Jared Flinn:
Alright. Here we Nathan, I love your background. Like, I mean, many of these we do, especially when we do video, we have, you know, somebody's at their desk, or we have a studio behind us, but, you may top what I have behind me, though. I love the Jeep, the shop look.
Nathan Faleide:
Yeah. I'm, at my my dad's office, which is actually just like a rented shop with an office in it. So with houses like half of our family junk and, you know, a place to place to tinker around and all that, but, yeah, it's a little different. I usually I like doing things in the shop, so I don't, you I I get tired of the office just like anybody else, and you kinda wanna play around and get your hands dirty. And I'm here today, so, you know, you you get the Jeep in the background. So it's all Yeah.
Jared Flinn:
Yeah. I love it. And, yeah, I totally agree with you, especially this time of year. I think anything you can do to change up the environment and keep things going, I get, yeah. I I I can't stand to be cooped up inside. So I hear you there. But, we connected through LinkedIn and love that, you speak you're very vocal in the AgTech space. And, you know, we consider ourselves a little bit I mean, we're we're in technology, and I consider ourselves like trucking, but also agriculture software because we serve the bulk trucking community, but we also serve the grain feed fertilizer commodity industry as well.
Jared Flinn:
So we do, you know, a lot of our big trading companies. They all u they use our platform to help find trucks. So love your take on that and your experience. I thought that's where we would kinda really center and dive in. You put out a crazy amount of, like, cool memes, by the way. Like, in visual images, and I think maybe that's what catches my simple mind is seeing these pictures. But talk about why, I
Nathan Faleide:
guess. Yeah. So, I mean, to maybe go back a little bit, I kinda grew up in the ag tech industry before it was called that. My, my dad started one of the first ag softwares out there looking at satellite imagery on crops and crop health, and, and there's so many things you can do with it. And he kind of, started it here in North America. No one else really was doing it beyond universities and testing. And, so I kinda just grew up around it, just much like someone grows up on the farm around farming or someone grows up in the trucking industry, and you just kinda you just learn every little nook and cranny of the industry, whether you like it or not too. And then just I grew up on a farm, so I have a passion of all things agriculture.
Nathan Faleide:
And, you know, from from getting through all the just the the history of things, experience, one of the things I was getting tired of is just the same old crap news wise of ag. Like, it's like the same puff pieces, and everyone just talks the same. Oh, here's this new, you know, product that came out, and it's, you know, edited perfectly. And everything's, like, gotta be so constructed perfectly, the messaging, the media. And I just was tired of it, and I started writing. Well and I just laid it out there because I didn't really I didn't really care. I was tired of the same old, process. And but with that, I decided I can't just I can't just complain to complain.
Nathan Faleide:
I gotta put some substance to it. And some of the best ways to do that is through, a picture and through memes because that's just kind of the way the culture has kind of evolved too. And I I like to use comedy to make fun of the industry that I'm part of. And, you know, someone's gotta do it. Someone's gotta be the kind of the comedian within the sect of an industry. And, the I'm that guy for AgTech kind of because I I just need to I like to speak how it actually all kinda plays together in the pros and cons, and sometimes you gotta make people laugh for them to get the point. Just like any comedian out there, you look at all the comedians, you know, they complain about politics or this person or that person. Sometimes that's the only way you can hear it.
Nathan Faleide:
You can't hear it through talk radio or you can't hear it through an article because it seems it's so intense. It's it's too intrusive, and comedy kind of brings out the subtlety of what you're talking about, and it's it's easier to soak in. So in a nutshell, I yeah. Was was tired of the same game and was like, oh, let's let's make fun of what I do. Why not?
Jared Flinn:
We're gonna keep rolling. And Nate, it just cut out there. I think I don't know if my Wi Fi I just wanna make sure it's still recording here.
Nathan Faleide:
Yeah. Being in a book's still building, I don't know. It could be
Jared Flinn:
perfect. Now it's actually fine. So maybe back up just a couple minutes, and we'll splice it all back in there pretty. So, actually, I'll I'll ask this question from one of your first, and we'll just kinda keep rolling with this. But, if I think I know what you mean when you talk about how ag tech there's kind of this they put this nice pretty bow, and it's nice and perfect. And I don't know if that's because the industry that we're in that, you know, it's more mom pop down to earth. You know, I grew up on a farm too, but there's, like, this nice, formal, polite, I don't wanna say but, yeah, it'd be just a really I mean, just a good experience. Like, there's nothing it's it's just that good I'm trying to say the best word for it.
Jared Flinn:
But is that what you're talking about? How it it, like, you know, they make it look so pretty, but it's not?
Nathan Faleide:
Well, I mean, I have friends that are farmers. I farmed a little myself and grew up in a rural setting, and I still live in a rural setting. The, the ag media, just like any other media, likes to sugarcoat it. You know? Good the good old good old, mom and pop, like you said, on the farm and working hard and all this. And it oh, that's true to varying extent. But, go to a local bar in the small town of hundred people. It's a little different experience. People are joking.
Nathan Faleide:
People are screwing with each other. People are making fun of each other. You make fun of your neighbor for skipping his plan or getting stuck in his tractor, and you throw some swears down, and you you make fun, and you go to the next day. Like, that that's part of it too. But the media doesn't wanna show the other side, the other side of just humanity. I don't know. Yeah. Making fun of itself.
Nathan Faleide:
Like, that's and not taking it so serious. Like, I I get, you know, you gotta work hard and make your money, but you gotta have fun too. And that's kinda why I've I've messaged things the way I've done because it's I was just kinda tired of that. It's it's, you know, the just the the good old pat on the back, you know, hardworking rural American person, farmer, that's all great. But, you know, everyone kinda sucks that time too, and we can make fun of it. It's okay. It's not the end of the world. We gotta have some humility.
Nathan Faleide:
If you can't if you can't have humility, if you can't take a little criticism because you're not perfect, like, none of us are perfect. Right. So why not open up the door a little bit?
Jared Flinn:
I find this fascinating because and then we hear this all the time, but and sometimes it's the same person, but what you're talking about farming, we hear the exact same with trucking. Sure.
Nathan Faleide:
Yeah.
Jared Flinn:
The same issues. And, again, there is a lot of farmers that do truck and Mhmm. Obviously, trucking is a big part of farming, but, like, the same kind of stereotype or what it's it's the same thing we hear in the trucking community as a whole.
Nathan Faleide:
Yeah. I mean, you it's it's so easy culturally for, people to not pay attention to other things. You know? They they they get kinda stuck in their way, and they see a movie or a TV show that illustrates probably a trucker. I mean, there's a few of them out there, and that's just the mantra. It just gets stuck in the head of people just as much with, farming, you know, the American gothic guy with a pitchfork or, oh, we got a we got ducks and chickens and geese and, you know, one single Holstein cow and, like, a few pigs. Like, that's how a majority of people think of it. And you really can't change it, really, because the the cultural standard has been set. But I think slowly it's getting better.
Nathan Faleide:
Like, I got little kids and anything farm related. That's how they see it. That's how, like, TV shows and all that. That's how it's showcased. You know, everyone's got big overalls on, and you have to see a trucker. They got a trucker cap on, and they got a maybe a a skull kind of thing in their pocket, and that's how it's thought of. But, I'm trying to do my part just to kind of quell that whole thought and be like, yeah. That's not how it works.
Nathan Faleide:
And and ag tech is kind of a good medium for that because it can showcase, like, hey. This is complicated stuff. This is intense stuff. And where I've maybe done most of my, I'll call it, maybe being cynical, as I call myself appropriately cynical, is there's so many that came in in ag technology in the last, I'll say, 15.
Jared Flinn:
We say they that came in. Who are you referring to?
Nathan Faleide:
Just people that had no ag background.
Jared Flinn:
Okay.
Nathan Faleide:
You know, from investors to just, you know, tech people to business people. And that's fine. That's good. You need outsiders to come into industry. That's that's a good thing. But when they came in, none of them listened to any of us that were in the industry. They all went around because they're like, well, you haven't developed this stuff in the industry, so you must not know what's going on. And that happened throughout like, we already had a tech side of ag.
Nathan Faleide:
We just called it precision ag. We didn't call it ag tech.
Jared Flinn:
That's right.
Nathan Faleide:
Yeah. And it and all the businesses that were part of that, they were built from the ground up. There was no investment. Maybe some of them had a an angel investors, you'd call it now, but it was just a guy with money that, you know, he knew from his local church or someone he knew. And he's like, hey. Would you wanna come together and be part of this? And be like, yeah. Sure. Let's go for it.
Nathan Faleide:
And then all of a sudden, overnight, it came in. I have an idea on a PowerPoint. I can raise $20,000,000 and create whatever I want and not listen to the people that actually went through it. And that's where I kinda got tired. I was just like, well, that's bullshit. Like, that's fine that people wanna build new things and they come from the outside, but at least talk to the people within and try to get an essence of what's going on. And a lot of that didn't happen. A lot of money got wasted.
Nathan Faleide:
A lot of people didn't work out, and they pissed off the people that they were trying to sell to, farmers, and they get tired of it. They're like, yeah. You're building things I don't need, don't want, or I'm not paying for because you didn't listen. You didn't ask us. You just built something. And yeah. I don't know. That's it's it's frustrating, and that's where that's how I voiced it.
Nathan Faleide:
No one was voicing it. They were just, oh, this new group raised money. They must be amazing. They're like, no. They suck because they didn't listen, and they're just regurgitating the same crap over and over again. They just have $20,000,000. Like, cool. That doesn't make it work work.
Jared Flinn:
I find this super fascinating just in my now almost twenty years in the industry and probably now fifteen specifically in technology piece. I know a % of of what you're talking about and that feeling. And I and I was trying to pinpoint when we really saw that happening and maybe really even just in the last ten years more than any. I mean, I know maybe you can back up more, but there's always a why behind of all this. Why? I mean, how did it switch, or why did it switch to that? Why did it switch from precision ag, which I a % remember that? And that sounded better. It was clean. It was developed by some farmer that was doing this, and he saw that there was a problem. But versus this tech startup out of Silicon Valley or wherever, you know, they raised $30,000,000, and they're gonna solve the problem that people didn't know that there was a problem of.
Nathan Faleide:
I mean, it's it's some will say it pinpointed when Climate got bought by Monsanto for a billion dollars. It was starting before that, but, yeah, there's always just a moment. Some some big thing happens, And then people see that, and they I mean, true enough to just humanity, when you see someone make some big deal and there's a lot of money involved, usually, the thing that follows are other people that wanna take advantage of the situation. That's I mean, this is a weird kind of cross, but, okay, all these fires in LA, someone's gonna take advantage of it. That's just human nature. Always does. So even maybe I'm sure there's moments in trucking that someone some big thing happened. They're like, well, I can take advantage of this now.
Nathan Faleide:
You know, there's some new rule. There's some new thing, some government thing, and it just happens. And you'd have to fight through it and because there's always a bunch of vultures out there that are trying to disrupt an area that they're not used to because they see money. And that's a tough thing to battle. But the people that know the industry, know the area, you just gotta stick strong to it and kinda run through it, run through the gauntlet. But, I wanted to speak about the gauntlet of things to run through. So I figured why not? And, no one pays me to do it anyway, so I might as well do it for for Ian, tell the world my thoughts.
Jared Flinn:
Yeah. Well, people are definitely listening. Talk about the the money I mean, these this ag tech that does come in, and and you can talk specifically or more broadly. I mean, first off, I mean and this is maybe Jared Flynn's perception, but it comes in. There's this crazy amount of hype. You know? It it sends shock waves to the market, kinda runs it, stole, fizzles out. We're back to something. Usually, there's still an aftermath or there's still some result of it that sometimes you can say is positive because of whatever happened.
Jared Flinn:
Mhmm. But talk about what your perception of that is, and and really just even in agriculture. And I think maybe you said this in the beginning, but sometimes it does feel like we're behind the eight ball versus other industries.
Nathan Faleide:
Well, in in a hack, I mean, we have to deal with the one factor that we can't control any percent of, and that is weather. You just that's part of the game. When you're building software or hardware, weather doesn't matter. You can build it and sell it, and it can house within a computer in a safe environment or within a building or a machine. That that's the factor. Like, ag just goes it goes in these up and down cycles, up and down. There's no, like, path. There's no hockey stick path in ag.
Nathan Faleide:
That's not how it works. There's maybe a hockey stick up, and then there's a hockey stick down. And then there's another one. So much assumption was made that it it can do this exponential thing, but there's limits in ag. And then I think the biggest thing that a lot of groups did coming in is they just looked at ag in a linear linear mode. It can just go up and up and up and, you know, companies can buy more and more and more and afford more and more and more. And they didn't realize even the ag corporate companies, the biggest ones in the world, they go through the ups and down cycles too. It's not just this it's not really a steady growth thing.
Nathan Faleide:
If anyone if anything, it's it's these up and down cycles that slowly just incrementally, very slowly gain Mhmm. Into it. But it's not like tech where it's like a 45 degree angle up, and they just didn't see it. They didn't because it that that's what people want. They want that quick buck. Ag, there's nothing quick about it. You know? My dad always said, that goes in thirty year cycles. That's a long freaking time.
Nathan Faleide:
That's that's how long the tech industry in ag kind of has been around. It's been thirty years, maybe a little longer in certain areas. And we're still talking about things that were being developed in the mid nineties. Literally, the same concepts, same process. Variable rate application of seed fertilizer chemical, yield monitor using data to to help on the farm to, you know, help with even accounting or just tracking stuff. All of that was talked about thirty years ago. Nothing is new. It's just it's easier to do it.
Nathan Faleide:
It's easier to connect. The software's easier to use. It's more powerful. But the concepts are the same, and we still haven't perfected those concepts from thirty years ago. But people thought taking money would solve it, would would leapfrog that, and that was actually never really the problem. The the essence of the problem in ag is it just happens slowly and you have weather, you have things that get in the way. It's not the top priority. The top priority if you farm is getting the seed in the ground, making sure it grows, making sure it it produces and weeds don't get in the way.
Nathan Faleide:
And then you combine it, and you market it at a good place and make sure that the grain gets to where you need to go to so you can get the check. That's it. That's farming. And there's a hundred pieces and there's 40 different decisions on each one of those hundred pieces that you gotta make. And AgTech is a few of those pieces here and there. It's not important enough necessarily. And I think that's that's kind of the the disconnect is people weren't connecting those things. They weren't connecting the emotion to it.
Nathan Faleide:
Farming's emotional. It's not just a job. Mhmm. There's
Jared Flinn:
you
Nathan Faleide:
know, the farm's been around over a hundred years or whatever. Great grandpa done it. That's another thing people didn't think of on the tech side. Like, there's actually emotion to this. People actually are invested into it mentally. This isn't just a task to solve. There is a lot more to it. They would rather go to their kids' football game than spend time on a computer because who cares? You know, that's that's the mentality, and the tech industry doesn't get that, typically.
Nathan Faleide:
They don't they don't understand that merging of history and time and grit. I don't know. It just it's make things fast, efficient, quick, better. Like, sometimes slow is better too. And in ag, you're used to it. So you just kinda that's how you work. Just kinda slow and steady wins the race. Yeah.
Jared Flinn:
This is so fascinating. I mean, I just look at it, like, this is so true. And maybe it's a moment where some of the people I've been talking to and just over the years because I have had those conversations with ag tech startups. And I'm not calling any specific out, but you don't hear you don't hear that. What you hear are, you know, solving the problem, raising the money, the valuation that we're gonna get, you know, how much we're worth. But you don't really you don't hear there's not an emotion to it. It it's it's really, what can I get? What what what can I get in and get back as fast as possible? And, and it is the truck is the same way, but farming, it is super emotional. I've never thought that way.
Jared Flinn:
But you think about these people, these generational farmers that it's a lot more yeah. They wanna provide for the families, and they wanna they they wanna get a good return, but there's so much more than than that to the farm.
Nathan Faleide:
Yeah. There's some there there's all this weird emphasis on ROI in AgTech. Like, it's got a, you know, return on investment. It's gotta make an extra this per acre or whatever. Yes. And, apparently, there's some truths to that. Don't get me wrong. That's like any other business.
Nathan Faleide:
But in in when you if you can put a farmer you can put your farmer cap on, which a lot of people just can't do because, you know, they didn't grow up around it. They don't they don't get it.
Jared Flinn:
They never experienced it.
Nathan Faleide:
That's fine. But okay. Think of just the farm is the family. It's like it's the same thing. It's they're intertwined, but they've acted as the farm is separate. It's business. And that's how some people and some farmers are that way. It is business, and it is.
Nathan Faleide:
But most don't do it that way. Most, it's it's intertwined. The farm is intertwined into the family. It is a cohesive unit of business family, you know, and it's located. It's you argue with your kids. You argue with your your dad, whatever. My family business. I work with my dad a lot.
Nathan Faleide:
We argue all the time. We don't agree. Like, normal business isn't that way. Everything's family business in farming. And the thing about that, when when that happens, the real value isn't necessarily the task that is made, you know, the efficiency. Oh, we got more ROI. Yes. Important.
Nathan Faleide:
It's just saving them time because it's family business. You want more time to not be it business. You want more time to be it family. And where tech needs to help more, and it is in various spots, is it helps with time. The farmer's time is worth the most amount of money, not every acre equals another $10 an acre for profit or something like that. Yes. Important. But time is because they have too there's too many things to do because you are five CEOs of different things on the farm, and you're just trying to not spend too much time on one thing because you always have another thing.
Nathan Faleide:
Yep. And if you can do that, then you can be successful in in the the ag tech world, but no one wants to spend a lot of time with it either. They want the automation part of it, you know, like auto steer and tractors driving themselves. The reason it's popular isn't because of the technology of, oh, this and this. It's because you could drive straight and your neighbors could see it, and they wouldn't call you out at the coffee shop or the bar. And you weren't as tired, so when you came home, you could spend more time with your family. You could get more done. It had nothing to do with the efficiencies directly.
Nathan Faleide:
It all had to do with the emotional things it did for the farmer. That's why. It made them not be made fun of by their friends and neighbors, and it made them have more family time and become less tired. Like, the biggest tech advantage in farming ever is not GPS. It's not anything we think of it. It's air conditioning. The air conditioner in a tractor cab is the best piece of technology probably ever created because you're not dying in the sun and the heat or the cab itself. You can actually be comfortable, not dusty, full of dust, and drive a tractor.
Nathan Faleide:
What's cooler than that?
Jared Flinn:
Yeah. So, so fascinating. I think, yeah, we could keep going down this rabbit hole. I wanna pivot, and we'll kinda land on this one. You have your own podcast you released, Ag Uncensored. Correct?
Nathan Faleide:
Yeah. I'm I'm kinda changing it up a little bit. I I started, yeah, interviewing some, you know, colleagues I knew and important people, and then life gets in the way. And I'm trying to rehash it in a different way, but, yes, the short answer. Well, I want in,
Jared Flinn:
and we'll put your information below so people can follow you to wherever that leads, that next piece. But I guess really talk about that because we can sit around and complain all day long about how bad the industry is. But, like, I I guess, what what are your goals and hopes, or what do you what do you hope to to accomplish with this creation of really kinda being cynical of ag tech?
Nathan Faleide:
I want people to get out of their comfort zone and think and just have a different reaction than they're used to. You get caught into the normal ways of your business, your job, what you're doing, and I I want people to have a different concept of it, a different thought process. It doesn't matter what it really is. I mean, in trucking, there's I'm sure there's I could if I just put my head to it, there's probably, like, 20 things that I'd be like, oh, have you thought about it this way? And some people don't because they they can't turn, you know, too focused on one thing or they're too focused on this part or they just maybe they just don't see that part or they don't think that way. That's okay. It's to open those little things up just to get people to think through the aspects of what you know, for me, it's ag. Like, understanding those little things that you just don't think of, like, and why they're important. That that's the basics of it.
Nathan Faleide:
I'd and and sometimes you gotta do that through controversy too. You know? You have to do that through humor. You have to do that through being a little cynical about how the world actually works because nothing is perfect and everything sucks half the time, but, you know, there's beauty in that too. So
Jared Flinn:
Yeah. Well, I am a sucker for humor, and I think that's where it caught my attention on some of those images. I'm I'm probably just a sucker for memes. I think yesterday, I sent an image of, like, a little it was like a little dachshund dog chasing a rhinoceros, and then the caption below the dachshunds getting interviewed saying, like, man, I was really drunk that day. Like, it was just like but I I think people can always, like, our our culture has adapted to these shorts, memes, images, and that's kind of how we we relate to serious issues by the the humor that comes out of them. And I think that's you're you're really telling a beautiful story that people can relate to and really telling a story that people don't hear about because I think, you know, agriculture, farming is still, important, but it it's really it's still at the same principle that it was, you know, thousands of years ago when when we, you know, the same farmer is the same farmer today, and it's really not changed. I mean, the the principle of the practices are still the same.
Nathan Faleide:
Yeah. And I'd I think, for all the different groups that are trying to get tech into any industry, if they can't look back and see how it kind of has formed or started in some semblance, they should get the hell out of it. Because if you can't understand the history of what you're trying to industry you're trying to be in, I don't think you have a place to be in it. So if you wanna get into trucking, I guess, if you don't can't understand kind of where it all kind of comes from Yeah. And respect that, I I don't think you have a place in it. It it you should feel that. You should feel part of it. But I I'm not like everybody either, so maybe I'm just an odd duck thinking that way.
Jared Flinn:
No. I think you brought us some good points and just it gives somebody it gives a whole new perspective to kind of how to think about this and and this industry. So well, cool. Well, Nathan, man, this has been an awesome, conversation with you. I'll put your information links below. I know you're very vocal, especially on LinkedIn is where I follow you, so, yeah, really encourage you to check it out there. And, man, appreciate you coming on. Thank you.
Nathan Faleide:
Yeah. No. Thanks for having me.
Jared Flinn:
Alright. Let me hit stop real quick.
