as chief executive of 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 seems to be inviting them to do or whether tesla can survive without musk's celebrity. 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 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 they were 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 when i went to school at north carolina state university and while i was there i started a soil testing laboratory that right there was just 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 the farmer's own data as opposed to the traditional method which is you know universities and you know kind of depends.

researchers which is based on really small plot data we essentially turn the entire world into test walk and when we talk about what you're doing it of course reduces the amount of inputs whether or not it's purpose sides or pesticides it makes a 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 recantations been historically unavailable to it's 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 too 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 and our science applies it works just as well there as it does in the more you know water here it's just a matter of the ease of house actively innovation that we can capture the data and that becomes a challenge in 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. 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 u.s. 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 but whitman and then be able to use it in some of the places where they might not have the money of the u.s.

or perhaps you're right there as a big can be substantially more so i mean just a an average you know grain combine this year you know with the euro and put a new header on 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 couldn't 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 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 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 occurring. 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 it 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 eight plus years doing it there's been a lot of new and exciting technologies that have been 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 stephen you told me before we start started doing the interview that you were actually profitable and that is a different than a lot of the folks at the four hundred thirty summit here who are startups are looking for money 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 a you know pretty long hard slog and 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 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 sell a 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. generating sustainable revenue. stephen but once in 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 firemen 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 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. the way to the united states is dangerous for most of the illegal immigrants.

that's the simple i want to. put as many of them look for refuge in the so-called sentries sides of the drug used to share information about undocumented migrants with federal authorities. plan. to stay in the country with donald trump in the. a sit. up to the hole to. join me every thursday on the alex simon show and i'll be speaking to guest of the world of politics sports business i'm showbiz. i'll see you then.

something seems wrong when old rules just don't call. me. yet to stamp out disdain become agitated and engage with equals betrayal. when so many find themselves worlds apart. she says to look for common ground. so what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have it's crazy thing for him to let it be an arms race of his own spearing dramatic development only mostly i'm going to resist i don't see how that strategy will be successful very critical time time to sit down and talk.

you know world of big movies lot and conspiracy it's time to wake up to dig deeper to hit the stories that mainstream media refuses to tell. me to be smarter we need to stop slamming the door. and shouting past each other it's time for critical thinking it's time to fight for the middle for the truth the time is now we're watching closely watching the hawks. welcome back the irish data protection commission or d p c is willing 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 quote 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. 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 lots 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 and 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 a.v.m. arsenal make a very special appearance perhaps last night dallas super exciting but also the start of right behind me that. actually where a lot of the action is taking place there are a ton of new thought leaders coming into the 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 started up in a detached and she's doing amazing things with the r.n.a. our technology is helping people with mental illnesses and disorders so what they're trying to do is make suicide prevention a thing as a path so they're taking that into the hands of technology and so there's also

noble banks as well thanking the banks they're doing some very cool stuff with zero fees payments as well and disrupting the entire banking and tech industry as well as a ton of new blocking technology companies as well emerging in the space 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 but they're doing without crypto right so they're doing some partnerships with 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 a lier right now the c.e.o. of circle he's going to be talking about his new stable point that he actually just launched the u.s. p.c. so they just launch a last month actually so it's a very new feature he's trying to disrupt there which as we know has a very profitable reputation we're very excited to see what he has to say about that and then we also have the co-founder and zero x. that's a coin that i've been following for years now the co-founder of zero x.

is coming to speak and he's going to be debuting his zero x. point which is going to be an open source protocol for the decentralized exchanges so that's one of the things you mention tethered but there really needs to be a stable stable point 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 it and acting as a regulator saying that they're going to be completely different than us each other as they're going to be opening their entire books to the auditors and being very transparent about it so we'll see. all of that adding to the excitement here at the courts under thirty good to have you here great to be here with you. 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 i 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 are. under give us the one hundred thousand foot overview of what you're doing at like gamble so we're developing cian their b.s. and that is really something that traditionally the fields of medicine has struggled to deliver on. we literally build delivery systems so we figure out how to target specific cells tissues organs and genetically or program them in other words there are sort of these molecular zip codes of each cell type in your body 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 and you know therapies where we can target which are a type of the mean cell in your blood and tell them to attack different cancer markers so this is actually a pretty mature feel old. 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 to noble 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 or 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 sarah tone and 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 softer as to not necessarily overlap 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 log and bytes of the receptors and

couple them to the gene therapy or gene out of think when they find the cell in the form of these particles sticking to a cell so 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 like innocence and you know you mentioned leukemia but. viruses too right so 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. 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 under what your background what inspired you to do this so i'm a biomedical engineer with a background in by material science and 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 editing school that was a precursor to christopher 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 editing school that has a guide component for binding to a specific site 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. so that was kind of the basis of me deciding to buy one way tickets. 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 have 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 and you mentioned 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 i want 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 still make that turnaround time shorter and make the technology to double enough that you can really cost a mine is why you're programming cheaply and quickly you suddenly have a much broader set of diseases 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 a 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 regenerate that tissue organ and so that goes well beyond just single genetic diseases and then you know therapy isn't really extends into regenerative medicine and aging as a disease as well andrea had 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 andrea watson the founder and c.e.o. of like gandel thanks andrea. 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 in 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. kind of financial fun today with the money laundering first to visit this industry different. this is a good start well we have our three banks all set up here maybe something if you're something going to america something. cayman islands do all these banks are complicit in the. need to do some serious. ok let's see how we did while we got a nice watch for max and for stacy oh beautiful jewelry how about.

you know what money you want to hire. watch guys record. and it is a new school is a. church secret indeed catholic priests accused of sexually abusing children can get away with it quite literally i like to call this the geographic solution so what the bishop needs to do then he finds out that the priest is is a perpetrator is simply moves him to a different spot were the previous standards not known the highest ranks of the catholic church help conceal the accused priests from the police and justice so something that you know that's known as the end and then i think you'll hear that it is this is out and. it's.

you know world of big partisan lot and conspiracy it's time to wake up to dig deeper to hit the stories that mainstream media refuses to tell more than ever we need to be smarter we need to stop slamming the door on the bath and shouting past each other it's time for critical thinking it's time to fight for the middle for the truth the time is now for watching closely watching the hawks. ah ah. ah through.

me. nothing. civil war in africa's newest country claims close to four hundred thousand lives according to a u.s. funded report the question when is the initial support for south sudan gone also ahead. america's nato ambassador threatens a preemptive strike on russia to take out a missile stockpile accusing moscow of violating a major cold war era treaty. a struggle between empathy and law unfolds in italy as a pro refugee marries placed under house arrest for allegedly helping illegal immigrants. the people's republic of germany job a prominent conservative party politician in the u.k. is under fire after making that insensitive quip about libby.