be focused that's where I'd be

Paul Shapiro: Okay so maybe not even anything in the for-profit business world at all You're talking about like political reforms here

Grant Canary: I think there's a lot of opportunity in for profit in civic tech and I'd be interviewing a lot of the people who you know similar to our journey I'd be interviewing a lot of the people who have Dedicated their lives to public service I figured out like Why is everyone sitting in the room They know the process is broken and they just don't feel for whatever reason they can fix it And then I'd be using my entrepreneurial mindset to figure out like cool I'm gonna go at this Let's see let you know what can I do to build small tests and figure out like might this work might this not and that's where I'd be looking and that's what's the journey we did with climate and I'd love to have more people focused on all the climate opportunities But that one to me is one that you know one it's what's the biggest [00:41:00] impact we can make on climate Voting and the US national budget the federal budget the state's budgets that is literally how we collectivize action and we could make a huge impact there that and we're seeing some baby steps but we need so much more so much faster

Paul Shapiro: Nice All right that all sounds very cool and encouraging and I hope that there are people who will take up your prescriptions here Grant So before I let you go I do wanna ask you one final question which you dropped a couple books that were useful for you earlier in the interview You talked about the We Startup and you talked about Ben Horts book The Hard Thing About Hard Things By the way I love the line that he has in that book I remember when I first read it actually I only read it once So I remember the only the first only time that I read it where he said that if you start your own company you will sleep like a baby because you'll wake up every two hours and cry And I thought that was such a Yeah Yeah That was a very good

Grant Canary: about that one

Paul Shapiro: Yeah Yeah it's really good So I too recommend a hard thing about hard things but is there anything else that's been useful for you in [00:42:00] your journey now that you've had two startups that you've done You are raising tens of millions of dollars you're overseeing a team now of over a hundred people is there anything that you recommend to others who want to try to emulate some of the success that you have had as an entrepreneur

Grant Canary: And the hard thing about hard things the struggle that's the that that poem or whatever you wanna call it that's one of the things that speaks to me the most But after that it's multipliers I think a lot of the DNA of the founder that would go out and be like You know what lots of people have tried but for some reason I have the right stuff to be able to approach this problem And my thinking's different and I've got all the grit then you have some initial success and then you've got people and oh my goodness now I've gotta manage people What like Some of the same some of those same advantages of having the courage to take on a big problem also turn into disadvantages in managing people And I think multipliers for me was really helpful in speaking to how do [00:43:00] how to multiply the effect of other people in the organization so that when you're in a meeting You're actually amplifying one examples that stuck with me for a long time was just the as a simple example from parenting that was given which was like look when raising kids you could be so much more successful and kids feel so much more empowered and happier is the thesis here when you tell them when you ask 'em a question great We're gonna go what do we do next And when the kid can say Oh we're gonna go put on our coat and shoes and whatnot now harder said than done But that's different than hey small child go put on your go put on your coat and shoes which is more of a command form et cetera And that same example kinda brings up and anyone listening to this can tell I don't have kids but that was an example that resonated with me as a now take out to the business environment and you could basically see Oh how do I ask people questions How do I unlock information with more questions And I found that book really powerful and compelling that type of behavior which is [00:44:00] which is maybe antithetical to some of the stubbornness of I'm gonna take on this problem You're still doing it cuz you're asking everybody what's been tried before But then inside your own org making sure that you continue to represent that same question asking mindset and multiplying the talents and advantages of

Paul Shapiro: Okay that's useful We'll link as well to that in the show notes at Business for good podcast.com And Grant I just wanna say thanks It was really great to get a chance to hang out with you in person and I'm really happy to get a chance to hear and to have hear your story and have you tell it also for the show's listeners So I hope that you refor many millions of acres that have been burned and that we can Sequester a lot of carbon that you will be sucking from the air because of what you're doing and will give homes to a lot of wildlife as well So I thank you for what you're doing and I will be rooting for your success as you continue to grow the company

Grant Canary: Thank you for having me on it and I hope it's helpful to others in their journeys [00:45:00] whatever they may be and being able to do similarly make an impact whether it be for climate or otherwise so yeah thank you for making for amplifying my voice Appreciate it