this is boom bust broadcasting around the world and covering the world of business and finance and the impact upon you welcome aboard i'm bart chilton we are boom bust to get out from boston massachusetts from the boston city hall right behind me at the forbes under thirty summit we're full of action full of excitement and a lot of great stuff coming to you right now. and to start us off what is the forbes under thirty summit here in boston well it's

an amazing thing lots of energy and are going to cover all sorts of issues we see the smart home conference is taking place here i'm actually speaking tomorrow at one of the crypto events an oxford style debate but great things coming up artificial intelligence machine learning robots we love them from robots and drawings and then tech finance in general crypto currencies e-commerce green technology science and space plus entertainment music sports even style lots of cup things coming up but first of all we're going to head back down to washington to boom bust own daniel brito for a few headlines daniel. thanks part mexico canada in the united states agreed on a draft revision of the north american free trade agreement on sunday just short of a deadline imposed by the trump and ministration. the trump white house reportedly

hopes for a vote on the treaty updated an updated tree in this congress but many legislators doubt that a vote before twenty one nine hundred will be feasible the new tax has planks to please all sides including measures to bring more car production to the u.s. and mexico and canadian concessions on dairy issues for the u.s. side to tout canada's negotiators for their part succeeded in preserving the text of nafta chapter chapter nineteen which governs extrajudicial disputes settlements finally the remain the deal is renamed the us mexico canada agreements and also involves u.s. pledges to not hit canadian audio imports with new tariffs it's unclear though how much canada can rely on those pledges pledges given that the u.s. also says the question of whether new metals terus from the u.s. will apply to canada and that will be settled on a separate diplomatic track. tesla c.e.o. elon musk is no longer the chairman of the board of the company he helped to found

in two thousand and four mr musk agreed to resign and as chairman and other conditions in order to settle a lawsuit by the u.s. securities and exchange commission or f c c into possible securities fraud the f.c.c. opened their investigation last week into tweets musk sent in august about taking the company private if and when the stock price reached four hundred twenty dollars musk tweets were apparently aimed at harming short sellers of tesla stock mr musk will remain as chief executive at tesla and the company has effectively built its brand around the erratic south african billionaire it is unclear whether the tesla board will step in to check mosques impulsive behavior as seems to be inviting them to do or whether tesla can survive without musk's celebrity aura. and we are here at the forbes under thirty summit in boston and we're pleased to be

joined by steve the lensing who is the c.e.o. of growers he's out of north carolina and boy what he's doing is interesting race combining technology and agriculture stephen welcome welcome to boom bust thanks for having me and stephen how do you merge agriculture and technology what's your secret sauce so we hire a company that takes all the data that's being generated on the farm whether it be from machinery or something some soil sensors that we're mapping so we're all across the country and we're a couple now with a platform that we've built that analyzes all of that data and the soil that it came from to make recommendations really on how to personalize the place seed and fertilizer what inspired you to just to do this so i grew up farming in south dakota and then when i went to school in north carolina state university and while i was there started a soil testing laboratory that right there was just a a business opportunity to get into the private solar water testing space and it was

there that i realized there's a better way to make recommendations on fertilizer if you can actually use and understand the data that's coming from the farm where the soil is placed so we developed a new way that kind of reinvented sole fertility recommendations and essentially rewrote the agronomy handbook using a farmer's own data as opposed to the traditional method which is you know universities and you know kind of independent researchers which is based on really small plot data we essentially turn the entire world and that's why and when we talk about what you're doing it of course reduces the amount of inputs whether or not it's purpose side pesticides it makes it more efficient effective use of the soil but it should also result in. greater yield so right yes so the key word really is optimization and so we you know we think that farmers are just like you know human beings where we all overcompensate for a lack of information. and the data that we're you know pulling out from the farm

in the delivery into regulations been historically unavailable to its fragmented it's hard to analyze it's hard to view hard to aggregate if we can do that it helps them optimize literally everything that they apply on the farm which includes you know capital to so not only optimizing capital resources but also seed and fertilizer and chemicals as well and so when you do that you profitability is a very nice byproduct of better optimisation of resources the entire planet is full of soil so theoretically you know you could do this on a lot of places around the world where they are are forming right that's correct so the unique thing about agriculture is like every plant that's grown on you know on earth requires the same sixteen you know micro and macro nutrients just the variation in the amounts is different so you know corn is corn whether it's planted in iowa or is central america and so our technology in our science applies and works just as well there as it does in the more you know water here it's just

a matter of the ease of how effectively and efficiently we can capture the data that becomes a challenge and more of the third world kind of countries in developing countries but it's getting a lot better what is it that you actually need to do what you need the technology do you need a big expensive piece of equipment either a tractor or combine and the supercomputer what do you do you so the technology and the equipment is you know housed in the or the technology has the equipment really is the limiting factor for the scaling of this type of product or service and that the new technology or the new equipment has been manufactured has all of just tons of sensors that are capturing all this information it's all tagged with this first you know precise latitude longitude location with the g.p.s. you know absent that information you start to have a much. bigger you know more of a data set so it is a challenge but it is getting better but that cost is significant if it's you know if it's going to be that that that amount of money then i guess we have

a large corporate agriculture in the us we're moving more towards that for better or worse but a.d.m. and cargill bunky eccentric but by the same token you know i can see where perhaps non-governmental organizations or others might pool resources and sort of have a co-op to afford this more expensive equipment and then bid us for perhaps you're right. it could be substantially more so i mean just a an average you know grain combine this year you know with the new input a new header on a you're probably looking upwards of four hundred fifty thousand dollars for a one piece of machinery that you only use you know two weeks out of the year. and you know the tractors the sprayers the planners they're all right you know right around that level you can you probably can even touch this type of technology for now if you had to start from scratch for less than a million dollars so you know you know as daunting as that may sound it's amazing you know how broadly adopted it's become you know and in some of these other other

regions but what are the major challenges that you have that are confronting you it initially it wasn't the challenge that the big problem in agriculture not a problem but the challenge for a business in agriculture is that it's very cyclical and that you only get one cycle per year right and so as we're developing products and technologies and iterate the new things you get to test one of those things per year and then you have to wait twelve months to figure out how effective and successful you were and so the adoption process in agriculture is by nature much much more slower than any consumer product where i can sell you something you can try and you can tell me if you like and then maybe buy a begin it just takes a long time and that's i think been one of our advantages in the space honestly is that we've been here for you know a plus years doing it there's been a lot of new and exciting technologies that have been. and you know brought into the ag tech space that we're competing with almost but. the history that we have in agriculture is really helping now kind of separate us from our competition now

steven you told me before we start started doing the interview that you were actually profitable and that is a different that a lot of the folks at the four hundred thirty summit here who are startups are looking for money and bravo for you to share as much as you're willing to share about how you're doing as a company yes so it's we started eight years ago so we've been at this for a while it's been you know pretty long hard slog been very fortunate to grow in scale you know in the past five to six years pretty significantly so we're thirty three people now headquartered in raleigh north carolina and we have a technology development office in seattle and then a few remote field offices in the south southeast and kind of southwest all right and last question what are your goals what are your challenges where do you see yourself going in the next few years here stephen so we we have raised a little bit of capital as we've kind of tried to do aggressively scale some of our technology products but one of the things that we did that really differentiate

ourselves was selling higher value products and so that helps you generate more revenue quicker but the catch is you have to be able to deliver high value so we've been really focused on delivering that high value experience high value results to the farmers and they're willing to pay for it that's the important part so if you can have you know keep your customers pleased and get them to continuously pay year over year that's the trick to you know generating a sustainable revenue. stephenville once and the c.e.o. of growers our north carolina thank you for what you're doing we wish you well with your company but we also wish you well because it'll help farmers and will help the environment and the planet thank you stephen good luck. good stuff from boston but stay tuned because when we come back we'll take things back to being. in town to take a look at the event with christiane and then we explore explore the fascinating world of what could be a huge breakthrough in the health industry and as we go to break here are the numbers at the closing bell.

what politicians do. they put themselves on the line to get accepted or rejected. so when you want to be president. some want to. have to go on to be pros this is what the four three in the morning can't be good. i'm interested always in the waters about how. to. join me every thursday on the alex i'm unsure when i'll be speaking to a guest of the world of politics or business i'm show business i'll see you then.

welcome back the irish data protection commission or d p c as we move in to investigate last week's massive data breach at facebook a spokesperson for the d.p.c. said in a statement on saturday that the commission is concerned about the delay between discovery of the breach on tuesday and public disclosure from facebook on friday the d.p.c. also says it is concerned about facebook's failure to clarify the. nature of the breach and the risk for users at this point the d p c's official inquiry under authority of the european union's general data protection regulation could result in fines of up to four percent of facebook's net global revenues that formula would

yield a fine in this case of just over one point six billion dollars as first reported by the wall street journal. and now we take you from washington back to boston to catch up with bart and the boom bust team bart what's the energy like there right now. to get daniel it is super exciting here all the entrepreneur is the venture capitalist lots of folks we've got senator flake from washington governor k. six from ohio even the mood she was here earlier watts of things taking place but it just got a lot more exciting right here where i'm standing because we're joined by christiane counterpart of our own finance expert christy i was not able to stay up as late as others last night i know there were some great acts on the main stage there you were here tell us about it as we had hard to make a very special appearance for us last night i was super exciting but also the start

of right behind me that's actually where a lot of the action is taking place there are a ton of new thought leaders coming into this space right now and i was able to go to the start of how to check out a lot of the new companies that are emerging there is maggie who is started up next the nitty tack and she's doing amazing things with b r n a r technology helping people with mental illnesses and disorders so what they're trying to do is make suicide prevention a thing of the past so they're taking that into the hands of technology and so there's also no bank as well banking the unbanked they're doing some very cool stuff with zero payments as well and disrupting the entire banking and can take in this story and as well as a ton of new blocking technology companies as well america in this case and that getting to the bank with no fees is one of the attributes that you and i talk about a lot of the attributes of crypto by. they're doing without crypto right and they're doing some partnerships with crypto and with master card as well but that's those are features that are coming up we've got to get we've got to get people back and finally what are you looking forward to coming up in the future here well we

have jeremy alair right now the c.e.o. of circle he's going to be talking about the new stable point that he actually just launched in the u.s. d.c. so they just launched in last month actually it was a very new feature that he's trying to disrupt there which as we know has a very questionable reputation very excited to see what he has to say about that and then we also have the co-founder and c.e.o. x. that's a point that i've been following for years now the co-founders zero x. is coming to speak and he's going to mean debuting his zero x. point which is going to be an open source protocol for the decentralized exchange and that's one of the things you mention tethered but there really needs to be a stable stable coin and we don't have a really great one out there a lot of people are looking waterproof those are looking for sort of a benchmark so that's pretty important isn't it yeah absolutely so right now they have a consortium behind this new stable point that is supposed to be backing and acting as a regulator they're saying that they're going to be completely deaf and then us details there as they're going to be opening their entire books to the auditors and being

very transparent about it so we'll see if that holds all of that adding to the excitement here at the ports under thirty seven good to have you here great to be here with you so exciting and we've got more coming up right now including a fellow i met yesterday who may have a way at least in theory to cure cancer that's coming to you right now. and we're pleased to be joined by andrea watson who is the founder and c.e.o. of why gandalf now you're not going to believe this but this is a guy who was telling you about earlier that i was speaking with him yesterday and he may have at least a theoretical way to cure cancer at least the. mechanism to go about that andre welcome you. under give us the one hundred thousand foot overview of what you're doing it like gamble so we're developing sheen their b.s.

and that is really something that traditionally the fields of medicine have struggled to deliver on. we literally build delivery systems so we figure out how to target specific cells tissues organs and genetically or program that in other words there are sort of these molecular zip codes of each cell type in your body and having something unique about it and we figure out how to be the facts and the amazon. of that delivery coupling our delivery systems to tools like crisper which have recently had a lot of fame for their ability to do gene auditing so we're really the first company that couple's a gene out of the school with a cell specific targeting technology allowing us to reprogram at will various cellular behaviors so some of the first things that we're doing are developing immunotherapies where we can target which are a type of a million cell in your blood and tell them to attack different cancer markers so

this is actually a pretty mature field and as of two thousand and seventeen have artists had their first drug approved in the u.s. for a gene therapy that is actually being applied for m you know therapy and treating a form of leukemia where you can target a specific marker on the leukemic cells by reprogramming immune cells to attack that the problem is that it's really expensive it costs about two hundred seventy k. or something in that range for these companies for their cost of goods to manufacture those therapies and we think we can drop that by a least ten x. by replacing the need for viruses with non viral technology that is very rapidly tunable and precise all right and go a little bit deeper now i mean how do you actually do that. so all cells have receptors receptors are these proteins that are on the membrane of the cell hanging out on the outside for different molecules to bind to so for example many people

are familiar with sara tonin serotonin has sarasota receptors so extending that idea if you know that a neuron has a given set of receptors and an immune cell has a given set of receptors those are two not necessarily overlapped so if you know what the receptors are you can design a law against that bind to the receptors hence the name of our company like kendall what we figured out is that we can take these law against bites of the receptors and couple them to the gene therapy or gene not to think when they bind to the cell in the form of these particles sticking to a cell just for scale and you know particle is around one hundred nanometers a cell is anywhere between ten thousand and one hundred thousand and eight meters so the nanoparticle which is small sticks to the receptors in the cell starts pulling it in and actively transporting it into itself it's almost like how a virus works but we don't use fire allegedly mechanisms and you know you mentioned leukemia but. viruses too right so with this this could be

a pretty important deal i mean to give you an example if you want to make someone either immune to or resistant to an existing infection of a shiv there are known ways to do that so there are actual viral entry mechanisms that use this bias of this receptor for example called c c r five and it was discovered that in people who are resistant to hiv they have a mutation in their receptor so you can actually create that mutation in your blood cells and your immune cells to confer that resistance just as an example of how you would treat so there are various companies that are trying to basically cut out the viral genes from these cells right but ultimately it needs to livery in order to see. see andrea what your background what inspired you to to do this so i'm a biomedical engineer with a background in by material science in nanomaterials really when i was studying at

r.p.i. which is polytechnic university in new york i stumbled on really drug and gene delivery as a specific subset of bioengineering that i wanted to focus on so i started looking for different projects that would make sense and i found this lab that had early gene had a thing school that was a precursor to chris for which was quite an effective tool that needed to be delivered and we had these mouse models of bone fertility so my task for next year is became how do i build a delivery system for that because looking around at the literature there were two publications on gene editing nanoparticles and they were getting zero point four percent efficiency so we ended up creating i have the first that was ever filed on delivering a guided nucleus which is a gene anything school that has a guide component for binding to a specific side of the genome performing a cots basically packaging those tools in some manner of particles it was also the first patent that ever spoke about cells specifically targeting a chance at it so that was kind of the basis of me deciding to buy

a one way ticket to san francisco and i raise money for our company and i've been working on that for five years now money is always a problem for start ups at least most of them yours is pretty complicated to be you know pitching to angel investors or capitalists how's the business going forward so far how's the money raised about seventy percent of our money we've raised about four million to about seventy percent of it has been from high net worth individuals a lot of founders and multibillion dollar companies people in different industries the other thirty percent is from venture capital but more social impact here than funds so what we've really encountered in the venture capital community is that you kind of out. this rift you have your you know maybe typical silicon valley is who want quick access and then you have your more traditionalist boston biotech p.c.'s and so the really the middle ground of that is a harder territory to navigate that at the same time is necessary to navigate to

build a sustainable business in an industry where typically people do maybe one or two product plays and then once your product hits the clinic it's all about let's push that through because that's going to be a multibillion dollar drug if it works ten fifteen years later well that's the old model of biotech and pharma i think the new model we see a lot more platform technologies like crisper like gene editing like are any therapies for transients genetic reprogramming and those those technologies can be applied to a lot of things because it's literally genetic codes so you have to question where can i deliver that genetic code to you in terms of a cell type and then what are the addressable diseases that come about from that so i think the industry doesn't really know how to think about platforms yet because it's still very vertical and we want to figure out how to do things that are vertical but still have this opportunity to really you know that analogy of the amazon of the facts of creating safe codes and being able to ship to them right now

people can ship to the liver and they can deliver to some cells aside your body and a couple of other things but there isn't really a broadly addressable way to make sheen therapies three different specific applications that you mention that this could cost two hundred seventy thousand dollars but you could reduce it by ten fold to twenty seven hundred and i think you were telling me last time we spoke that in the u.k. for example they rejected that even at least for certain people explain that a little bit more yeah so i mean specifically i should mention that that is their cost of goods they price the drug for seventy k. and so when i say ten x. reduction in cost of goods you know that's a perspective statement for what i believe we can achieve realistically i want to see this be you know pennies on the dollar and. gene therapy to be so inexpensive inaccessible that it can be a globally accessible technology right but with that said the rich really the barriers are that in the u.k. they decided that this drug called primary which is a t.

cell immunotherapy for treating leukemia they decided that if you're under twenty five you can get it if you're over twenty five you can't i believe that will lead us to take on that in the u.s. novartis had trouble reaching their margins so i believe they made one hundred seventy million or so in their first year of selling the drug for the first eight months and they're pricing it for seventy so if you consider how many people how well he made how many people could be getting that drug it's really not reaching the people and the reason is because it takes three to six weeks of manufacturers' technology you have to manufacture viruses that are specific to the edits you want to perform separately from growing the cells for your own body meanwhile you're dying from cancer and so if you can make that turnaround time shorter and make the technology to double enough that you can really customize why you're programming cheaply and quickly you suddenly have a much broader set of diseases that you can go after even within like reprogramming t. cells to go after cancer markers you don't eat can't talk to somebody like yourself

andre and not think you know what a visionary you are what is a visionary is vision what are your goals for this thing i want to see this technology get to the point where you can go into a clinic have an unknown disorder of some kind that there will be some biopsy and you'll figure out precisely what is molecularly wrong with the tissue or organ of interest so you will have sequencing you'll have proteomics you will actually fully profile that cell they will say this is what's wrong if we could fix this it wouldn't be wrong and then in a day maybe a week we design something that's hard. very precisely and delivers one or more or a dozen different genetic reprogramming instructions that. generate that tissue organ and so that goes well beyond just single genetic diseases and you know therapy isn't really extends into regenerative medicine and aging as a disease is well under have never met anybody and hopefully i will in the future

but i've never met anybody who has a delivery guided nucleus thank you so much for the forward thinking and what you're doing that's andre watson the founder and c.e.o. of y. gandel thanks andre. that's it for this time thank you for being on board we sure had fun we're going to be doing more of it the coming days but always catch boom bust on direct t.v. channel three twenty one dish network channel two eighty or streaming twenty four seven on pluto t.v. that's the free t.v. app channel one thirty two or you can catch us always at youtube dot com slash boom bust r.t. so long for now.

that up to they should have made a push over on this if not to the month of the instance of indians and by all means we can be you know plotting even you know a little and even. committing crime laws to say is a national rule of the said can sell out of its six he has few months and again also a lot of principals and patties. as

washington could be open to talks with. a commander of the group who rejects the possibility of any negotiation. doesn't want to negotiate with the americans and has never wanted this and. never gave permission to any member to negotiate on their behalf. iran says it has launched missiles against. responsible for last month's deadly military iran.