Oli Le Lievre 0:00
Hey Millie, we back evoke ag we've, we're towards the end of day one and I guess there's been a lot of different discussions, everything from Ai naturally it makes sense that that's a lot of focus on tech platforms. But let's get to know our next guest. And I need to tell you, Sam, I haven't said it many times Millie probably hasn't heard it, but I actually just got back from Japan myself.
Speaker 1 0:29
It's a place that you never know because he's never spoken about his holiday Japan.
Oli Le Lievre 0:34
went to Japan first time a couple of hours in Tokyo then to hack of escaping. Incredible
Unknown Speaker 0:39
do you make it your way down to Osaka or Kyoto?
Oli Le Lievre 0:41
I didn't say that.
Unknown Speaker 0:42
That's why I've got to get back next time.
Oli Le Lievre 0:46
Sam Lambert, you wanted to evoke ag fi to young leaders? You you'd already bit you actually calling Japan hot. So that's what we've got in common. I come on holiday where you go home?
Unknown Speaker 0:56
Yeah, it's weird. I grew up in Sydney. And then I studied for four years in Canberra. So I moved around a bit. And before that I was actually born in Hong Kong. So I've got a bit of a weird background born in Hong Kong. My mom's Japanese, moved to Japan for a few years and then moved to Sydney. And then yeah, I started a job and I thought I was going to be travelling heaps and then COVID Hit has stuck in my home and my apartment. And yeah, just I guess the curiosity got the better of me. And I moved,
Oli Le Lievre 1:24
Matt. So it's the first time we've met, like, tell me a little bit about your background. What did you study in Canberra? And where did it take you to? I
Unknown Speaker 1:31
think more interesting start is in high school, like I grew up, basically playing music my whole life. So I think I started playing piano from the age of four or five, got my diplomas for that, like quite young. And then I was on a music scholarship at a school in Sydney, playing the oboe, nice to just play oboe and make reads. That was my life. Basically, I did that did a bunch of rock climbing as a kid. And, and I wanted to become a professional Opus for a long time. And then, you know, being a professional classical musician is somewhat limiting, I thought, and I sort of saw the struggles of the teachers and the musicians I knew. And I figured I need to take a bit of a different step change and found my way to Canberra. So I studied economics and statistics there. And slightly slightly different. Yeah, a bit different. And it's quite funny. So I don't even think I was that good at math like I did. I did the harder maths courses, I think as a high school student, but I was never really good at I just played music. And I liked geography.
Oli Le Lievre 2:32
Do you still play music now?
Unknown Speaker 2:34
A little bit like I play the piano a fair bit more. But being an oboist is hard, like you have to make reads. And you really get the most out of it when you're playing in an orchestra. And when you're travelling around and as an adult living a life where you have different responsibilities. It's hard to stay committed to that. So I still play from time to time, but not probably enough to
Speaker 1 2:56
jump in here. I'm musically challenged. I think that two of us I think this will be relatable for the audience as well.
Unknown Speaker 3:01
What is Obrist?
Oli Le Lievre 3:03
Oboe, oboe, so oboist is a musical instrument.
Unknown Speaker 3:06
I'm asking you, yes. Yes or no in a classical orchestra, you have the like, behind the strings, basically of the wind section. And in the wind section, you have oboes and you have flutes and
Oli Le Lievre 3:19
yeah, instrument. Yeah, that's
Unknown Speaker 3:20
right. So an oboe. It's long has a Yeah, it looks like a clarinet. I feel like everyone knows what clarinet looks like I do not. Unlike a clarinet or saxophone, which has one single read, an oboe has to read. So there's a quite elaborate process of making this stuff. I became a bit of a craftsman you know as as a kid. So
Oli Le Lievre 3:40
while we're on the topic of oboes, because this is something I'm actually just curious about. Yeah. When you say you make a read Yeah, like how I'm What do is read made out of so
Unknown Speaker 3:50
a rich mind into this, I still know the dimensions and the gauge don't get too technical. For us. It's just bamboo. Bamboo, and it's a resonate as you blow through it. And you you basically have to scrape it with a knife to get it to a certain thickness so that you can resonate properly.
Speaker 1 4:10
to it really. And so how have you gone from this? This is so artistic, like classical music, rock climbing, economics, and now you're in ag tech. I feel like we've missed something. What has been the journey to get you here? Well, I think
Unknown Speaker 4:23
I think if I really look back at it, like it's just like a love for learning, I think like a curiosity about the world, but also the discipline to back it up. So like if you think about my music background, and then my my studies like they may seem like quite different from one another. But all behind that there was always this discipline and sort of curiosity about things so and I think it really came out during uni I was being mentored by a guy called Bob Gregory. He's quite a well known Australian economist. Him and another guy called Bruce Chapman actually helped create hex, so
Oli Le Lievre 4:57
then take that loan programme. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 4:58
undergrad student loan programme, they came up with this stuff. So
Oli Le Lievre 5:02
it'll literally have my future in the palm of their hands.
Unknown Speaker 5:06
But so so many millions of Australians benefit from this. And I got the study under this guy used to have coffee with him basically, once or twice a week, he invited me to always postgraduates classes, like I'm an 18 year old at this point. And when I speak to other students, like they never got that type of mentorship or experience, and I just spent time with him. And he just taught me so much about learning, asking the right questions. And he told me, you're probably not suited to go to academia. So I took a different path. And I went to consulting and I became interested in technology. And then yet one thing led to another and I found myself in the commodity space. Well,
Oli Le Lievre 5:45
I love asking this question to people, what would you say you genuinely and truly passionate about?
Unknown Speaker 5:51
So I think my superpower is curiosity. That's it good. I just have learning things. And I saw my brother about today. But we're quite specific in terms of our curiosities around things like I find every single thing. Interesting. But when I do I become addicted basically. And I, I love learning as much as I can. And then part of it is just like trying to figure out how it all connects together, right? Like a lot of people are very specific in the skill set they have or the interests that they have. But because I find lots of different things quite interesting. Just bring it all together. It's quite interesting. quite magical, I think.
Oli Le Lievre 6:26
And you've got me now because I'm quite curious on this. This is like an intervention. Now. When hasn't that served you?
Unknown Speaker 6:34
Yeah. So for a long time, I thought it was a bad thing, right? Because I get bored really easily. Like one of the reasons I actually left my corporate job because I missed out on it. But I got bored. I get really bored easily. So like, but when I really find something I find passionate, that that just keeps going down, the layers get deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper, and you can keep going keep going. Like that stuff just really excites me. So it hasn't served me well, for a long time. Like maybe because there were so many competing interests for a long time. It seemed like I was not quite getting to the depth that maybe other people were getting at. But over time, it all sort of connects together, I think. And when it does, you've got it. My dad talks about this as a analogy, you have wells, right? When you build your well. And over time, a lot of people just build one well, but if you're so smart about you might build multiple wells. And over time, that ground system connects and you have like a ground, you know, basin of knowledge and wisdom and experience. And that's what I'm working towards. Yeah. So
Oli Le Lievre 7:39
do you think you're going to change industries and places like that across you?
Unknown Speaker 7:44
So yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Um, so right now, what
Speaker 1 7:48
does it look like? Like, tell us what you're sinking your teeth into? And it's giving you that reward in your curiosity?
Unknown Speaker 7:53
Yeah, so I spent the last year learning a lot about the tea market. So we entered into Sri Lanka, working with some of the biggest tea producers over there. With the tea factory owners association, we've been speaking to the tea board, which is the governing regulatory body. And I knew nothing about tea like, as an Aussie, like we buy tea to you know, Dilma is in the film as a Sri Lankan Ceylon tea, we bought that at Woolworths like, that's, that's the extent to what I knew. And then I found myself thrown into this world. And I've just learned so much. And the cool thing is like, the more you learn, like it, just, it sort of all comes in pieces together, and you attract the right people. Like I've got someone on my team advising us, she's like, one of the global TX But that's a thing. And she's like, done a bunch of projects, like consulting with the UN, like worked with the biggest buyers like producers all around the world. And she's crazy, like how much you can learn from people like them. So that's sort of what is taking up my time. But really what we're trying to build, like our our end vision is building a commodity exchange, a hub and spoke Commodity Exchange. And the cool thing about commodity exchanges is that there's so many modules that make it up and some markets care more about certain models than others. And really, what the interesting thing is sure, like learning about this stuff's cool, like learning about payments or like how commodities are made, how they're traded, how they're financed, like, intellectually, that's interesting. But I think what's the most rewarding bit is when you can successfully build the solutions, you put trust back in the system, where trust is absent. And when done right, you can completely transform the entire ecosystem. And one of our advisors for our company. He used to be the CEO and Managing Director of, I think the second largest commodity exchange in the world, the Indian multi commodities exchange, and like he helped them IPO. And one of the things he said is like it was crazy, like the yields doubled, tripled. Farmers were getting paid twice, three times the amount with more trust, ability to finance stuff borrow more He get access to credit. And like completely changed their livelihood. So I think especially in like emerging market, Australia, I think certain markets as well, you can completely transform the way people like in communities live. That's rewarding, like, I'm not here to change the world. There's a saying that I heard from a mentor once and he says, don't change the world, but be change in the world. And that's really what I live by.
Oli Le Lievre 10:24
Sam, Alex, so to speak out, have you come across Julie Hirsch. And she's elements teaches she's hosting cat live.
Unknown Speaker 10:31
I was speaking to her in the Speaker's lounge when she came in and watch me before.
Oli Le Lievre 10:36
Yeah, cuz she's doing some really interesting stuff. How did you get to this, like this interest? So you, you had the background, you'd worked in commodity markets and whatnot, but then actually going creating something for yourself? Also, in some of the most love through Southeast Asia, which is billions of people, it's a heck of a, I guess, a marketplace to go after? Yeah, but who have you done this with? Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 10:57
so I've got two business partners, and most of the work that we're doing, and so much of it is driven by his vision. So we're very deep in the blockchain space. So a lot of our community and our customers are coming from that space. And he was actually one of the founding members of one of the largest blockchains. In the world. It's called the Cardano. Blockchain. I don't know if you guys have heard of that before. But I think that like a 15 or $20 billion ecosystem, a huge, huge, and they've got a very strong vision and mission around giving access to people access to financial services, in a way that they've never been able to get access to. So a lot of the stuff that initially that we were thinking about was through the work he had done in a lot of markets, such as Georgia, Africa, they're doing a lot of work out in Kenya and Ethiopia, for example. So it was through that, like, we saw that there was a big gap. Like I had done some work in the Philippines working with digital banks a few years ago, I also saw the same thing. Like there was a huge gap in terms of the the technology that producers had access to. And we just like there was a huge gap that needs to be filled. And
Oli Le Lievre 12:08
so with everything that you had going on, I just want to pull it back to probably talking about okay, with everything that's going on, you're living over in Asia in Japan, like why did you apply for to be a future young leader here at evoke, and maybe what have you got out of that journey?
Unknown Speaker 12:21
You're I think, I come in noisy, right? I grew up in Austria, I'm a half Australian half Japanese, but I grew up here like coming Ozzy. So I think part of it is a nationalistic sort of pride or sense of trying to do something here. And Australia is a much more developed mark like market than many of the places I work in. But there's some innovations that we're working on that still benefit Australia. And I think part of part of applying to voc was trying to be able to share all the work that we'll be doing, and find out if there's an overlap where we can, we can have an impact on the market. That's why I applied.
Speaker 1 13:00
And so going from here, like what, what does it look like going into the future? Like how, I guess you were using this platform as a bit of an accelerator, but what what are you specifically looking forward to accelerate, I'd
Unknown Speaker 13:13
love to be able to onboard different types of users onto the platform, like we have a market access platform right now. And we have a lot of different modules with built out. So we've got some pretty smart embedded logistics optimization. We also have open sourced traceability software. So with traceability, you can capture provenance data with from what inputs have gone in what certifications have been achieved, or given across the supply chain. Like we have a fair amount of technology that we plant all open source or is already open source. So whether a producer, a buyer, you know, a trader just you know, finance your regulator, like there's, there's something there that you can benefit from, and I'd love to be able to work with Ozzy's in that space
Oli Le Lievre 13:56
and accounts payable that you're going to get onto the platform here or not so much. I
Unknown Speaker 13:59
think there are like there are some markets here that have been developed where exporting is a key priority. And if we're already working in markets, we can cross sell some of the products to the customers that we already have. So that would be awesome. And I was just at the agri futures booth and they've got emerging markets that they're developing. So I'd love to be able to work with those types of producers. And
Speaker 1 14:22
so the producers that you're working with, I think that's who you're working with in say shortlink, which you mentioned before, like, and you mentioned the community aspect and giving that value and reward. Do you have any stories or examples of people that you've met and how it's directly impacted them in their business?
Unknown Speaker 14:37
I'll give you some examples of people that we've been working with. And a lot of it is not just our impact, it's just it's what they're already doing. But what they'll be able to do more if we can open things up. So I have one customer his name's who Danna he runs a tea garden called Callay teas. And this guy is just he's just got this love for sustainability and and also his community. So he's been funding a local school is he's been developing a new school basically in his community. The housing, you know, where the garden workers stay in is like much higher quality than than what exists in other Tea, tea factories or tea gardens, both in Srilanka. But there are around the world like pretty substantial step change, difference in terms of the quality of life that they have. And huge focus on education as well. So like those kids who are getting educated, like, they're in a position now where they can choose whether or not they want to live this certain life that their parents are living or perhaps going to the city or contribute back to that community in different ways. So it's a multi generational thing that I've been able to observe just by working with these people. And if we can get this stuff working in the right way, it's not just him. It's his neighbours. It's his colleagues in the space as well. And the entire industry can move from where it is today to, which should be tomorrow. That's
Oli Le Lievre 15:57
really exciting. Sam, I think you're straight back home after after this trip.
Unknown Speaker 16:02
No. I'm going home by I'm going to Sydney. So my home for how long? Few days? Yeah. Cool. Yeah. And then back to Japan. That's right.
Oli Le Lievre 16:09
Well, my good luck with everything that's ahead. I think I'll say it's mine. Like it's levels above anything that I understand that I think, yeah, what you're doing in that opportunity. I think it's really exciting. So good luck with it all.
Unknown Speaker 16:20
Thank you. Oh, it's quite simple, I think, right? Like at the essence, you have someone that wants to sell something, and someone that wants to buy something, and you put trust in the system and you let them interact. We just want to make the process super simple. That's really now easy
Oli Le Lievre 16:35
as I understand it, yeah.
Unknown Speaker 16:38
Thank you so much, Sam. No problem.
Oli Le Lievre 16:41
Well, that's it for another episode from us here at humans of agriculture. We hope you're enjoying these podcasts and bull if you're not, let us know. Hit us up at Hello at humans of agriculture.com. Get in touch with any guests recommendations topics, or things you'd like us to talk and get curious about. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend. Right, subscribe, review it. Any feedback is absolutely awesome. And we really do welcome it. So look after yourselves. Stay safe. stay sane. We'll see you next time.
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