 Thank you all for coming. I'm excited to tell you about our new venture the alt e-fund before I get into the details of What we're doing. I want to tell you guys a story so When my dad was little he used to play tricks on his cousins Today they love to complain about all the awful things he did like hold them down and lick their noses Of course, my dad he denies everything one of the best stories. I ever heard started off fairly innocently with a carton of milk He and his cousins Dee Dee and Kenny were hanging out in the kitchen and he convinced them It would be a good idea to poke holes in this carton of milk When they did you know milk started gushing all over the place and he started teasing them saying he would tell their parents that They were responsible when they started crying and getting upset. He suggested they try to patch up the holes with tape You all can probably guess how well that worked out The tape would hold for a few moments and then milk would start gushing out everywhere all over again When their parents came home, my dad stayed true to his word and he blamed it all on his cousins So my first thought when I hear this story is wow my dad finally got what he deserved when my brother and I came along We were little troublemakers just like him My second thought is that my dad's way of making problems and then solving them as a kid Sounds a lot like how our society likes to make and solve problems To me that whole situation sounds like the energy crisis we're dealing with now But instead of milk spilling all over the floor. We have carbon dioxide and methane spilling everywhere We have people suggesting we put tape on it by passing more and more environmental regulations We have figures of authority looking for people to blame it all on and we've other people pretending that there's no milk spilling at all But what we really all know is that the real solution is to stop drinking milk altogether Y'all probably gathered by now that by stop drinking milk. I mean stop burning fossil fuels Now that I've milked that metaphor to death. Let's talk about what that really means So we all know that we can't stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow We rely on them for our food supply our clean water Transportation our entire way of life relies on them But when the stakes are so high it's easy to fall back on questions of blame and morality But the real question is not one of morality It's one of survival in order to survive We need to find a way to support an exploding population and we need to make sure that there's a planet for us to survive on To accomplish these modest goals. We need to change everything about how we do energy This includes energy generation energy storage and grid optimization For the most part cheap technology isn't just sitting there for us to adopt Have we as a country max out the amount of wind and solar we can have on the grid? Of course not But in California in particular, we're seeing that maxing out current renewable energy technologies is far from a hundred percent integration Our grid simply wasn't built for renewable power sources worse. We're wasting energy because we don't have an efficient way to store it My colleagues and I had two important realizations about this predicament First the only solution is to create the science needed to solve these huge technological problems This is an obvious solution, but it's not a simple one Creating science means creating an entire interconnected web of ideas that encompass a large landscape of possibilities If that wasn't hard enough the scientific landscape is almost impossible to map out beforehand We know that attempting to do so actually decreases the probability of a breakthrough and we need a higher density of breakthroughs Than have ever happened in history. We need to reinvent the battery We need to reinvent gasoline and we need to reinvent the electrical grid We need to do it all without emitting carbon dioxide and we need to do it all within the next 10 years Those are some of the biggest Expectations that have ever been placed in the scientific endeavor It took us a hundred years to figure it out when fossil fuels were still an option The second realization we had was that the probability of every single one of those reinventions relies on the funding landscape for basic science discoveries, they don't come cheap As all of you are probably aware close to a hundred percent of current funding for basic energy science currently comes from the federal government This source of funding GDP has been declining for decades The last time our government devoted a substantially increased percentage of resources to basic R&D funding was the space race and Those sending men to the moon was certainly an achievement Solving the energy crisis means a complete paradigm shift for every single person on this planet I would have no idea that this crisis was even happening if I was just looking at the federal budget I'm not going to bet all of our futures on business as usual From these two realizations we made a very inconvenient conclusion We have to create a new funding source for basic energy science outside the government that source the alt-e fund We're specific. We are Increased current funding levels as well as bring new players onto the funding landscape We're specifically seeking donations from private citizens for-profit companies and other nonprofit organizations We're looking for support from private citizens because there are millions of people who care about the energy crisis and who care about climate change But they don't know what to do about it. They're just looking for somewhere to put their support Involving private citizens has the added benefit of further integrating the scientific method into everyday life We plan to develop further outreach programs so that people can visit the labs with their local energy scientists and learn about the Kind of work that they do firsthand We're also interested in developing mentorship programs between alt-e funded scientists and young aspiring scientists in their communities We know that forming a strong connection between science and the public is key to the success of both communities The success of this approach can be seen in other research-based charities that naturally make this connection like St. Jude Children's Research Hospital which raised over a billion dollars in donations last year and Susan G. Coman Which raised a still respectable quarter billion Every one of us has probably lost a loved one to cancer So we understand why these organizations are important people easily make the connection that science is the answer to this devastating problem But people are also capable of seeing an even larger picture Climate works received over a hundred million donations last year and the nature conservancy raised over half a billion The alt-e fund simply seeks to appeal to people who know the importance of science and saving human beings and who know The importance of saving the planet and show them a problem where science can be used to save both human beings and our planet Interestingly the most common response I get from the non-scientific community when telling them about the alt-e fund is Doesn't that exist already? amazingly no We are the only large funding platform that gives people the chance to directly donate to cutting-edge energy science We're also seeking support from for-profit companies for two reasons The first is that most for-profit companies already have philanthropic arms, and they're just looking for a place to put that money The second and more important reason is that there's not a single company on this planet that won't be affected by the energy crisis It takes massive amounts of energy to create and transport products across the world For companies explicitly involved in the energy business It doesn't make sense for a small solar company or even a large energy utilities to do basically an energy science in the house No matter how much it may benefit benefit them in the long term From a scientific perspective separating funding decisions from for-profit interests is just an added benefit Finally we're seeking to form strategic partnerships with other non-profit organizations because our mission has inherent implications for every piece of philanthropic work in this country There are very few problems that the energy crisis doesn't exacerbate and there are very few problems that cheap storable transportable energy can't help solve Richard Smalley who won the Nobel Prize in 1996 for the discovery of Buckminster Fullerine Made a list of the top 10 or set the top 10 problems for humanity for the next 50 years Number one on that list energy Going down that list water food the environment poverty terrorism and war disease education democracy and population Energy is first on that list because it's the most pressing issue But also because it's inherently intertwined with every other issue on that list It's going to be hard to provide clean water for everyone on earth without massive amounts of energy It's going to be hard to bring people out of poverty without giving them access to cheap renewable power It's going to be hard to avoid war when we're fighting over finite resources Given centrality of the energy issue our goal is to connect renewable energy and fundamental science with other activist efforts We believe this kind of intersectionality is vital to both the scientific effort at the core of our mission As well as the societal effort that our mission implies We also see our organization as part of a new ecosystem that is being built to specifically address the global energy crisis Some of you may already be wondering about another essential player in this ecosystem Breakthrough energy ventures or bev This initiative led by bill gates and other dedicated billionaires is setting a new precedent for problem solving in this country vv recognizes that quote the existing system for basic research clean energy investment investment regulatory frameworks and subsidies Fails to mobilize sufficient investment and truly transformative energy solutions We can't wait for the system to change through normal channels and quote They're specifically interested in addressing the value of death, which is a delightful term we used to describe the roadblocks between the lab and the marketplace Promising ideas require patient long-term investment in order to become promising products While this type of investment is beyond the reach of typical venture capitalist and angel and angel investors bv hopes to fill this gap However, bv itself recognizes that the foundation of their program must quote be large funding commitments of basic and applied research From the government where current government funding levels for clean energy are simply insufficient end quote Unfortunately, we have no reason to believe the government will actually do this given the aforementioned historic funding trends Mission innovation the other initiative led by bill gates offered a glimmer of hope But it's ultimately going the same way as the paris agreement a public declaration of government commitments without any mechanism to enforce those commitments We offer an alternative solution in the private sector for basic energy research that is perfectly complementary to bev Our coalition of clean energy scientists and experts will identify and fund projects in clean energy science across the country at universities and national labs Which will utilize the research infrastructure that we already have Successful projects can then be picked up by groups like bv and turned into viable products products capable of changing our energy economy Of course, stanford is already an integral part of this new ecosystem through the pre-court institute The tomcat center the styrochaylor center and many other successful initiatives that bring private investment to energy academia We need to bring these resources to every institution that might be able to offer a part of the solution Bill gates and many others estimate that we need to at least double our investment in foundational energy research nationally in order to Have a chance at solving this problem If you're interested in helping us do this, there are many ways you can contribute If you're a scientist, please consider joining our technical advisory board Past members include howard brands who was a program director at arpa e where he selected and incubated more than 70 million dollars worth Of interdisciplinary energy technology projects. He's now a part of our executive board Current members include michael mistrandrea the co-director of near zero here at stanford Who helps create a global assessment of climate change science and policy options for the intergovernmental panel on climate change Other members include art nosic who probably needs no introduction As he has made a profound impact on a wide variety of energy related fields from quantum dots to multiple x-ton generation to solar fuels His contributions to the global energy picture was recognized with the research award of the un an intergovernmental renewable energy organization in 2009 We believe in a true collaborative approach with input from a wide variety of experts Apart from technical considerations, we also would appreciate introductions to any person company or nonprofit You might know who would be interested in contributing to our cause We are currently planning to set out our first request proposals and start our first funding round at the end of this year In order to do that, we need to build a sustainable organization capable of funding energy research for years to come We understand the complexity of the problem we're trying to solve and we know that more money means more opportunities to explore the vast scientific landscape before us In a testimony to the senate committee on energy and natural resources in 2004 Richard smally commented that quote innovations and power transmission power storage and the massive primary power Generation technologies themselves can only come for miraculous discoveries in science Together with free enterprise and open competition for huge worldwide markets America the land of thomas edison should take the lead We should launch a bold new energy research program At minimum it will generate a cornucopia of new technologies that will drive wealth and job creation in this country At best we will solve the problem within this next generation Solve it for ourselves and by example solve it for the rest of humanity as well The new energy research program that he envisioned was a nickel tax on every every gallon of gasoline jet fuel diesel And fuel oil which would generate at least 10 billion dollars a year But that problem that program has not been realized this idea emphasizes Just how small an investment we need to make in the context of a global energy market currently valued at six trillion The payoff a transformed worldwide economy that can sustain both our species And our planet Thank you Thanks so much for this really interesting presentation I'm curious as to what sort of information you're collecting about your different investors slash donors If you could clarify if they're getting any sort of return on this fund and then also What type of people are or private? What type of individuals are donating to this fund? Yeah, sure So we do not guarantee any kind of return on the investment It's not like a for-profit business or anything like that. We would really expect more philanthropic contributions Um, and I think that the people on the bev are perfect examples of the kinds of people We would expect to donate because their entire model relies on us existing that they don't know about it yet So, you know, they're relying on this at least doubling of foundational energy research funding And we know that's not coming from the government and we kind of hoped it would but you know given Historic trends and just sort of rationality about the current political landscape where we're trying to you know cut our budget in half It's unlikely we're going to double or or you know even quadruple our current budget So they're going to need someone to help create that science that they need to even create technology I mean, you can't create a company from science. It doesn't exist, right? and I mean we're we're talking about not only Creating technologies that may not exist today, but making them cheap right making them economically viable, which I mean We could in theory You know actually just change over our our entire energy economy today with the current technologies we have But no one would do it in an economic sense. I mean you can't Tell people oh you should spend 400 of what you're currently doing and change everything about how you live And there's no incentive, right? You actually have to create the cheap technology and to do that You need the science and that's what we're creating that answer your question Or no, not so much I was more interested in the individuals like demographics. Are they students like ourselves or are they people who have are highly educated Are not in urban settings are using energy sources that are more renewable versus others Do you collect that sort of information about individuals who are donating to this fund? We are really looking for donations from A wide variety of demographics and the way we're thinking about it in terms of the grassroots fundraising is if you think about all the people in this country who already believe in climate change and believe it's an imminent threat and You were able to raise one dollar A month from each one of those people. We'd meet our current clean energy budget in terms of research funding so We do see it. We do see that's possible to raise money from Anyone who might have say participated in the past political campaigns or who might be otherwise involved in civic life I mean, we do we have a target audience? Maybe um We we see our argument may be being better received immediately by people who might have some background in Energy or climate science or the environment or might have some more spare cash But what we're really talking about is something that everyone can participate in right most people In this country probably have a dollar a month that they could they could spare for this or even ten dollars right and that Funnily enough is enough So we see those people and then maybe some more wealthy private donors who are really dedicated to energy and environmental causes and are looking for another outlet Um, maybe they've donated to other environmental charities in the past Maybe they're part of bev. Maybe they're going off in their own initiative But they have You know obviously a lot of motivation to keep going on this path and to really target something innovative that Hasn't existed before right? I mean we're talking about something that or we have no competition unfortunately Like it would be great if there is you know some precedent for this exact kind of philanthropic organization Um or funding agency, which is kind of we're kind of a hybrid, but We're not I mean there is no precedent and um, we can only look to sort of environmental You know other research organizations and see those two are successful on their own So why not create something that is sort of in the middle and that uses the logic of both, but you know actually create something new Does that answer your question now? In the short term, obviously you're just trying to raise a lot of money beyond that. Uh, what metrics do you think will be useful to evaluate? Um Your performance and sort of the success of how that money is being used by the research community First of all, we're not going to judge our own grant success by necessarily completely traditional means We will be looking at publications, of course, but we're also looking at the strength of people's communication plans with the public so, uh a unique part of our I guess funding structure is that we're going to be requiring all Groups that are funded by us to post youtube videos where they're explaining their work Which we think is going to be particularly effective in that you know You see this video explaining something cool that you've never even heard of and you see exactly where your dollar is going Right, you see this amazing work being done And you see the faces that are doing it and you have it explained to you in a way that no one has ever done before So I think just that Outcome is something that we view as success um, I'm not sure What other metrics we might be using apart from the traditional and that kind of untraditional adding on top, but um I mean to me the true success is are there groups like bb or even arpa e or You know other groups that really think about right now We have the science and then we're going to technology are those groups picking up the things that we do down the line Right, if they're not then I would view that as unsuccessful and that you know Nothing's really going anywhere. We're creating science that no one's using So if people are using it and actually creating successful companies, you know, maybe part online Maybe a decade from now then that success to me Does that answer your question great presentation? um first question I have Is what sort of like I imagine At the beginning at least you're going to have a smaller pool of funds than you would probably like How are you going to prioritize what technologies and what approaches you have for your funding applications? um, so we don't have any outright, you know, we're going to Really favor this technology over this technology We're generally thinking that we really want to target storage and transmission at at the beginning Because we see those as big areas where we could use as much money as possible, right? And I mean, but other than that we have no real, you know, if we had a great proposal That's talking about how to put solar cells past the max theoretical efficiency and we're like, oh man We've never seen anything like this before. That's a great idea. You know, that would of course be something we consider funding um So did you have another question in that and also like what is your funding target for this year and how close are you to it? yeah, so, um Our funding target for this year is somewhere between one and two million and The reason for that is that we want enough money to go through our initial our initial funding cycle Which will have smaller grants than what we eventually want to go to So this initial funding cycle would be somewhere between 50,000 and 150,000 Which would be more towards the side of, you know, you have this kind of something more towards You know a seed proposal for something that might actually become a technology like closer to that side as opposed to like really foundational science We'd be more willing to consider that But where we want to go is large grants somewhere around 300k where you're supporting maybe a graduate student for many years And they're able to see a project through from the beginning to the end um I mean, you don't really get breakthroughs without a lot of work, right? It's not like someone we all know that no one like runs down the hallway like shouting anything Um, they might do that if they're really angry, but now if they're really excited, right? So We understand that you need something really patient and long term and You know bv understands that but they're just doing it further down the pipeline and we also understand understand that we're just applying it to research Um, so that's that's really the size of things that we want to go. So if we were Just for our funding around this year, um We are looking at between six and ten grants. So it would be very small But everything if you're thinking about down the road, we definitely want to be reaching that level of, um Coming close to matching our current budget, which is about a billion dollars And as I was saying earlier that is really in the scope of things One dollar a month from everyone who is already in the choir, right? So that doesn't seem like an insurmountable goal Especially when people are already looking for somewhere to put their money and already already caring. They just have no idea how to help the problem So a great venture and thank you for the presentation. I have a question So you're trying to balance open innovation and fostering really, you know, like Groundbreaking research How how do you see that you'll be able to balance this out with ip concerned? Especially, I mean, so, you know for donors you will need to publicize and You will need to kind of show a result of sort, but then Sometimes pretty serious ip consideration. Absolutely. Absolutely. So we've been in talks with ip lawyers And i've been talking to many people about whether it's even worth chasing down ip and we see it as you know down the road It might be worth it to to to claim the ip some portion of the ip And it's a little bit easier when you're in the foundational research side of things because You know that you don't have such a line of sight to a technology, right? No one's fighting over the next product on the market because they don't know that what's going to happen five years from now There's going to be a little easier for us to claim it but a little harder for us to fight it down the road So it might be worth it and it might be worth it in terms of certain investors that we might want to approach But it's not something that is built into our structure right now So we just care about getting the research done. We care about getting the research done Such that someday someone can make a wide variety of technologies and we don't care at this point You know how that happens We don't you know We don't care about retaining rights at this exact moment unless it helps us actually further our goal in the future Like if that if that scales us from 10 million to 100 million then that's worth it to us But you know, we're really most concerned with getting that research done. Does it answer your question? um, we have some specific calls or say in a specific field like I mean even more narrow than you said transmission or storage or are you open to any kinds of proposals um, you're talking about um Can you elaborate on what you mean by narrow? Do you mean fields that don't fit into those umbrellas of generation storage or transmission or no, I mean I mean even that is It's an extremely wide field. Absolutely that the funding is just a couple million. So I was wondering if you're if you say every year you're targeting a certain more specific field where you have Calls open and where you can compare different proposals and I mean otherwise, it's kind of You you probably will overwhelm the amount of hopefully by the amount of proposals that you receive and it's hard to compare Completely different Yeah, so we might have some more targeted Calls proposals in the future. Our current one is pretty broad. So I mean We have example technologies under each of those umbrellas. So we recognize. I mean generation is out itself huge, right storage huge And we have you know examples under each of one of those like, you know Wind solar like whatever you might be interested in Submit a proposal, but we're saying, you know, we're not limited to that It can be whatever technology you might want at this point and our filtering mechanism is really in our Our proposal review process, which is that we're starting with like a merit review where We're going to just kind of have a quantitative measure of you know Should this proposal go on to the next level but then pass that then have grant officers look at you know the best maybe some of the not so well reviewed proposals because proposals that are truly innovative tend to have one person who He's really excited about the proposals I could tell One person who really hates the idea, right? I mean if you're doing something really groundbreaking And there's something to be like no, that's a terrible idea and we're bring we're building a structure where someone can say Oh, no, this person this person got maybe a couple bad reviews But I think this is a really good idea. Let's fund it and we're bringing out experts in all these different fields such that in the future Say we want to do a proposal just about behavioral You know economics of energy use where we want to do a proposal just about breaking the shaft with wise relevant They'll have someone right there to help us craft that kind of call for proposals such that we'll really get the best possible ideas But we don't plan on narrowing it too far anytime soon. You mentioned that For the large part that emphasis will be on some of this fundamental breakthrough research But you also mentioned an interesting idea, which is rolling out Sort of the importance to the public with regard to like these youtube videos, for example And so I'm curious how much of that Because I suppose you could think of a scenario where there's a lot of research already out there that just hasn't necessarily been put in such a Way that the public sees it as extremely useful. Absolutely. Um, so how much of that is a fundamental shift in public perception I think how much of it? I mean Quantitatively, it's 90 percent. No, I think that a core part of our mission is fundamentally changing public perception of science, right? And that's partly why we're kind of aching for money at this point is because as scientists You know, there might be some isolated outreach programs, but we're not we don't have a concerted effort to really tell people about what we're doing Right. I mean we have You know, maybe some outreach to local schools or something that and that's great But it's like if you go to the average person on the street and you say, hey I do work on singlet fission and they'd be like that nuclear, you know You know, like what is that about even people in the in the energy world may not know exactly what i'm talking about And it's because there's this fundamental problem of we don't communicate what we do We don't tell people about this really these really cool things that we do such that they can't they can't help us Right if people don't know what you're doing they can't help you and if they don't know what your world looks like They can't help you and so yes, we are fundamentally trying to change how our community relates to the public Um And I think that that's really possible given current technologies and we're really thinking deeply about the kinds of platforms where that might be useful We're also thinking about how to change how the scientific community interacts with each other so other useful videos that we're going to try to Encourage our you know everyday videos where like, you know, we tried this experiment and then someone can see it and say Oh, we tried that experiment five years ago and it failed and here's here's the reason why and they're like, oh I had no idea, you know, sort of those conversations that Don't necessarily have a chance to happen because it's not a flashy successful result in the journal So we're trying to create a community where People can really have those discussions and be brought together in ways that they may not Otherwise be brought together and have conversations in strategic ways that maybe not haven't happened before like, you know in my field in particular I'll go to a conference and people will say The last question is about their very particular thing Well, you tried this transient absorption experiment and I've noticed that you've had these Effects that happen under these circumstances and you know, you answer questions like that But you don't answer questions like why can we not harvest triplets from single fission? Why do the why do these experiments not work? Why do these acceptors not work, right? Where do we need to go? What are you capable of and how what are my skills and how are they complementary? And how can we actually work together to solve a problem as opposed to Being like many points of a problem sort of coming together in a mishmash and hoping that something useful comes out so A lot of a lot of ways we have very broad goals, right and somebody isn't maybe met some of them not but I think merging them together into a funding agency is one that will actually incentivize them to happen Right if you have money, they will come right in some ways and that If people can be supported and their research can actually go places They couldn't go before then they might be incentivized to form communities They may not have formed before and communities with each other and communities with the public I have a follow-up on that if this all all e-fund is so new Within the realm of philanthropy or in funding research then why not restructure it as something completely new Why not say let's make it a Kickstarter model and every research team needs to compete for public dollars You need to be able to communicate your idea build a team That is well representative of those larger questions You're talking about that build the bridges and then let the public vote And in voting or being able to see what these different research projects are Are becoming more educated about this Why are we still talking about a traditional funding model for this idea of educating the public To then increase the amount of money for alternative energy projects. Yeah, that's a really good question. I guess I have Almost probably three answers. You'll have to keep keep me on track for exactly what part of your question I'm answering We do have we are setting up a mechanism where people can donate to particular projects if they're really passionate It's like oh someone really cares about hydrogen and they're like I want to Really donate to a hydrogen project. We'll give them a chance to do that, right? But the reason why it's not to do that is your overall model Is that the wisdom of crowds is not so wise, right? And we've seen that maybe in the last couple years And that people they'll they'll read an article and they'll You know, they'll be really excited and that's great But they won't necessarily have the viewpoint of the entire field and thinking about what's most useful for the scientific community And what will be most useful on the other side of things on the technological side So we want to definitely harness that excitement But not let it guide something that might be better guided by a community that lives in that space The reason why not to do a Kickstarter we debated we debated this pretty extensively And that you know, we want to have that excitement But we were advised that having that kind of campaign might limit the scope of what you're trying to do So if you ask people for $200,000 and you get it Then people will always think of you as that organization that needed to that $200,000 And maybe some larger donors or organizations might be turned away from that kind of psychology So it might have a good psychology for you know, maybe a thousand people But we're thinking on a much larger scale than that, which requires maybe a more Sophisticated marketing approach, which we've been trying to do with other kinds of digital advertising and stuff like that Was there a part of your question that I missed? Those are great answers. Um, I study crowdfunding. So that's why I ask awesome Because there are there are models in which you as the fund get to vet projects And so instead of putting up a thousand projects or you're screened by you You're already able to sort of guide the wisdom of the crowd Um, and so therefore the projects that you're putting up say if it's 20 30 projects Yeah, you then have a more targeted A set of projects for individuals to fund. Yeah, so to sort of get at your second point Um, and then the third point where you don't want an organization to be known just for that I would hope that they are known for that and then they can grow from that and So I hope that wouldn't be a limiting thing. I mean professors here are known for One thing but they've been able to branch out and do other things through collaborations And for them being known for that one thing other people are contacting them And they're able to grow that way and you know, I don't work in your field So it might be different but we like to think of ourselves, especially in civil engineering as interdisciplinary. Absolutely Yeah, I mean, we're definitely thinking in terms of collaborations and that's partly why We've been so careful about really launching this on a wide scale before having a broad coalition of people So we want to make sure we have people like you people who are, you know, maybe in the scientific community Maybe have some other kind of expertise also recruiting people in the business world in traditional nonprofit world Foundation world and making sure that we're thinking about this from all those kinds of separate angles And you know If if you made a good argument or a group of people made a good argument that overruled this other person that said No, that's a bad idea your organization will forever be known as 200k scale organization Then of course we'll learn from that, right? I mean we're the kind of organization where we can be adaptable and be flexible Um, and if there's a good reason to do that, we will we just we're thinking on a scale that I don't think many crowdfunding platforms have thought of so like for example with Kickstarter They're particularly good for a very specific product, right? You have this video and you sell people on something very specific you say I'm going to build this thing usually something concrete and if you help me do it then you'll get this kind of um Yeah, I'll show you give you a little token to show you that you participated in it and it's great Whereas we're selling something much more abstract. First of all, so it's going to be hard to say Um on a you know a Kickstarter, for example, hey, give us 20 dollars and we'll give you a really cool battery in 20 years You know and in a lot of ways that does um point towards You know, we need to be a little bit more clever with our crowdfunding model And that those traditional platforms might be a little traditional platforms I guess they're only recently traditional Um might not be quite the right approach, but there might be some angle of it that we haven't seen yet That might be a reason for why they would work, but that's that's our general thinking is like we're selling something more abstract and at the same time Concrete in a way that must be explained according to its own needs as opposed to as a product in the most traditional sense so kind of bring people to where bring people more to the Foundations space like they're thinking about all right. I give this dollar to cancer All right, I give this now. I'm going to give this dollar to climate change through energy research And have them thinking about it through that through that vein instead of We're going to create the most awesome battery anyone's ever seen in you know, whatever amount of time that takes Which hopefully we will do but We just have to be a little bit more circumspect So I actually had a quick one myself So it the your presentation like spoke a little bit about how you know trying to narrow the bounds of Your basic research and what kind of things you want to focus on Is you know, like in some ways, you know reduces reduces the Output or the impact of the output from you know, that entire research project But at the same time, you know, there is the name there is like a time There is like a time constraint on Putting out, you know, like you know these breakthrough energy technologies So I guess my question is how does all the planet, you know reconcile these two You know, these two like conflicting aims of promoting white basic research as well as sticking to the You know time constraint post-bike climate change That's a really good question because obviously we have what 10 years max to really start this research and almost end it in some ways Um I think it's sort of a paradoxical answer And that if you give people more space They will tend to give you the more directed outcomes just ones you may not expect so If you ask someone to create a much better Lithium battery and you say I need this in two years You'll get you might get a much better lithium battery in two years You probably will especially if you're Elon Musk or someone, right? But if you say I want to think about storage in a much different way I don't even necessarily need a battery. I just need something that will work on the scale that we're thinking Maybe it's going to be a flow battery. Maybe it's going to be something that You know, we don't even know at this point and you say We'll give you the resources to actually explore that space Maybe they'll create something that's a thousand times better than that lithium battery but You won't it serves taking your hands off the reins in order to get something that You may not completely understand to start with but May offer a much larger payoff than being more directed So in a way it is like you're trying to hit a sweet spot in terms of you know We need to have our proposals like this is a possible application in the Android world It can't just be like Oh, I want to create a clothing line and it's going to be great and it might be made of polymers or something You know like it has to be has some connection like we're trying to solve this big problem Here's a reason why you know this might do it But apart from that, I mean we truly believe that more space means more possibility of that direct outcome as opposed to I would really like that battery in two years. You know, we think that's much more useful And I guess in terms of that balance we're skewing more towards Space and more towards actual exploration Which I think we all understand is really the scientific endeavor right is to And the best things happen when we have accidents or something weird happens and we're like, oh Why did that weird thing happen? Let's chase that down or that was exactly the opposite of what I expected would happen That's really interesting frustrating, but interesting. Let's go check that down and that's where a lot of great discoveries happen And we're trying to learn from that All right, uh In that case, uh, we can wrap up. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you all for coming. I appreciate it