Turning Cow Burps into Clean Energy with Griffin Cherry

Speaker A: You basically put a halter on a cow and you attach a nose piece to it. And fun fact, most of the gas comes from their nose, not their mouth. So you capture all the gas from their nose. It goes to what I call the backpack. The gas goes back to the backpack. When the cow comes in to get milk, a laborman's going to hook up to the udders to milk the cow. It's just one extra step. Hook up to our system, um, sucks out the gas and then that goes to someone side infrastructure that will upgrade it to a pipeline.

Speaker B: Quality Hardware to Save a Planet explores the technical innovations that are giving us hope in the fight against climate change. Each episode focuses on a specific climate challenge and explores an emerging physical technology solution with the person bringing it into reality. I'm your host, Dylan Garrett. Hardware to Save a Planet is brought to you by synapse. Make sure to click subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. Thanks for listening. Hello and welcome to Hardware to Save a Planet. I'm very excited to be here with Griffin Cherry today, the founder and CEO of Planet Tech Tech. Joining us, uh, actually from the San Francisco area, but normally based in Austin, Texas, Griffin, uh, and his team are tackling methane emissions from cow burps. I've heard about methane capture through dairy digesters, which capture the emissions from large manure ponds. I also did an episode with Josh Silverman from Windfall Bio a while back who was reducing methane emissions from Mandure. But I just learned in prepping for this episode that cow burps account for something like 90% of all methane emissions from cattle. Uh, and like we've talked about, methane is 80 times more powerful at trapping heat than CO2 over a 20 year period. Griffin, you'll have to check me on all this, but this is, this is my best understanding now. Uh, so what I'm really curious about though is how you're doing this. I hope we get to get into that a bit. Um, just to introduce Griffin quickly, he, uh, took what sounds like a really fun path to climate tech, including sailing, culinary school, and roofing sales before founding Planet Tech. Um, so I'm excited to hear a bit about that journey too. Griffin, thanks a lot for joining. It's great to have you.

Speaker A: I am so excited to be here. Um, this is one of my favorite climate podcasts and now I'm on it. So this is great.

Speaker B: Awesome. Um, so I really want to get your origin story. Your LinkedIn profile says at 14, you read a quote from Dan Brown that said nothing is impossible. The impossible just takes longer. I thought that would be, and it sounds like that was sort of a pivotal moment for you. Um, I thought maybe we could start there and just kind of hear about your journey.

Speaker A: Yeah, my journey is definitely, uh, and atypical. And when VCs are like, oh yeah, we like to invest in founders that have a, like founders that would not typically be founders, I'm like, oh yeah, that's my investor right there.

Speaker B: Perfect.

Speaker A: Yeah. I've never been to college. My highest education is culinary school. Um, but the start to finish story on a short basis is I started working at 16 as a mechanic, um, and realized that was kind of a dead end job. So I got into building, uh, airplanes. My dad worked at Boeing and so I was like, hey, let's try that. Uh, Covid happened and Boeing was hemorrhaging money so like, hey, let's lay off 7,000 people. I was one of those people at the time. I was watching videos on sailing and specifically people sailing around the world. And I was like, that sounds like such a fun life. Let's do that. So I moved to Hawaii, took a one way trip, um, and started immersing myself in the boat culture because I realized, hey, if I'm going to sail around the world and even if I'm, if, even, even if there's other people on the boat, like if the mast snaps in half, I don't want to die. So let's figure out how to not die in the middle of the ocean, right? So I, I, I dive, dove in and created an environment that, that spurred information and boating. So I did four things at once. I, I uh, built my own small business doing boat repair and cleaning. I uh, built and repaired sails for sailboats. I earned captain, uh, hours working on a booze cruise where I also started the photography program. So I was basically like, how do I absorb as much information about boating as possible while also building up the coffers to actually go sail around the world? Now the missing piece from that and why I'm not on a boat in the middle of the ocean right now is because it's really hard to make money in Hawaii. So my brother called me up, he's like, hey, you're miserable, you're working way too much. You're not making any money. You should move to Austin. And this was 20, 21, peak, peak migration to Austin where it was like, austin's the coolest place to be. Right? So I moved to Austin and got uh, into uh, restaurants out of necessity. I didn't have any money at all. I didn't have a car, nothing. So I just walked next door and started washing crawfish. Like 300 pounds of crawfish a day, uh, at a crawfish place. And fell in love with restaurants. I got into the front of house, started as a host and then a server. Quickly realized I'm really good at selling stuff. Like I was number one or number two in sales, always at every restaurant I worked at. And I said, okay. Hm. I have always wanted to start a business. Uh, let's try restaurants. So I went to culinary school to de risk that. Realized restaurants don't make money. And I wasted a bunch of money on student loans that I didn't need to, to figure that out. Um, and, uh, said, okay, wow, sales. I'm good at the selling thing. Let's try that out. So I got into door to door sales. Started, um, with solar and then got into roofing and quickly rose to the top 2% of the nation for door to door roofing sales. And then I started my company. So that's the origin. Origin story.

Speaker B: And then roofing to. To cow burps.

Speaker A: Roofing to. It was technically roofing at first when I started the company, but then we pivoted to cow burps. Yes.

Speaker B: Oh, that's a good pivot. Um, tell me about that.

Speaker A: Yeah. So 25% of most landfills are made of roofing jingles. Especially in the south, where we do our roof every two years because of hail storms.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And I was like, that's ridiculous. We, they're actually recyclable. We know how to recycle them. And I realized we. We first figured out that we can put asphalt roofing aggregate. So, so, uh, asphalt shingles into roads. And then they all started cracking. They're like, oh, crap. So we can only do 1 to 3% of that shingle in roads now. There's way more roofs being done than roads being built. And so it's a market problem. There's not enough demand for the end supply. And, and I was like, you don't solve a market problem with 50k. So let's try something else. And then I saw a notification pop up on, um, my phone that said cows are the cause of climate change. And I was like, holy, Holy crap. Like, that's the same exact story that I heard when I was in elementary School 13 years ago. Why is it the same story? Why is the problem still here? What's going on here? I then did 700 hours of research over the course of three months and realized like, this is the largest untapped source of clean fuel feedstocks on the planet and nobody's capturing it. And so now we're the only company on the planet that captures, uh, enteric commissions.

Speaker B: Okay, okay. Um, I want to get into that. I'm curious. It seems like you have such a strong kind of entrepreneurial drive. Do you have a feel for where that comes from? You said your dad worked for Boeing. I think, is it in your family or where does that come from?

Speaker A: So I'd say it maybe skipped a generation in terms of like my grandfather, he was the co founder or one of the really high up execs at cpcsd, which is one of the largest cotton producers in the, in the world. Um, if my dad did not leave, um, the Central Valley, California, I would have been an eighth generation farmer, which I didn't know until like eight months into my agriculture climate journey, which was like the land called me back. I'm back in the valley.

Speaker B: Crazy. Uh, in your jeans.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. So, um, I've actually asked myself this question a lot. I think it goes back to chronically growing up watching Shark Tank and other entrepreneurial driven shows and knowing the outcome of the pitch or knowing the outcome of whatever that story was before even we were even 10 minutes into whatever the pitch or the show was. And I was like, why do I know this? Why am I good at this? And going through it was really roofing that unlocked this. Holy crap. I'm really good at business because as a server or as a normal W2 kind of low level employee and all the other jobs I had, you don't really get to touch the business side too much. But once I was the top person in the roofing company I worked at, I was like seeing how things could be improved, how we could be more effective, and actually implemented a lot of systems and things and ideas that I had that improved the company. And I was like, it just all, everything lined into place. I think there's four things you need to start a company. You need the skills to actually do it, the time to be able to execute on those skills, the capital to be able to back that up. And then the fourth thing is the roadmap or the vision of being able to take those three resources and actually make something out of it. And so the beginning of 2025 was the first time I had all four of those at once. I had the skills and the time for a long time, but I didn't have the capital or the vision. And uh, that Was unlocked. Yeah.

Speaker B: I would add, I don't know, there's something less tangible like the spirit or the risk. Ah, appetite or something like this. Right.

Speaker A: Um, I slightly disagree. I think that my thesis on what an entrepreneur is is the only difference between normal people and entrepreneurs. Because normal people, everyone has, oh my God, I have this idea, it could be a million dollar idea, it could be a million dollar business. Everybody has that. Nobody doesn't have any. At some point in their life they come up with an idea and it could be a billion dollar company. The only difference between normal people and entrepreneurs is relentless action. Because if you can take relentless action, even your risk appetite isn't really a factor. It is just action, action, action, action. And you can overcome the risk appetite through action.

Speaker B: I like that. Um, so okay, so you zeroed in on cattle, uh, something you had heard about as a kid and is still a problem. How did you get to um, cow burps specifically looking at that whole problem? Because my understanding is there's, you know, there's a number of sources related to, of emissions related to livestock. Right?

Speaker A: Sure, yes. So, um, what I was really looking for when I saw this and I was like, okay, roofing ain't it? But then there's this cattle thing. Um, I was looking around and like what's the most tangible, lowest hanging fruit climate impact that can be solved. And thankfully this notification came in at just the right time and it was serendipity. But, but when looking at different climate problems, like you got the pie chart and we've talked, I know you've talked about it on a lot of other episodes, but you got, you got energy, you got transportation, you got how we build things, you got agriculture and then kind of some miscellaneous, miscellaneous stuff. But agriculture is really overlooked. Nobody really looks at it because it's a really hard problem. I mean they're all hard problems to solve. But agriculture, and you said it in the beginning of the episode, 90% comes from the burps. And the current way people look at it at the problem is through the lens of how do we re engineer the cow to produce less methane.

Speaker B: Right? Yeah. Like supplements, uh, in the feed and this kind of thing.

Speaker A: Exactly. Or vaccines, gut microbiome, re engineering, um, you got all kinds of different solutions that basically try to re engineer the cow. And I think that's, I think it's a very cool way to look at the problem, but I think it's inherently ineffective because you're messing with biology and it's usually a cost driver. And so when I looked at it, I was like, wait a second. This is if you were to put all the cows on the planet today, it's like somewhere around 11 billion mmvtus of renewable natural gas potential. That's a lot of gas. And it's also carbon negative sources of methane. So interesting. Can we capture it? And we put a thing on a cow and we captured it and it was like, okay, we're doing this.

Speaker B: This is the thing. Yeah. Uh, okay. What thing did you put on a cow? That's what I really want to hear about. What is the thing?

Speaker A: I know it's burning for you. So we have a two part system, right? We got the on cow device and then we also have some infrastructure on the farm that purifies the gas. The on cow device, you have what we call a nose piece. So you basically put a halter on a cow and you attach a nose piece to it. And fun fact, most of the gas comes from their nose, not their mouth. So you capture all the gas from their nose. It goes to what I call the backpack. So you can imagine like a bareback pad on a horse. If you don't know what that is, look it up. A bareback pad on a horse. And then you'd mount the electronics, power systems and the gas storage on that. The gas goes back to, uh, the backpack. When the cow comes in to get milked, uh, a laborman's gonna hook up to the udders to milk the cow. It's just one extra step. Hook up to our system sucks, uh, out the gas and then that goes to some on site infrastructure that will upgrade it to a pipeline quality and then that farmer can either sell it or use it on site. Um, eventually we'll be able to provide things like sustainable aviation fuel or other types of renewable hydrocarbons that that market would need.

Speaker B: Okay. And I want to hear about kind of the business side of it as well. But maybe just to focus on the thing a bit more. Um, it sounds super cool. Maybe first, where are you in the, in the development process? What kinds of prototyping have you done or.

Speaker A: Yeah, so we've done. We've had about 17 successful live tests on dairy cows ranging from one cow for three minutes. That was our very, very first one. That was like the. Oh my God. We captured cow burps.

Speaker B: Holy crap.

Speaker A: To, uh, our latest test, which was our first pilot. It was our first 24 hour continuous where, um, we found all the failure modes, uh, and where we need to, uh, iterate on some of the product to be More what we call cow proof. Um, again we're deploying on a live 1600 pound animal. Uh, so designing something that not only stays in place but is also resil and also number one, uh, absolutely no negative effect on the cow. That's I'd say it's as much of a design problem as an engineering problem. And that's not quite the case for most climate products I would say like energy, it's just, it's a square panel that you put on someone's roof or uh, even biogas stuff. It doesn't need to look pretty, uh, but for us it needs to not only look pretty but for uh, functionality, quality and the engineering side have to all come together in a beautiful design of a product. So uh, that's where we're at as uh, our first pilot just completed.

Speaker B: Right. Uh, it's user oriented design but in this case at least one of the key users is a cow. Exactly.

Speaker A: Yeah, the user is a cow but the customer is a farmer.

Speaker B: Yeah. So what does it mean? What are some of the big challenges of designing for a cow, uh, putting electronics on a cow in this environment there. And maybe just so I'm centered in the right thinking, um, is this primarily or should I be thinking kind of big industrial feedlot operations or cows out grazing in grass or what's the mental image here?

Speaker A: It's a great question. We operate on both and the reason why it is a wearable is because only 14% of global operations are intensive or concentrated operations where they're like in a, in a factory farm. And so we looked at this problem and said well if we want to actually tackle 14% of global emissions on a 20 year time period that is only cow burps then it needs to be a global product. And so we can't do it inside the barn, which also is not very effective. We need to do this on every single cow. So it needs to fit on every single cow. Um, so the, I forgot the first part of your question.

Speaker B: I was. Well I wanted to understand are we, yeah. What kind of environment. So it sounds like it's cows out kind of grazing in the open or maybe not grazing but out in open air.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's both intensive and grazing. So we can deploy on both farms uh, that are 40,000 cows in the two square mile area and also um, a couple hundred cows on thousands and thousands of acres. The, the only kind of limiting factor right now is dairy. So they can, they come in twice a day predictably to get milked. That's when we have, uh, the window of opportunity to extract the gas that we've collected. Um, yeah.

Speaker B: Otherwise there wouldn't be a regular opportunity to, to offload the gas.

Speaker A: Yeah, beef is, is definitely on the horizon. It's just a very, very, uh, it's going to be a lot more high tech and it's a lot harder. So we're going with the lowest hanging fruit, which is dairy. So. Yeah. In the US alone, there's about 9.4 million dairy cows out of 94 million. So about 10%, uh, is in the US is dairy.

Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. A good place to start. And the other part of the question was, what are some of the challenges of designing for a cow in those environments? Um, you know, you're outside, you've got cows bumping into each other. What, what are we, what are we thinking about from a, sort of a design and engineering challenges standpoint?

Speaker A: Exactly. So the. There's been wearables on cows since 2000, so it's not a new technology in terms of a wearable on a cow. What is new territory is the form factor. So we have two parts. We have a halter and the backpack, um, bumping into each other. The, the parts of the device have to stay high up on the back so that they don't, uh, interfere with bumping in other cows. It also has to be in a place where when the cow mounts on another one, they're not crushing the device or if it does hit that, that it's rugged enough to not break.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Uh, and then on the form factor, the nose piece, it needs to be what I call sleek and sexy, where because of its design and its form factor, around their face, it's not gonna get torn off, it's not gonna get in the way of the cow. It actually moves out of the way when they wanna eat and drink. Um, so we don't interfere with that. But methane is an incredibly dispersive gas. And so something we learned real quick is like, okay, this can't just be like a dune mask where it's a, uh, I think it's called a capillary or cannula. Uh, a cannula, where, uh, it's just stuck in their nose because all the

Speaker B: gas, it's only capturing part of the airflow.

Speaker A: Yeah. When they breathe out, it's like really forceful. So it would just go around the cannula. So it has to be more of like an actual nose piece than just something we stick in their nose. Um, I know way more about cows than I wish I knew.

Speaker B: Yeah. What has that process been like, are you working closely with ranchers? Do you have a cow? How are you making this happen?

Speaker A: Not yet. We joke all the time of like, okay, ah, at what round can we have an office and then have something in the back of the office in the parking lot or something where we lay down some hay and we have a cow? Uh, but no, we will at some point. Uh, but no, we have a farm partner that we've been working closely with for about a year now, um, who lights up every time we come around because he's like, all right, let's see if this one works better. Um, and uh, so yeah, so we have access to a small farm that is, uh, very collaborative with us and we're on the farm. I was just at the Animal Ag Tech Innovation Summit in um, Fort, uh Worth recently. There was a panel that said, hey, if you ask agtech founders, um, if they've been on the farm or been with producers in the last year, something like 70% would say they haven't. Uh, I love saying that. I've, I go to the farm at least once a month, I'm there on the farm getting knee deep in shit. Um, but no, it's a fun process. Iterating on a live animal and seeing, okay, this specific strap material that we used versus this other one is actually a little bit more aggressive. So let's go back to the other one and then integrate that in our new designs. And um, the hardware process of iterating on a, uh, 1600 pound animal is just so fun.

Speaker B: So that's a lot of the challenge of keeping the hardware alive. What about keeping the cow well and functioning and not impeding with their kind of day to day? I guess you talked about how it moves out of the way if they're eating and drinking. Are there other downsides of, I don't know, impeding the breath out of their nose or, or putting extra weight on their back or anything like that?

Speaker A: You have to think about weight. Not so much. No, they, they are sturdy animals. Um, um, I won't talk too much on like the weight we're shooting for, um, but it's definitely not impeding them in terms of how the cow behaves and behavior changes. We, my co founder is really, really good at, uh, metaphors and he, he very quickly was like, cows are a lot like three year olds, right? A three year old, you want to put a T shirt on them, they're going to be like, no, no, I don't put a T shirt on me. And then Once it's on them, they're like, all right, let's go eat and play. Cows are exactly the same way. So they're about five minutes or so, they're like, what is this thing? And they're like, all right, cool. Where's my food? Where's my friends? Um, so behaviorally they don't change much, uh, at all. What we're really excited to see is really deep data in our next pilot with our academic partners showing qualitatively, what are the negative effects that we see now that we can iterate through design so that we can certify when we go to market with our farmers and also the general public. Hey, there's absolutely no negative effect on Macau. If anything, there's a positive effect. And we have quite a few different ideas of how can we create a positive experience for the cow. Because most of these cows that we're

Speaker B: going to be say more about that.

Speaker A: So I can say one idea. I won't go too, because there's a bunch of ideas. But, ah, one idea is like the tactile feelers in the halter that massage their face. And we could actually time it with their eating. So they go down to eat and they massage their face. We could actually potentially induce, um, uh, a positive association with grazing to actually have higher, uh, dry matter intake, which is the big metric that farmers are looking for, especially beef, is how like, are they eating, Are they eating to get weight gain? Um, and also just kind of massage their face, you know, give them a little massage?

Speaker B: Yeah, why not? Who doesn't want to face massage?

Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah, they never. They, um, cows, they love to rub their face if they're not, because they don't have hands.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: So either their buddies are coming around and licking their face or their, their actual, their neck or behind their ears. But if we can massage it, then that, that gives them that itch. Satisfies that itch. Uh, pretty, pretty wholeheartedly.

Speaker B: Uh, first time developing hardware for you?

Speaker A: Yeah. Uh, I mean there I had a lot of. Yeah, I had a lot of uh, electronics kits and like Legos and uh, lots of those early late 90s kids types type of, uh, building stuff. But I've never actually developed a hardware product. But yeah.

Speaker B: What stands out as something, uh, kind of unexpected that you've learned about it or advice you might have for somebody else heading down a new hardware development pass?

Speaker A: I'd say the vast majority of people that build hardware overstate how hard it is. I think it's actually a lot easier than people Say it is. Now, let me kind of expand on that. A lot of people are like, think it takes 10, 20, 30k, 100k, millions of dollars to develop hardware when reality, like every, every part of our System is either 3D printed or bought off Amazon. Like the. I invested, um, just under six figures myself over the course of over a year. And we got to tier L5. Like, it doesn't take much to build. Like, I'd say the exception is if you're like, um, biotech, where you got to go through a huge FDA process, or fusion, where that's like, you're to build a unit. It's literally $20 million minimum. If you have an idea and you think there's a market for it and you validated that market, and you can really, really take the true essence of an mvp, which is, okay, what's the really, really cheapest minimum thing I can build? And I could maybe sell it to someone that's an, that's an mvp. I think a lot of people are like, okay, I got to build something that it doesn't break, it doesn't. Like, there's no problems with it, there's no bugs. No, just build something that just barely works and the right person would buy it. That's an mvp. And then that can get you whatever funding you need.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: I think, yeah, that's the kind of. That's the. That's the only piece of advice I get is like, it's actually not as hard as you think it would be. And if anybody wants to contact me and say, hey, I got this idea. Can you, can you help me validate it? I would love to, love to do that. Uh, it's a really fun thought experiment. Yeah. It's like, okay, we need a proper budget now.

Speaker B: Yeah,

Speaker A: Yeah. So the big value prop to the farmer and should actually touch, should actually talk a little bit more about the problem. So the average American dairy farmer only makes about 1 penny per 11 gallons of milk they sell in profit. And that's only two out of the last 20 years. They've actually turned a profit. So they are chronically unprofitable. Um, they do not make money and they are hurting. And their children don't want to keep going on the business because they see how hard their parents are working, and it's just not. It doesn't work.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: So when I went and spoke to farmers and said, hey, if I could give you $600 in new revenue per cow each year, would you. Would you want this? 85% of them signed an LOI on the spot. So they, they see anything that can materially change their economics. And, and I've posited this thesis to some of the largest names in agriculture that dairy is dead. The future of dairy is just energy farms that happen to produce milk. And that is why we have a energy developer that signed an MOU that's like, okay, if you can get, um, if you can get some farmers together, some, uh, groups together, then we're going to deploy solar on every farm that you put your system on. Because the economics of dairy is just so thin that if you can offset the cost or introduce new revenue streams, you got that farmer for life. And so this is taking a clean biogas and land that, uh, they have and turning it into an asset, a strategic asset for them. And it's also food security and energy security for the United States and the world. So business model is direct to the farmer. Uh, when the, let's say farmer wants to go buy a tractor, they'll probably get some sort of grant or some sort of incentive and then some ag lending to go pay for that. Uh, we qualify for all those and then they get it and reap the 100% of the economic benefits of that device. And then once we can bring our costs down as fast as we can, we will offer the entire thing at no cost to the farmer. Uh, and revenue share on the gas sales. That's phase two of the business model.

Speaker B: Do you get involved in the selling of the gas side of things with the farmers as well, or is that on them?

Speaker A: It's kind of dependent on whether the farmer could sell it or not. Is dependent on the location of the farm. If they're selling it and they are, uh, not already piped into the system, then we would assist. If they're already piped in, then they just use their existing infrastructure.

Speaker B: What do you mean piped into the system?

Speaker A: Yeah. So, uh, you mentioned windfall, bio and anaerobic digestion. Um, those digesters, where does the gas go from there?

Speaker B: I see. They already have infrastructure where somebody's off taking the methane they're producing. Exactly. Gotcha. So if they're already there, hook up to that existing system. If not, there's got to be some kind of logistics to capture it in tanks or something and truck around or to get them hooked up to some kind of infrastructure. Exactly, exactly. Exactly, yeah. Is there a certain kind of scale of operation that kind of tips us into the scale where it makes sense? Or could it be any dairy farmer?

Speaker A: Yeah. Right now, at our price Point, the larger the better. And that's the same thing for digesters.

Speaker B: Digesters.

Speaker A: Uh, the larger. Really any large farm already has digesters because it just makes sense, it would be stupid if they didn't do digesters because of the volume of manure that they're processing. They can, they can create a lot of natural gas. Um, so same thing for us also the larger farms, they're, they're run more as corporations than like a family dairy. So they have a farm manager. They have a, ah, a dairy manager. Because the farm isn't just dairy. Right. They're also growing all of their own corn for silage, for feed for the cows. They're potentially also growing pistachios and almonds. If they're growing pistachios, then they're gonna. Or almonds.

Speaker B: They'll be.

Speaker A: Sorry, yeah, pistachios. They'll be using the um, the shells of the pistachios for the uh, feed supplement. And so there's usually a farm manager that's managing all of that stuff and then a dairy manager that manages the dairy and then there's a health manager anyway, getting way too into the logistics of farm management. But uh, uh, so they, because of their scale, their economies of scale, they usually have a bit more cash to play with. So those are our first customers. And then later on, once we get to, um, bringing our costs down, we can help out some of the smaller family farms. 100%. That's still part of the goal.

Speaker B: And if I understand the numbers right, if they're currently doing, using manure, like one of these, um, uh, anaerobic digester systems to capture the emissions off of m manure, if they could then capture it directly from cow burps, we're talking about what, like eight or nine times the amount of emissions that they're getting from manure. Is that the right way to think about it?

Speaker A: If you were looking at that number alone, yes. The only variable that's missing from that equation is anaerobic digesters can actually optimize the amount of methane that's being produced because it's an anaerobic system. And so if, if traditionally it was just off gassing, maybe one mmbtu. I don't know the actual number if it's uncovered, but let's say it's one then. And then they cover it and then they can actually play around with that soup of bacteria. They can get 10, 20, um, MMBtus.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So if it was just the M digester alone. Yes, you would be right. But since they can optimize it, uh, it is actually a bit more than what we produce. But on the emissions perspective, if digesters were not there at all, we would be capturing eight or nine times more.

Speaker B: Right. The emissions reduction potential relative to doing nothing is a lot higher.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: Yeah, but the, but the revenue potential for the farmer is at a, maybe a similar scale a little sounds, uh, like a bit less than the digesters.

Speaker A: Yeah, a little bit less. But it is basically doubling the amount of revenue, uh, they're getting. And it's super high margin revenue for them versus the milk sales where it's 1 to 3% sometimes.

Speaker B: And when I was first thinking about this, I thought, oh, you must run into kind of, I don't know, resistance from a traditional mindset, uh, in this community. But it sounds like that's not really the case. People are pretty.

Speaker A: The customers are pretty stoked, you would think so. I think it's what I call the rancher's paradox, where whether it's dairy or beef or anyone that has land, rural land, the rancher's paradox is, okay, I have this land. I need to turn it into money somehow. So let's put cows on top that can eat the grass, and then I sell for beef or dairy or whatever. Let's use the minerals down below. Whether it's mining or oil and gas or geothermal.

Speaker B: There's.

Speaker A: Oh, there's wind above me. Okay, let's put a windmill there. Oh, there's solar.

Speaker B: Cool.

Speaker A: Let's put solar. Right.

Speaker B: That's.

Speaker A: That's the rancher's paradox. So I think there's a really big stigma that farmers are terrible people to sell to just because the adoption rate is lower. I think it's purely because there's not. There hasn't been any solutions that are truly disruptive to agriculture, and that's why there hasn't really been any excess.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Over the last five years, 17% year over year, we've seen a decrease in venture capital because the largest exits have been around 300 million. And my thesis there is where Airbnb truly disrupted an antiquated industry. There has not truly been a solution yet to actually disrupt agriculture on the level where you can actually create an enduring company. Um, that's where we think we're a bit different.

Speaker B: What are the kind of market sizing numbers for the gas production potential?

Speaker A: Yeah, and it's a great question because I think as I talk about this, someone would be like, oh, this is an ag tech company. Well, no, we're not. We just deploy on cows, we're an energy company, so we have energy company market sizing. So if you take our bottoms up approach of our price times, um, the amount of cows there are, it's a total addressable market globally of about $5.2 trillion. Um, if you look at United States alone, it's about 200 a quarter, a quarter of a trillion. So 250 billion. And then on our, our beachhead market is five and a half billion in the dairy. So it's a really big market.

Speaker B: US Dairy farms. Yep.

Speaker A: M mhm. Uh, just, just California dairy.

Speaker B: Just California dairy.

Speaker A: Just one state.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I suppose it's sustainably sourced so there's a premium on this methane relative to conventional, conventional methane.

Speaker A: Yeah. So we, our assumptions actually account for a little bit lower price per MMBTU than digester methane. Um, digester methane can get up to like $156 per MMBtu. Whereas spot price of just normal natural gas, you're looking at like $3, $5 per MMBtu. Um, and that's because the CI score, the carbon intensity score is so negative. It's like the, it's the most carbon offsetted product in the world. Um, dairy methane because you're avoiding the methane from going into the atmosphere and then you're turning it into a product that's actually, if it was burned it would just be CO2. Um, so if you can get your manufacturing process, your whole life cycle assessment process to be very sustainable, then it is a very high value commodity.

Speaker B: Super cool. As you, as you scale the business, we talked about some of the challenges, um, that you got to overcome. On the engineering side, what are the things that keep you up at night? On the business side, what are some of the big risks or big kind of milestones you still have to get over?

Speaker A: I think touching on what I just talked about a second ago in the VC capital, um, I think access to capital is one of the big things that keep me up at night because the growth rate that we're looking at and the speed at which we're going to grow and I've spoken to a few financial people like could we actually do this? It's like it'd be really, really, really hard because we want to raise a good amount of money.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Um, so I think access to capital and then the challenges of scaling and manufacturing a low cost, lightweight, effective, wearable on cow is going to be such a fun process to go through.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker A: I, I, I am a, I call myself a problem engineer and uh, all of the problems that are going to come up from that is like I, I don't, it doesn't really keep me up at night, but it's, it's very, very, very exciting to think about. Like oh, okay, well I, how can we do this?

Speaker B: Sorry. What is a problem engineer? Do you create problems? What does a problem engineer do?

Speaker A: No, maybe a solution engineer would be better. No, I create solutions to problems.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Cool.

Speaker B: Uh, as you think about what's your vision for the company, what do you want to become? What's the long term goal?

Speaker A: Yeah, so this is my favorite thing to talk about. Um, the reason why we're called Planet Tech is we purely solely exist to build technology that solves planetary scale problems. Usually where people are not looking so that all future generations have a cleaner and better plan. And so I see this as a 500 year company. If uh, you look at the landscape of, of companies that the greatest minds could be like oh, I want to go work for that, that mission you got. Uh, okay, how do we engineer people's attention more so that they become slaves? Meta. Uh, we have a company where you could come up with an amazing idea and it probably won't see the light of day. Um, Google, uh, we have company that is traditionally super mission driven and has a really big why but is turning much more corporate. Apple. Um, and then basically it's like okay, what's left? Well, I could go work for Elon and waste my life away working 14 hours a day, which I love. Elon companies I love, don't get me wrong, I like all the companies I just mentioned. But like when you, when you take an outside perspective and you put your, you put your head in the shoes of someone that is like an A player. There's not very many options of mission driven companies where they could go put their life's work in. And so my vision for the rest of my life and my vision for Planet Tech is building a vehicle for people to systematically build planetary scale technologies to create the utopia we all talk about of bringing asteroids back to the planet, of colonizing Mars, of becoming a multi planetary species, of creating systems and products that are so valuable for the end customer that it is stupid for that customer to say now too. That's Pinetech. That's the long term vision.

Speaker B: Love it. That explains the name that isn't specific to cow. Uh, burps or asphalt I guess. Asphalt shingles. Yeah, I guess uh, step one, uh, solve the, the methane emissions from cattle. When do you start to lowest, uh, hanging.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, lowest hanging actually solvable Climate problem. COW burps let's solve 14% of global emissions first and then we can, we can move on something else. Yeah.

Speaker B: What kind of time frame does that happen on, you think? Yeah.

Speaker A: Ah, it's looking at the validation path. Like we could, we could ship our. Market our product. Now we've hit the viability milestones for capture efficiency. Um, we do have the cow proof problem to continue to iterate on, but we could probably ship soon. Right, but shipping a product where farmers can 100% wholeheartedly get behind and say, that's not going to harm a cow and it's actually going to make me money. Um, and taking that farmer adoption equation and like, if it's great product times validation equals farmer adoption, then it's probably like two to three years out. Yeah.

Speaker B: Awesome. Um, I'm ready to move on to the last few questions that I ask everybody. Unless you had anything else you wanted to hit that we haven't done.

Speaker A: I think, um, the last thing I'll say is. In line with the vision of our company. If you feel like, oh, my God, I just want to put my life's work into solving a new category of technology I.e. planetary scale problems, hit me up. I'd love to, um, love to chat with you.

Speaker B: Nice. Uh, well, people can find you pretty easily, I think, but we can put your socials on the show. Notes. Um, sounds great. Okay. Three questions that I ask everybody. Sounds like maybe you've heard these. The first is, how optimistic or pessimistic are you about the future of the planet and why?

Speaker A: M. Future of the planet or the future of humanity?

Speaker B: This is a great question. And if I could rewind, uh, and craft my questions again, I would probably say that because I think the. Yeah, the planet's probably not. The planet's gonna be okay.

Speaker A: Um, yeah, uh, there's a great movie and it might be in theaters right now still, or maybe by the time this comes out, it won't be. But there's a really good movie called the AI Doc, or How I Became an Apocalyptimist. And that's what I subscribe to. I'm an apocalyptimist. It's, uh, threading the line between the two simultaneous realities we hold where it's mass extinction or utopia. It's like right in the middle.

Speaker B: That's where I'm at. Yeah. Nice.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, who's another company or individual doing something to address climate change that's inspiring you?

Speaker A: Yeah, one of my buddies. His, uh, name is Chris Saunders. He's the founder of Power 48. Um, he, uh, has built the world's first, uh, module, a battery module that can charge in 10 minutes, 0 to 100, 100% in 10 minutes.

Speaker B: And I think it's at kind of like EV scale or. Yep. Interesting. Yeah.

Speaker A: So he, uh, yeah, really, really cool guy. Inspires me a lot.

Speaker B: Might have to get him on the pod.

Speaker A: Yeah, I'll get you his info. Cool.

Speaker B: What advice do you have for someone not working in climate today who wants to do something to help?

Speaker A: I was waiting for you to ask this question. Um, I think I'm a perfect example of. You don't have to have gone to school for environmental sciences or mechanical engineering or really anything at all. Um, at the end of the day, um, uh, the reason why I started this company specifically is because I truly believe it is Gen Z's moral obligation to pick up the proverbial climate cam that my parents and my parents. Parents have been kicking down the road and just actually, for lack of a better term, unfuck our planet.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: It is our moral imperative because we're the last chance. We're the last line of defense. Gen Z is the last generation to have a planet for us to theoretically thrive on unless we take relentless action. And so if you think about, like, if you're listening to this episode right now and you're like, hey, I like climate, it sounds interesting. I have nowhere, no idea where to start. Just start. Just listen to the rest of the, uh, episodes in the show and you'll find a place.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Awesome. Well, yeah, like you said, you've set a really good example of that. Cool. Griffin, this was super fun. Um, I've learned a lot and I'm very excited to see, uh, cows out in the world with your tech on them. Um, thanks for everything you're doing. Thanks for your time, 100%.

Speaker A: Thank you so much, Dillo, for having me on the show.

Speaker B: Hardware to Save a Planet is brought to you by synapse. To find out more about us and how we develop hardware solutions for the world's most ambitious company companies. Head to synapse.com and then make sure to search for hardware to save a planet in Apple podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere you like to listen. Make sure to click subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. On behalf of the team here at synapse, thanks for listening.