 This is a question that was submitted by Rachel, who's an undergrad here at Stanford, and the question is, were you ever scared in pursuing your ambitions or doubt yourself in the process? And if so, how did you overcome those fears? And I'll let anyone answer that, who wants to take it. I'm guessing the answer is yes. Yeah, I'm trying to think of a good example. I really didn't want to start this company. I think that I ended up doing it because I felt like the world really needed it, but I was really just intimidated by the business side. I knew how to build product and I knew how to make something desirable, but the whole, it's not that I can't do math, it's just what it represented was something that felt very alien to me. Possibly because I have a lot of families in the investment banking community and I had seen that side of the world and I was like, I am not that. So there was an entire identity transformation that kind of, I had to work out. It took, I did my master's thesis, my second year of Stanford, I launched this company my fourth year of Stanford. So I had to really realize that it was something that I needed to do, not I wanted to do for me. It wasn't about being an entrepreneur, it was bringing life to this idea that I really felt needed to exist. I would say my example, I thought it was, we started writing small business innovation research grants and I wrote this grant, which I thought was a really great grant application for the National Science Foundation and submitted it and it came back and we didn't get it and we ended up in the interim before we heard back, we had filled out like seven or eight grant applications and they ended up all, we ended up not getting any of those and it was, it was this very disheartening moment was like, oh my god, like we're not giving these grant applications. So then kind of had to regroup from that and then took in like the reviewers comments and then it was like after like our eighth or ninth application, we basically would get them, we got like three in a row, three of these grants and now our hit rate for grants is like over 50%, which is pretty high for these, you know, there's a lot of people writing these grants and it was just a matter of like just getting like doing it and getting the feedback, incorporating that feedback into the grant application, just resubmitting and then after a while just kind of understanding how again, how to tell that story. I think someone mentioned that earlier, like our initial grant applications were too scientific, we were writing it too much like manuscripts and so being able to tell how the technical economics fit into our technical work plan and how that would bring the cost down for our customers, like telling that story was really important. I think for us the biggest challenge that we faced was early on, we were working with drones and we were actually going to retrofit our own drones and then do the inspections ourselves and we found out that not only is that very capital intensive, but at the same time there were so many regulations that we were going to have to face as well and that was going to be a really long uphill battle. So trying to decide whether or not we were going to pivot and just become a software company or also and then partner with drone companies or stick to this like drone retrofitting business as well was a big challenge for us and we faced that like month three or month four of our business. So I think that was the scariest thing that I faced as a new entrepreneur, but I think it was a great learning experience. Catterjohn, either of you want to? Well, I would say yes. Anyone would lie who doesn't say that they have doubts and are afraid and unsure. So one of the things that I do when I have such doubts to your point, Tasha, is I bring my team close and we kind of regroup, but another thing that I do is I go see customers and I do talk to the people who really do have a need for what we're innovating with and so that kind of gives me new energy and helps me work through that crummy period also. So I think running mission-oriented companies, you often have to speak the truth when people really are uncomfortable hearing it internally and externally. So I don't remember when I started putting almost every speech I give about the bank which is maybe a hundred a year that we have to wrestle with the fact that this country was founded on slavery, native genocide and less than personhood for half the people. And the first couple of times I said that even my own family is like, do you really have to say that? But we really do have to say that and wrestle with it. And then we're in a regulated industry so it's super scary to have outside authorities who can shut you down if you don't do it right. And it's hard to do it right. We're 10 and a half years old so we've have made some mistakes along the way. And even on the ranch side we were caught up in a recall of beef at a facility in Petaluma for us, a year's worth of beef. It was just a showstopper. So blank happens. Okay let's see if there are any questions from the audience before I turn back to some of these other. We have a microphone if anybody wants to. Okay we have, well actually we'll start here and then we'll go to the one in the back just because this is closer. This is also a question for everybody up here and I'm curious as sustainability entrepreneurs, how much each of you think about working with the ecosystem around your company as much as you think about working to make your company specifically successful? And any sort of examples that you have about that whether that's policy or working in a collaborative environment with other people in the same supply chain? Yeah I definitely do both for I hope for the benefit of the ecosystem but also for us as well like I'm you know help out with certain nonprofits that have a kind of more global mission of CO2 utilization and CO2 removal and decreasing kind of I try to speak on behalf of kind of industry as a whole not just my own my own company and I certainly try to be honest on panels as I can you know like I have to regulate that a little bit to make sure I can so do the work of the company but yeah I mean for me it's really good to kind of see what's on the horizon so like for example there's this new law that this Congress passed surprisingly that was surprising to me I should say that but it's called 45Q where companies can now get a tax credit for utilizing or sequestering their CO2 and so you know being in that ecosystem and knowing that was being worked on and then kind of hearing that it got passed you know so that's like really helpful for our company because now that's like something else we can tell our future customers they're like hey well you can get this tax credit in addition to the revenue that we can generate from using your CO2 so it's you know it's a give and take and and I like to just pay things forward and kind of get good karma points and also too on the entrepreneurship front like if you know people have questions and want to ask me about a specific fellowship or something that I've been a part of I'm happy to to help and give strategic advice. We absolutely depend on our ecosystem because our mission is to change a banking system for good the same is true in ranching and energy so we can't do that alone we aren't even the intermediary that can make that happen where the change bank they can show a model that works and then we really work hard to convince the large regional banks that they should act more like us to change the whole system so that's disciplining the supply chain and arguably that's what we're doing in the food energy space as well it's not good enough to be a good bank in a bad system. Go ahead son. I also heavily rely on the supply chain effects within the industries that we're working in and one of the big interesting things is that I might actually find the value to the customer is actually different in different parts of the supply chain so for the person preparing food and selling it at the point of sale they're concerned about wastage and spoilage and how much of something and not losing a sale but there's also an intermediary who makes their big risk is actually based on the amount of working capital that's disposable to them and so all of a sudden our value is in helping them be able to match one end of their customer base with their other end of their customer base and that's a really you know it's the same product but it's solving their problem in a different way and so understanding that full ecosystem actually has given me access to different kind of customer than I initially expected to have so I strongly support like really getting to know just like the full complexity of the space that you're in. Great we have a question back there. Yeah good afternoon my is this on yep okay my name is Rainie Chang I'm with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District Government Agency so I appreciate all of your comments about connecting to funders and investors and customers and building out a team and I'm glad Kat raised the the issue of government as well I think in a lot of cases government is interested in working towards a lot of these positive goals in collaboration with the private sector though I think there is a reputation of regulations being in the way so I'm curious to hear from all of you on what you see the opportunities what you see as the opportunities with partnering uh with with governments to achieve some of these goals. I feel a regulation for us has been a big challenge given that like the line of site regulation is really strict right now in the US in particular for using helicopters and drones and so currently the line of site regulation they're actually trying to work to get clearance for multiple drone companies for the purpose of inspections of infrastructures so that they can allow drones to go in and use sensors and actually become much closer to the line to detect more of the overall problems with the health of the line and so for us that's been a matter of working with not only the utilities but also working with the government and the utilities together to try and figure out the best way to come to this conclusion whether or not that is letting certain inspection companies have clearance or whether that is required training that allows you to go through like to circumvent the line of site regulation I think that's been something for us that we're hoping in the next year or two is going to become even more flexible because that would greatly help the amount of inspections not only in power lines but also for mining and for gas and pipeline inspections the possibilities are endless for using drones for those types of inspections so that's that's our hope working with the government and the utilities together we can come to a much quicker solution we embrace our regulators they're really important to us because banking is not just a financial service industry we actually are an arm of law enforcement and a part of constitutional rights so in addition to having to operate safely and soundly to as the entrusted steward of deposits and the banking system which we see what happens if it is threatened it's a showstopper we have to maintain fair lending so that's access to credit is tantamount in any capitalist society and we're one of the few safeguards of it we have done it imperfectly over time there was a period of shameful redlining in this country so you need not look too far back to see what happens when you don't warrant fair lending fair lending super important any money laundering right now in the six west coast states that have all legalized marijuana or cannabis we are a wash in the cash industry that's unregulated as the money laundering it's not that cannabis is the criminal element it's the other criminal elements coming into an open cash system so we're working really hard to try to figure out how to solve that it's very important it's a huge threat to public safety also cybersecurity and data breaches the banks are actually the most armed to fight against those so we set an example we're not perfect you see big breaches but you see them more in the big box retailers and stuff so regulation is really important to us and it's not just a kind of defensive posture like oh we have to do that too so that's a multi stakeholder model right we're serving a lot of different constituents there but it's also a proactive opportunity so we are the bank lending into the subsidy provided by the california air resource board for a low to moderate income borrowers to buy clean vehicles hybrid and electric vehicles five million dollars we'll put a lot of clean vehicles on the road in just the right hands we're trying to put more in different people in charge we're starting at the bottom of the pyramid those are the people who should be getting the chance to drive those vehicles first so i'm not afraid of regulation there's such a thing as efficient but it's a great process of serving a multi stakeholder community i'd add to that just quickly that regulation is our friend too in that the the state livestock and dairy industry is facing sp1383 which is a new law that requires the dairy and livestock industries to reduce their methane emissions by 40 by 2030 and it seems incredible very difficult to attain goal to producers but for from our standpoint it has been very useful in working with livestock producers to get them talking about well what would it take and and you know how could we work together with you know with the industry and with government and you know with the food system overall to try to try to meet those those tough goals so it's been a catalyst for productive conversation we have a question in the back thank you all so much for sharing your advice your stories and your motivation with us all going forward i have a question that it might land more so in where jonan cat work but you please anyone who has some thoughts on this would be fantastic to hear i'm curious how you beat the projects that have you know 10 plus you know 20 or 30 year time delays before you actually start to see that real like deep impact and societal change aspect to it it's so difficult to proof concepts in that regard and i'm curious how you all approached that if you try to kind of beat the time delay or if it's something that you kind of accept and bake in and cat as you said you know just be honest with that mission element up front i'd love to hear any advice you have on that going forward thank you i think cat mentioned earlier that the position she's in does allow her and and tom some patience and i think there are people who have the luxury to to be able to take long-term risks and other people who who really can't probably um productively manage that i think that those people who can either themselves or with a partner an investor who has that patience you know who can take a long-term bet should definitely seek to do that because those kind of long systemic type changes that change not only the one business but the entire industry in the case of a beneficial bank and and others that those kinds of really disruptive and long-term changes need to be made room for in concert with the short-term things that that we might be able to achieve to get some impact and i actually um so it is hard for everybody to take that long-term view but we have a lot of different types of capital and a lot of different types of return so what i mean by a lot of different types of capital people are really reimagining for instance the humble municipal bond it's an awesome instrument because of uh alternative improvements including blockchain we might actually get the minimums from municipal bonds way down so a lot more people could invest in them a lot more institutional investors could be comfortable with them and they might be better directed at long-term uh sort of capital improvements for society like bike trails and pollution mitigation and workforce housing um and the type of return so the global lines for banking on values represents 46 banks internationally that have always been directed by value some of them we're one of them but some of them are much bigger much longer standing than us and they've been trying to make the argument that they are literally a different asset class than the other banks the volatility of return on banks is ginormous i mean it looks like a roller coaster it exacerbates the cycle the economic cycles and our economic cycles are out of whack they're they're much more volatile than we experienced in the you know the beginning of the 20th century uh expression accepted but the um so i think what their thesis is that now over a 10-year period that they've been measuring they return eight to ten percent return on equity like clockwork that's really good the lack of volatility is really good volatility it's hard to imagine what volatility is good for otherwise and it's really good for the underlying business activities too because finance is the basis of business formation and uh time intermediation it's a really important function but if the turn of the last great recession in 2007 i think uh financial services represented 25% of GDP that's a surcharge because finance doesn't actually do anything it allocates capital that's important but it isn't a product or a service per se that we should dedicate that much of GDP to so i think it's time to rethink a lot of these financial principles about what is return what's the return you seek what is risk capital these large insurance and re-insurance companies have a totally different time frame and um profile you know the premium flow that they see is much more um matched to long-term results so they might be a source of some help and then the custodial accounts you hear a lot of talk about public banking right now it's really a rethink of public finance and it isn't like a bank owned in the public by the public is the best solution for everything but we should really think hard about what it is good for maybe it's infrastructure finance maybe it's for bridging to the legalization of cannabis at the federal level you know whatever it is we should think outside of the box about that because so far finance has been killing us recently so we are basically out of time there will be time at a reception after to um ask questions and um have conversation with our panelists and speakers but i want to ask one more question that was submitted for atosha uh by a community member jan um which is one of the one of the aims i think that you'd articulated at opus 12 was um using something about mars and of course that captures people's attention so the question is how would converted carbon dioxide be used on mars to make products from recycled materials oh yeah so um one little fun fact is that 95 percent of the atmosphere on mars is actually carbon dioxide um so we literally can mine the atmosphere of mars and make plastic uh we can make um we can make diesel fuel we can make methane which methane is kind of the fuel of choice for um for rockets specifically rockets that would go to mars and a rocket that would come from mars back to earth so you could imagine sending our unit to mars ahead of any astronauts and just have it producing this methane fuel that the astronauts would then use to come back to earth or they would use it on mars to go travel around so we've actually gotten a grant from nasa which has been great um to to actually make plastics um on mars so i mean it's you know it's an early stage development grant we're not going to be sending our things to mars anytime soon but it's the first first few steps to get us there so we're really excited about that okay thank you to all of these inspirational women for coming and spending time with us this afternoon telling us about their stories and thank you all for being here uh today with us and we are holding a reception that's outside the building um on the sarah mall side we look forward to seeing you there thanks again