Name: Meet the Company Using Fish to Manage Vegetable Gardens
Uploaded: 2016-05-17
Duration: 4 min 51 s
Description: Grove won Fortune's Cool Companies competition at the Brainstorm E conference.

[ BLANK_AUDIO ] My name's Gabe, and I founded a company called Grove to help people grow their own fresh healthy food. My co- founder Jamie introduced me to a new way of farming three years ago, when he hacked together this Rube Goldberg machine in our MIT fraternity room. Now, Jamie told me that he was gonna build an ecological farm that combines a fish tank with a gardening bed so we could grow food all year round. But I quickly explained to him, that's not how agriculture works. Farming is about big fields. It's about big pesticides and big fertilizers. It's about fields thousands of miles away. It's about corn, wheat, soy. Maximum productivity and cheap calories. But Jamie [ UNKNOWN ] said it doesn't have to be like this. He reminded me that in the 1940s, in this country, backyard victory gardens grew over 40 % of the vegetable that we consumed here. Sure enough, two months later, In the middle of Boston winter we were farmers, him and I. Our air was cleaner, the ecosystem became a center piece for all of our friends and we were harvesting fresh food every single day from that system. I learned how to cook with soral, it's a sour leaf, with spicy masuno, with Cuban oregano. With food that I didn't even know existed before that system. That was when we realized that bringing personal farming devices to homes and to classes around this world is a massive opportunity for social good, but also to build a profitable business. So, we built an ecological farm in a box. Our product is called the Grove Ecosystem. And it's based on a natural symbiotic relationship between fish and plants called aquaponics. You feed the fish, the fish fertilize the crops, and the crops clean the water so that you don't have to clean the aquarium. And we've sold hundreds of units since launching six months ago. And we'll do well over a million dollars in revenue this year. We've had videos that have gone absolutely viral. We had one that got over ten million views. Dozens of people have been growing in their Grove Ecosystems for the past year, and we're installed in schools from Boston, to the South Bronx, where teachers use the eco system, and the curriculum, we provide. To teach their kids how to farm. Heck MIT researchers at using the grove ecosystem to simulate environment farming conditions that will eventually sustain life on Mars. So the business model's pretty simple, we ship the the ecosystem for $ 4500 directly to homes, to restaurants, to offices Fully assembled and ready to grow. Every month or two, our customers buy curated seeds, fish food, and supplies right through the mobile app called [ UNKNOWN ] Communicates with sensors right to the ecosystem to control the efficient LED lights, the fans, and the pumps. We get all of the data back from each ecosystem as well. So Grove OS that app gives you a green thumb it literally teaches you how to farm. It's like Farmville but in real life. Now in your ecosystem you can grow a small bowl of salad every single day, or you can have all your culinary herbs for cooking right there at arms reach. Or you can harvest crops, like strawberries and peppers and tomatoes right in your ecosystem, in the dead of winter. But perhaps most importantly, we're here to inspire the next generation of ecological stewards. So if you think this is important or cool, then I ask you to consider pre- ordering the ecosystem today. For your living room, for your office, or for your kids' classroom. Or donate one, for one of the hundreds of teachers that's reached out to us and wants one in their school. Afterall if you give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. But if you teach our children how to farm, they'll nourish us and our planet for the rest of our lives. That's growth. Thank you guys. [ APPLAUSE ] Love the passion. Phenomenal pitch. How low can you lower your costs? Sure, appliances whenever they've been introduced in the past hundred years have been between $ 5, 000, $ 10, 000, $ 12, 000. Think we'll follow a similar curve. I think under $ 2, 000. We'll see much more mass market appeal. Love the idea, great idea, great vision. Good luck, very exciting. Thank you. I live in Oakland, California. My wife sent me a little clip yesterday of my son. Pulling a huge carrot out of the community farm in our neighborhood. No option but to say " this is awesome ." Thank you very much

Grove won Fortune's Cool Companies competition at the Brainstorm E conference.