- Welcome back everyone,
thanks for joining
and thank you to Mark Huang
for being here with us today.
Mark drove all the way down from Boston,
where he's just started a
new venture called SeaAhead.
So Mark, thank you for coming.
- My pleasure.
- Tell us a little bit about SeaAhead
and what it is and what it does.
- Sure, so SeaAhead, we're
about roughly one year old,
we incorporated as a benefit corporation,
so our mission is to catalyze
more venture-based innovation
tied, broadly defined,
to ocean sustainability,
so we've created a physical hub in Boston
as our first big step.
- Okay, so tell me a little
bit about how you got into this
and why, and I hear you've
used the words new economy
and blue economy and Bluetech a lot,
so break it all down for us.
- Sure, so on a personal
level, I was a naval architect,
marine engineering, probably
not a very good one,
in my younger years, left the waterfront
and spent, roughly, about 15
years working in Cleantech,
electric car batteries, renewable
energy, elegant lighting.
And with venture or business development,
you're always trying to figure out
what's coming around the
curve without a lot of data,
so timing, sometimes you're
off and sometimes you're lucky
and what's for sure, you
don't have a lot of data.
So our belief is that,
today, is this intersection
of entrepreneurialism and venture
and real business models
that have something to do
with ocean sustainability
are overlapping and
the opportunity is now,
so why do we believe that?
It's either because of market demand
or there's a regulatory component
and in the meantime, you have disruption,
a lot of it driven by tech,
every industry is facing the
challenges of technology,
opportunistic or disruption,
and you have rapidly declining
technology cost curves in other sectors.
So all those ingredients of an apple pie.
- Okay, so why the ocean?
What is an example of an
ocean sustainability venture?
Isn't it the same as Cleantech?
- Subtle differences and
that's why we think that,
or I mean not so subtle,
but we think there is
differences on approach,
some of it is also on focus.
So Cleantech, historically,
when it came to the water,
was focused on freshwater,
inland moving outward,
drought in California,
reducing water usage,
how to try and clean up some
of the water from fracking
and maybe out to the coast for
technologies on desalination
and as such, how to get
freshwater to people.
Bluetech starts with an
ocean-centric approach
and it moves inland, as
opposed to Cleantech,
so what does that mean?
There's a focus, it means
who are the counterparties,
the stakeholders,
the seafood industry is not
necessarily tied into Cleantech,
it's definitely part
of the Bluetech thesis,
as well as shipping and ports.
- So it's the marine ecosystem
and the human ecosystem
that goes around that's different.
- That's right and so,
first, I think the term,
it's why it's good to
have a different term,
because there are some
differences and approaches.
- Okay, and would you say you're
a first mover in this area?
I haven't heard any other venture funds
focusing on Bluetech,
I don't think I've ever
even heard the term (laughs).
- It is relatively new,
we weren't the first to come
up with the blue economy,
you'll see that in The
Economist and others,
Bluetech is a subset that refers
to the technology aspect of it.
You do have some venture funds
that are maybe focused
on sustainable fisheries,
you have some new funds
that are focused on the circular economy
and they'll touch maybe into seafood
or plastics, which could
result ending up in the ocean,
as we know, that's a big issue
and then of course, there's Cleantech
and advances in Cleantech
could apply to the water.
So you have some dedicated funds
in maybe some of the sub-sectors
and then you have, of course, the overlap.
We haven't raised our funds,
we believe that a dedicated approach,
holistically and broadly,
about the opportunities in Bluetech,
the global market can handle, should,
and there's opportunity
for a first-mover Bluetech,
dedicated Bluetech venture fund.
- So that's why you started
by creating this physical hub,
located in New England, based in Boston,
to bring together the
entrepreneurs, the scientists,
the shipping industry, et
cetera, catalyze new innovations
and then you'll raise
the fund to support them.
- That's right, that's
exactly what the plan is.
- Okay (laughs).
- And we've gotten to at good start.
The idea is that New England,
all the way down to the Hudson River,
New York City included,
a little farther as well,
New York all the way up to,
let's say, Portland, Maine,
is a very dense geographical
area, highly populated
with amazing resources that
have to do with Bluetech.
You have the tech venture,
New York City, Boston,
you have, Boston particularly,
in technology innovation,
is a leader in the world of robotics,
AI, life sciences, Cleantech.
And then, along the coast particularly,
you have an amazing density
of oceanography schools,
fisheries, aquaculture,
and the emerging offshore wind, shipping.
So all those siloed groups, so to speak,
is that we believe Boston, being
the capital of New England,
is a good hub for a hub and spoke vision
of a Bluetech cluster
where it's more creative.
Can we get the technology sector
to look more at new
sustainable fishery startups?
- Okay, so what are some examples
of the most exciting tech
innovations in this space?
- Sure,
so there's maybe four or
five deals we can talk about.
- Okay.
- Which shows
that there is activity,
they may not just be called Bluetech.
One is traceability, using digitization
for traceability on wild fisheries,
may or may not involve blockchain.
The other is what we see in
the land-based food industry,
it's just starting to be looked at
along our shellfish aquaculture
and as well as our
fisheries along the coast
and that's digitizing the supply chain,
sensors, better data for the oyster farmer
and then, how do you maybe use apps
to have these family-owned
farms get their product out
into the end market, into the
city, New York City or Boston.
'Cause those are examples
of what we've seen
in the land-based food sector
already in the last 10 years.
- So it sounds like it has a
lot to do with collecting data
on what's out there and where
and who's fishing or
collecting or selling it
and how that connects to the
end user and the consumer.
- That's one example, which is what--
- Or all three examples
have something to do
with measuring and tracing and everything.
- That's right and--
- Whether you're going to use
blockchain or not (laughs).
- That's a bit of a, I know,
it's a bit of a buzzword
on the venture world today,
but what we just described,
there's two to three startups
that we know, help or work with
that are looking to digitize part of that
and that's just a simple example.
So why this is exiting is
these are family-owned,
shellfish particularly
is very sustainable,
they clean the water, no escapement issues
and in the end, if some
of these business plans,
they're looking to make the efficiency
of that business process
of growing oysters
and distributing it more efficient,
so everybody wins.
- That's really promising,
because I feel like a lot
of tech-based ventures
and venture funds are
always going to leave out
those small family-owned businesses
and make them less relevant,
because they're not going to be players
in the new tech industries
and it seems like, if done right
and if done by the right people
who are conscious of
the fishing communities
or shellfish or oysters,
then you can do it in a way
that actually benefits them,
rather than makes them irrelevant.
- Yeah, that's very astute,
is the challenges going
forward is technology
and its disruption on the workforce.
And here is an example where, actually,
technology can empower the smaller farmer
and that just doesn't apply to shellfish,
that applies for land-based food as well.
So can technology help with smaller,
maybe family-owned farms, water or not,
get their product out?
Where historically you needed scale
and that's the power of maybe technology,
and that's an example where
technology might be able
to better empower the
producer and we as consumers.
- Yeah, I was just thinking
while you were talking
that, as a consumer and as
a public health scientist,
my main concern is making
sure that what I eat is clean
and that I know what's in my food
and I don't think that should be a luxury,
I think everyone should
be aloud to eat produce,
whether fish or chicken
or meat or vegetables,
that does not have chemicals in it
and that, these days, that's a luxury.
You have to go to Whole Foods
and pay a fortune, but it shouldn't be
and it's all about changing
the way the industry works
and I think that tracing
and transparency and data
can be a huge factor in holding
people accountable to that.
- That's right.
- And making it less costly
and more streamlined to build
those kinds of industries.
- That's right, so using the
land-based food analogy again,
to your point, is that the cost of that,
well, let me backup.
What you just described is
actually a real economic driver,
how you consume, similar
to me, multiply that out,
population-wise, the numbers are there,
the growth of more natural,
less processed food.
You see that in the stock market,
you see that in the venture
capital for food and ag,
so is that same consumer,
you and I, now going to make
those same consumer decisions
and questions on a seafood side
that's already being
made on land-based food?
I don't want, maybe necessarily,
drugs in my children's
milk or in my red meat
and do you ask the same about your shrimp?
- Yeah (laughs).
- Question, right?
And will you pay a so-called premium
if the fish you know has
been regulated heavily
and is sustainable and is
local and it's been well-caught
versus an imported fish from wherever.
- Which is going to have higher emissions,
because, like you mentioned
in class, for every one
of those huge tankers
that arrives at the port,
there's an 18-wheel truck
waiting to transport it
and then, there's low-income communities
living closer to the port
and it sounds like a
lot of the technologies
that your ventures might come up with
will help reduce those emissions too,
from shipping and from--
- That's right.
So a couple thoughts on that
is why we source more local food today
is it tends to be less processed
and many of us as consumers
say that we want to try and
keep the money in the community,
so question is, let's say New England,
where the water's very clean today
and our shellfish is doing very well
in a lot of the fisheries, as we consumers
are going to start making
that same decision, hopefully.
The other is on the other side of Bluetech
is green ports and green shipping,
which is what we refer to.
- Smart cities.
- And smart cities.
So their thesis, essentially,
is that there is technologies
already advancing rapidly
in other sister silos,
if that's a way to look
at it, or sister sectors,
so can you have a rugged,
that can handle seawater fouling sensor,
maybe the Navy has already developed that
in their lab and with an entrepreneur
and put a sensor for the oyster
farmer to get better data
or a sensor into the urban waterfront,
which has a lot of challenges,
because of the population density,
storm runoff, nitrates, pharmaceuticals
and then, the big one, coastal resiliency
and beginning should, at least,
try and collect some data
that a data scientist can
maybe start looking at
as we face that generational challenge
on coastal resiliency.
- I could talk to you all night, Mark,
this is really exciting,
all I'm going to say is
keep your eye on SeaAhead
or look ahead to SeaAhead,
I'm trying to find the one
(laughs) that goes here.
Thank you so much for coming
and sharing your work with my students
and we're really excited to
learn more about this sector,
about the blue economy and Bluetech
and all the exciting things
you're doing, thank you.
- Thank you very much
for having me, bye-bye.
