 I'm like super intimidated coming here, and after Rich's presentation, I'm really, really intimidated now. Yeah, you can see we're a snarling bunch. No, no, no, no. But Rich, I have to say, I thought you were going to get into tokenizing eco shards, and then we really have come full circle, because then all this mining will be doing something good, but that would have been like the, you know, figure out how to use blockchain and in solving, in saving the world rather than wasting all this energy. And you were just, you were just getting good, so thank you for that. I think I was the last class at Stanford that learned FORTRAN, so that might have been. Hey, well yeah, go back to the beginning a little bit. Sure. How did you get started? You know, thanks for having me here. This was really incredible, the energy, and the love, I think, we all have for the natural capital project is palpable, and I think a lot of it is, a lot of you doing the hard work, but I feel like we are on this cusp of using technology and using data to in some way solve all the problems that humans have created, and hopefully we can solve it through the technology. But I was born in Taiwan, and when I grew up in the 70s, it was heavily polluted. It was a place where there was a lot of industry. I don't remember seeing the sun very often. I had asthma probably from the pollution, and then I moved to California. And in the early 80s, and you just remember seeing the blue skies, seeing the sun, and I feel like I lived outside all the time. And I think that growing up in Taiwan, coming to the U.S., and then eventually going back to Taiwan, especially nowadays, the industry is gone, and Taiwan has come back to being what the Portuguese call Formosa, which is this beautiful island. And you see how much change that human progress can pollute a place, but also how much you can restore it if you put your mind to it. And maybe that's the beginning of my, and again, I'm not a professional in the environmental sciences or I'm not a professional in the climate, but I feel like my roots have taught me a bit of the cycle, and my wife Akiko, where we both, as we have thought about what we can do for Stanford, is, she grew up in Costa Rica, and so similar, you know, similar, what is similar about it? Well, I guess it's green, and beautiful, and very bio-diverse, but we probably have the same sort of affection for nature and environment and diversity, and I think that was a big part of our wanting to be part of the environment and energy community, if you will. And that was, I think, started 10 years ago, where the building we helped name in the Science and Engineering Squad, Y2E2, as it's affectionately called, started and being part of that building, but also being part of seeing what's happening in the work that's done there in a very, very interdisciplinary, in a very, very multifunctional way. And I thought that was unique, and I know you were a big part of that. So it's hard to believe it's been 10 years, but that's a... Yeah, that was a huge moment, actually. The first real home on campus at a major university for highly interdisciplinary, kind of cross-cultural, cross-the-world work. And yeah, that's what this community here is. I think we're at at least 40 countries represented among those attending the meeting, and I know we're working in many more countries than that across the world together. And just thinking about your own path and how did you get into so much kind of international work? What was the path? And are there lessons, maybe, in your business experience or other life experience in approaching like what we have? We're just very entrepreneurial people, but coming together in teams from a lot of different backgrounds. Just sort of the academic side, but as Rich is laying out with real decision makers in industry and government and communities, how does all your experience kind of translate to what we're up to? I don't know if it's experience, but certainly my observation is, you know, my experience with starting Yahoo, which was done in a corner of the science, you know, sort of the engineering building in the trailer. It was instantly global. Within months of 1994, we had visitors from 190 different countries, and this was just really early days. It was still a lot of researchers, a lot of people who are using internet for development purposes and not for commercial. And so this power of being very open quickly and the power of having accessible internet to information that, you know, I think always theoretically was in our heads, but to see it actually happening and flowering was quite incredible. And I think, you know, it's been 20, almost 25 years since sort of the web started, and maybe longer, 20, almost 30 years, that power is now really manifests itself in multiple dimensions. And the most notably is the cloud, the evolution of the cloud. And but the same principle of putting tools and analytics and potential system making into the hands of people who are closest to the problems and closest to the solutions is not unlike when people were able to publish information first hand. So when you build a website, you can, you know, the protocol allows you to be able to publish it once and then have everybody else in the world see it. That is the way you intended to see it. So it's still very similar in that I think so much of the entrepreneurial activity starts and ends with being able to have those tools being available and the data that is, you know, as we all know, it's garbage and garbage out. You put bad data in, you're going to get bad data out. But if you can really have a source of truth and if you really have a high quality standard of being able to avail these tools into people's hands, I think that decentralized, open, accessible nature can be a real benefit. And we've seen some of this, obviously, in Silicon Valley here in entrepreneurship, you know, people really have gone from starting businesses where, you know, when we started Yahoo, you know, we had to figure out, we had to go build a data center, we had to go servers, we had to do things that today I would say most of the entrepreneurs that are starting companies now basically get to AWS account and work on their laptops and sit in cafes and, actually, sounds like a pretty good lifestyle. But it's because all the tools they need, a lot of the tools they need are now abstracted away from them having to do it themselves, so there's been this whole ecosystem developed. And one of the parallels, if you will, with conservation is Akiko is a, my wife is a founder of a conservation network and it's called Wildlife Conservation Network and it started about 15 years ago and it really tries to encourage conservationists and these are conservationists around the world that are saving a certain species. It could be cheetahs in Botswana or snow leopards in the Himalayas. And so they try to find sort of top species that affects the entire sort of ecosystem around them and they really use this metaphor of trying to empower these conservationists as entrepreneurs, try to give them tools, try to give them know-how, try to give them networking. So rather than these conservationists are working in Zimbabwe trying to save, you know, painted wild dogs by themselves, they have this vast network of colleagues, of resources and what we've seen over the 15 years where we get them together once or twice a year where we give them expertise or experts so they can have an ability to access them is that these entrepreneurs, entrepreneur conservationists, but they're really entrepreneurs, take advantage of technology, take advantage of their scrappiness, they figure out how to negotiate with ranchers, they figure out how to deal with poachers and so you see the resourcefulness that happens when you're able to encourage the entrepreneurial spirit which I think is in all of us, but the real breakthrough has been availing them with tools and resources and I think we're just in the beginning of that, right? So I think the natural capital project and especially the emergence of software enables people to be more entrepreneurial and to be more, you know, acting locally for the good rather than having some grand plan that have all come together in order to make something work. Yeah, let me ask you a little bit more about that and then we'll open up to some questions if people want to maybe stand by the mic. Or you can get rich to come back up and tell us the rest of that. Right. But yeah, we're just, it's really interesting. First of all, I'm so ignorant, I had no idea. I was going to ask you about scaling that within a few months you had all the world's countries knocking on your door. So how did you sort of scale so rapidly? And in the context of our own work, I'd say that over the past decade, I think we'd all say this, we've developed a lot of successful projects the way you're describing Akiko has through the Wildlife Conservation Network that really demonstrate the power of these approaches, linking to Emily's presentation, not only the science, but learning how to connect with people, how to listen really well, how to mainstream the thinking by blending our own kinds of thinking and ways of doing with those of the, you know, ultimately it's millions and then billions of people whom we aim to engage in this movement. But we're kind of at the stage of having pulled off a lot of impressive projects and now I'd say in terms of scaled China is on the cusp and actually up and over a bit and hopefully really driving to scale some of these approaches but what are your reflections there on the time it takes to, because it isn't just software like you're saying with Akiko's experience and what all is it that we need and how could we accelerate maybe the movement at this point where the software is one key piece? Well, so much of what you do is training and getting people who are not experts in the subject to be able to do something with the data and, you know, again the analogy is, you know, before the web, you had to be somewhat of a, you have to know enough to be able to get on the internet and publish something and be able to, you know, sort of like a gatekeeper whereas once the tools and once the practitioner part of it becomes, you know, any child that can publish stuff or kids are building websites in third or fourth grades now. So I think you have to continue to take this idea of not only training people to be practitioners and be able to be good contributors to this ecosystem but also continue to move the line so that people who are able to contribute to this overall, however you define the ecosystem, can do it more easily. I think I told you this but I was at a, I'm a golfer. I was at a golfing, it must have been a golf technology conference and there was a natural capital project person. Is that person here or somebody who's here, from Minnesota? Are you here? And I was totally blown away, right? Stand up, Eric. You were trying to use that. Stand up. Yeah. So, you know, and I know you had to like get people to understand the software. You had to spread the word. But to me, you know, there are probably ways in which now that people are saying, hey, you know what, we're going to try to figure out how we're going to remodel a golf course or how we're going to make it more sustainable or how we're going to make it less use, less resources. They can now turn to a natural capital project. So to me, it's having the right evangelist out there and the right training but over time really making it so easy and accessible to use. And the beauty about a data or a cloud-based system is that you can potentially see the network effect happen really, really quickly. And so I think the design and the design of the platform needs to be such that you want to encourage that flywheel to fly as fast as possible. Really good, inspiring answer. And who has a, who wants to join in the conversation? We've got a fantastic room full here. Let's not be shy. Jerry's a little bit shy. I'm shy. Rich. Okay, come on up. She works in the Y2E2 building. I do. Room 127. Stop by anytime. There you go. I have a question. Now you made me forget my question. Oh no, I know. I need some reassurance that the current administration is not going to be able to destroy the knowledge and science and data that's been created that is partially contributing to us being able to respond to the global environmental situation we find ourselves in. I would like that reassurance too. Yeah, we all need that. You know, I mean, I think given that there are 40 countries represented here, to me, you know, this is a, and I will try to stay away from being political, but obviously it feels like we're moving backwards in the United States as it relates to the kinds of things we need to do for our environment. And yet we're, I'm very encouraged to see that other parts of the world are really stepping it up. And I know... Tell us a bit about maybe your work in China. Well, it, and I do a little bit of work with the China branch of the Environmental Defense Fund and EDF, and I feel like there is this tremendous obvious problem they have in China that they need to fix. But I think that in turn has really translated to incredible amount of focus by the government on down and the private sector to really take money to try to make cities carbon neutral. They're taking some very active steps now. They're very ambitious. But to me, you know, it's one of these... You know, in contrast with what's going on in our country today, there's aggressive goal setting and then there is this aggressive multi-faceted strategy of trying to figure out how you're going to find the right solution. So it's not like they're not looking for one silver bullet. They're looking for multi ways of solving the problem. So I wish we can undo the things that are being done. But I fundamentally believe that people will want to do the right thing. And I fundamentally believe that places like Stanford and others that have invested long-term to solve these problems will ultimately prevail. But you know, these are storms that we have to weather. And hopefully your data is backed up somewhere. Thank you, Suki. Oh, Gail, come on up. When you started Yahoo, I imagine you didn't envision the world we have today where there's a lot of false data being put out on the Internet. And both false facts and information overload so that it can sometimes be hard to find or to tell the difference between something that might have validity or not. Do you have any thoughts for us who are kind of way early in that to help immunize us to some of that risk in the future? You know, it's, you know, this is broader than just the environmental problems. But you know, obviously the challenge is that we have, it's so hard to know who to trust on the Internet right now. And you know, we see it, certainly I have young kids similar to Natalie's age. And you know, just to see them trying to understand where to go that's trustworthy and where it's not to go that's trustworthy. You know, we read about the issues that Facebook and other social media sites are now facing. It's much more dangerous now than when we started, you know, 25 years ago because you know, so much of the Internet in the beginning was a, it was a place based on people's goodwill. It was presumed that you are a good actor and then we all help weed out the bad actor. And at some point I think in the last decade that kind of flipped where there is enough incentive for people to act badly that you really don't know who to trust anymore. So now we have this massive, you know, infrastructure that is being set up underneath what we all see to try to figure out who's right, who's wrong, who's the good actor, who's the bad actor. And it's probably just like bitcoins that are, it's a lot of resources wasted to try to counter, to outsmart each other because we don't trust each other anymore. And I think, and this is a broader set of problems that the society has, you know, everything from Snowden to the emergency of cryptocurrency where people want to live, you know, between, you know, not dependent on the US dollar or the Chinese R&B or whatever, they want to have currencies that can go anywhere outside of these countries or intra-country, what do they call it, intra-national, not international, it's intranational. And so I think this is an issue that's not only with information and news, it's going to be about, you know, how we trade, how we buy things. And there's going to be, you know, for all the good that algorithms do, there's going to be tons of algorithms that are going to try to subvert a lot of that. And so I'm probably not helping answer the question, I'm probably making it worse. But I do think that the, you know, there needs to be at some point a way of creating these communities on the Internet. And maybe it starts with something like this where the community here are all, you know, hopefully basically good actors trying to do good. And then if you start there, it's, and if you can keep it there, then it's a lot easier than to have an environment where you have a lot of opposing actors trying to gain advantage on each other. Because you essentially have an armed race trying to outsmart each other. And unfortunately that's what's happening sort of the broader in it. So you're seeing a lot more activity of people trying to find, you know, try to close off their community so they can protect themselves or have communities that they all can verify and trust the people that they deal with. And I'm sure that something new will come out in the next five years, something that always does. But for now it's a challenging environment. And, you know, it probably, you know, I think the most telling sign is every country now, you know, you have your army, Air Force, the Navy. And now, you know, either the fourth or the fifth branch of military is cyber. And people do believe that's a national security or a weapon that you have to use to fight wars. And when you have that mentality, I think it's a very different thing than what the internet was 25 years ago. Well, really good question. With no real answers. It's a tough one. We have to confront all these tough things. And we do so basically with trust at the forefront. I was going to ask you to say one more thing, maybe, and then we'll have a break. Just turning to the brighter side of all this, I really like to quote I found of yours on the internet. I don't know whether it's actually yours though. We have a trust of sorts right here. It's without rain. There is no life. Right. And I just wondered, okay, well, it might be yours. Yes. Did you say that? Well, you know, I think when I decided to do investing and I needed to come up with a name and it's really hard to follow coming over the name like Yahoo with something really clever. And so Akiko says, well, you know, why don't you do something that she actually didn't request it to be named after her. But she basically says, you know, do something that's familiar to you and that's based around people close to you. And so my daughter's names are Miki and Emi. And so it's Akiko, Miki, and Emi, so it's Aame. And so she's very happy. But then you have to kind of say, well, Aame, you know, it can mean candy or it can mean rain. And of course, I had a focus around investing in cloud-based companies. And so rain really, really fit that theme. And certainly if you even go back five or six years, all these cloud and big data companies and we really wanted our investments and our portfolio companies and our entrepreneurs really to think about how not to just create companies that are, that does something in the cloud but rather have an impact. And this idea of, you know, really rain brings life in the real physical world and we think obviously in cloud businesses bringing real impact is where we want to focus our attention. So that's my current chapter. I think that's a really nice metaphor. Yeah, it was fun. And a win-win in the family office. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I get to go to work and they're not angry at me. All right. Well, we want to thank you. Thank you for having me. Wonderful. Congratulations. I'm tremendously grateful. Thank you. Thank you.