[0:00] entrepreneurship in food industryHello, the guest today is Rajni Aneha, Masters of Science, class of 85. She is in charge of the Cornell Institute for Food Systems. It's where a lot of food entrepreneurship happens. And she runs the most popular hackathon, the Food Hackathon at Cornell. So hi Rodney, is is the food industry a good area to do entrepreneurship in? I think so. I think a lot of folks view the industry as a space where they can develop products that they can't find on their own grocery stores. So it's very attractive from that point of view. People are easily identify a market need they'd like to fill. Is it the easiest to make money in? No, not necessarily, because it's a really competitive space and margins in the industry are tight. There's some pros and some cons, but it's an exciting space. There's lots and lots of product innovation going on and it's a very dynamic space as a result. Like what are examples of food entrepreneurship? Like the products? Things that are available right now. A fellow alum has started a business called Grow the Earth. And Caroline, who's an MBA at the Johnson School at the moment, you want artisanal salami, she's the person to go to. She's got a wonderful product line. And there's another entrepreneur, Kimberly Lau, who has started a company called Bake Me Healthy. She has a great line of gluten free baking mixes for home use. So if you're gluten free and you're looking to have a baked treat at home, Kimberly's the person to reach out to. We have other current entrepreneurs working in the dairy space. Matt Pataki is launching a product called Smooth Culture. It's not quite yet on the market, but it will be later this spring, which is a dairy probiotic drink and has a healthful impact on your gut microbiome. So lots and lots of different products available. Lots of Cornell entrepreneurs working in in this space. Lots of products that are available in, I hope your local supermarket, but if not, most of these are available online. You can purchase them. We're actually developing a new directory that will launch later this year where we'll have a full list or as complete a list as we think we can get of Cornell food entrepreneurs and their businesses. So if you'd like to support them, you'll be able to find those products on a Cornell website and then link over to online portals or grocery outlets where you can buy those products. So stay tuned for that information later this year. And if you'd like your business to be listed because you're a founder of a food product or a beverage product company, please reach out to me. We'd love to include you in the directory. That's amazing. So what are like the process of starting a food business?

[2:48] how to start a food businessReally the first place to start is do you have a product concept in mind and do you have a recipe that you think delivers a product that consumers like? Most of the time the recipe works really well in your kitchen, but it might need a little bit of tweaking and we have commercial kitchens here where you can work to refine your product recipe. We then ask you, well, how are you going to make this? It's not trivial to build a manufacturing facility. So what we recommend is working with Co Packers or Co manufacturers, folks who will do the manufacturing for you in their facility, but then brand it under your identity. But to do that, you really need a good manufacturing process. You need to know that your product is going to be safe. You may not have actually thought about how to make that product at scale. It's one thing to do it in your kitchen. It's a different thing to do it in a full scale manufacturing facility. Cornell has a really great ecosystem of resources to help you get to that point of commercial launch. So, for example, you need help developing the manufacturing process. We have pilot facilities. You can come in and work with our team to develop your product, your beverage. We can help you refine that manufacturing process and ensure that it is a safe process that can then be manufactured on your behalf. That's one of the most critical steps in this process is making sure that the product is safely manufacturable. And we're well positioned with a whole suite of pilot plants here at Cornell. And we have a specialized plant for dairy products, another one for fruit and vegetables. We have a canning line where we can help you develop a canned beverage. If you're interested in cold pressed juices, we have an HPP validation center. HPP is a high pressure process that helps preserve the nutrient quality of cold juices. And we have one of the few validation centers to help you develop that kind of a manufacturing process as well as then putting together your food safety package and all of these other items. One of the other things we have that sort of complementary to this process is a really great sensory evaluation center. You may love your product, but is the consumer on the street going to like it? Does it resonate with young consumers or older consumers or consumers who have particular diet free or nutritional needs? Our sensory evaluation center can help you do that study and and really do a deep dive into those kinds of issues. So really let us know where you are on your pathway. We certainly have the Technical Support to help get you forward. We have educational tools like a program called Food Spark, which is a training program you can do online to learn about more of these areas. If you're not a food scientist or you're not from the food manufacturing space, but you would like to learn how to run, how to actually launch and then run a food business, Food Spark is a great program that you can do online that kind of helps educate you about a lot of these steps if you're new to the field. Interesting, so like the sensory is like the smell and of the taste? Smell, taste, mouthfeel. We can also ask about purchasing behavior. Would you buy this as a new product? Would you switch from a current product you're already purchasing? Do you think a line extension would resonate? If you reformulate your product, you know, new and improved with this better ingredient, how does that resonate with consumers, both as they actually taste the product and give you feedback, but also marketing information? Do they like the logo? Do they like the packaging? Is the packaging user friendly? Is it easy to open? Does it work if they're on the go and this is a portable product? All sorts of issues like that. Our Consumer Sensory Evaluation Center can help you with addressing those issues. Fascinating. I like Let's say I'm a couple years out of college. I work at A at a financial institution and on the side I've been cooking in my like. What are the considerations like for like why that cookie You could be mass produced. We're not mass produced my. Colleagues would probably have more insights into this, but a

[7:00] financials of a food businesslot of it is, you know, what is the cost of goods, what is the cost of the ingredients? What is the cost of the manufacturing process? Can you price that product competitively versus other products in the market? That kind of financial analysis is something that's quite critical. I mean, it's critical for any business if you're launching a product, but it's particularly critical in the food industry when margins are tight. You know, what is it going to cost to get your product on a shelf if you want to go the retail strategy route. So there's a lot of financial consideration in this beyond just building the recipe and finding a product that people like. It's got to be affordable right now. It's got to be nutritious. It's got to be accessible. And so we work to support entrepreneurs in really exploring all of those issues. I myself mentor both student and faculty entrepreneurs, but we also have an entrepreneurial mentorship network that we can help connect food entrepreneurs to provide support. We have a complementary resource at Geneva, the Center of Excellence in Food and Agriculture. They can also help with business development support, particularly for small companies in New York State. So there's a lot of resources just beyond my office. And part of what I do, actually a large part of what I do is connecting entrepreneurs to what we hope is the right resource to help you along that pathway. Out of a suite of maybe 15 or 20 different resources we have scattered across campus, a large majority of them are centered in the Department of Food Science, either in Ithaca or Geneva. But there are other resources across campus, and making sure you get there quickly and efficiently is really put important. We don't want to be roadblock to you exploring an entrepreneurial pathway and if we can help you get there in the Cornell ecosystem. If we don't have the resource, we'll be upfront about it and maybe refer you to other academic groups or other industry partners. I should add one of the other things Tony, that entrepreneurs face is raising capital. You know, how do you fund this? And while we don't have a venture fund ourselves or a seed fund, there is a very robust food entrepreneurial seed investment network here that we can help connect entrepreneurs to. But we also really would love to see food entrepreneurs apply to the annual Grow New York competition that's run by the center of, of what is it called CREA. CREA is the Center for Regional Economic Advancement, which is another unit here at Cornell. They run a food and AG innovation venture competition in partnership with the state of New York, and that's an opportunity to win a top prize of $1,000,000 to invest in your food or AG company. And there's prizes at the half, $1,000,000 and the $250,000 level as well. It's a global competition. You don't need to be based in New York State to apply, but our hope is that this will attract innovative small businesses into the region, not just raise that money, but then also work proactively with Cornell to help advance their product. So we do a lot of work with both applicants and winners in that competition to help them along their food innovation pathway. Gotcha. So I'm still trying to picture like from like the the the alum starting like a cookie business. Does she have to go to Ithaca full time or like does she? Really don't have here full time really. And this, I guess, is sort of an outcome of the pandemic is we're available via Zoom, we're available online, we're available for phone consultations. A lot of work can be done virtually. A lot of work can be done via e-mail, sharing documents and so on. Our experts can look at your documentation, package your recipes, what you've developed so far in your process, what your business needs are, and give you advice without you being here physically. What we do encourage is if you'll have a need for a particular pilot plant resource or you want to work in a commercial kitchen, yes, please be here. It's really important that you see the work up close and personal as it were, and you learn alongside our staff so that you're well equipped to move forward independently in the future. Because if you mix it yourself in your own home kitchen, you might not be able to do that in the commercial kitchen.

[11:35] manufacturing and food safetyYeah, I mean, it's there. There's always certain things. You know, we're so concerned about food safety. We don't want people to get sick when they buy a commercial product. And so ensuring that your manufacturing process is going to produce a safe product that's shelf stable and you understand how long it's stable for. So, you know, you see these sell by dates or best used by dates on products. We want to make sure that you have the right information to label your product correctly, you've got the right nutritional content information that it's, you know, meets all of the regulatory requirements, and that you have the right kind of support to put that accurate information on your labels so. I guess like if you're mixing at home you don't really consider the sell by date. Zone, I mean it may taste great and your your friends and your family may love the product. That doesn't mean it's necessarily manufacturable at scale. So give this a call if you have questions about that, reach out to us and we will connect you with the people who can help you to determine that and see if your product really is something that works at manufacturing scale or maybe it needs a little bit of adjustment. And again, our process authority team, the folks who are really the experts in that space can advise you on that. Gotcha. Gotcha. Well, like if someone they didn't study food science, but they really have a passion for this. Like how do they get over? Like like who am I to start a food business? We we actually get lots of folks who don't come from the food science space as food entrepreneurs. It's not unusual and that's part of why we offer programs like Food Spark that and there's also, I believe this certification program available on the E Cornell platform that's very similar that walks you through the basics of what it's like to develop a product and then launch it. So that's an online learning tool, self-paced with a little bit of live instructions so that there's time to actually ask the experts and questions. I believe Bruno Xavier, who is the associate director of the Connell Food Venture Center, is one of the teachers in that program, along with some of his colleagues. So that's an opportunity if, for example, you're a dairy entrepreneur. We had a program called the Dairy Runway, which is designed specifically for folks developing dairy products and that addresses particular technical issues in that space. And again, you know, we encourage you to reach out if you think you have a dairy product and we'll see if you're a fit for that program. Part of what's nice about the Dairy Runway is it includes time in our dairy pilot plants so you can actually prototype your product and get it into sensory with us. And, and it's a fully integrated program designed to help dairy entrepreneurs. So there's a lot of opportunities like that. Some of them are more structured than others, but we have a lot of coursework available. We have a lot of training programs through our Extension Service. We have access to the pilot plants and commercial kitchen. So really it's don't worry if you're not a food scientist. We are an educational institution and our mission is to transfer knowledge to folks in the community. I sit within CALS and we're a land grant college and this is very much baked into what we do and we want to work with external collaborators. We're here to help you along that entrepreneurial pathway, regardless of whether you're a food scientist or not. Just reach out to us and we'll see what we can do to help. And also, like a lot of food, entrepreneurship also uses skills as like marketing, which is like more transferable from other industries too.

[15:14] understanding the marketYeah. We, we have, I mean, earlier I commented, you know that there's a big issue around what are the financial aspects of the plan. Marketing is another really important part of it. How do you reach those consumers? Does your product resonate with them? Is it fulfill the kinds of needs they have in their nutritional requirements, their health requirements and so on. So that's actually quite an interesting aspect. There is a program here called the Food Industry Marketing Program that's run out of Johnson School. Those folks specialize in this area. So again, there's expertise that we can connect you to. And it's a really fascinating area because people love indulgent food, but they also want to be mindful of is it helpful? Is it going to provide the right kind of nutritional content? Is there too much sugar? Maybe I shouldn't be eating this, but sometimes it's OK. So you've got to find that right balance and that right marketing message and communicating why people should buy and try your product. So yes, absolutely a critical part. And it's one where Cornell has expertise to assist folks. Yeah, I'm trying to picture like the, the, the, the business model of like a typical food business like e-commerce Walmart. I hesitate to say there's a typical model. I think increasingly people are using e-commerce. I think, you know, they build an online presence, they use influences. You know, you use TikTok, you use Instagram, whatever is the social channel of the day, and you try to build an online presence. It's hard to get into retail outlets. It's not a trivial exercise to get a grocery store chain to carry your product. And you've got to show them that there is actually demand for your product. So increasingly, we see people developing A presence online. Consumers can buy it directly from you. Increasingly we see products being offered through portals like Amazon 11 manages the the distribution for you, but it's not quite the same as walking into Trader Joe's or walking into Wegmans or walking into Walmart and seeing it on the shelf and saying, wow, that looks like a really cool product. I'd like to try it. So it's it's a little bit of a balancing act, but I think more and more we're seeing small entrepreneurs start with the idea of an online presence and go from there. Interesting. And then the what's the life cycle of one of the cookies that gets manufactured? What? What happens after it gets manufactured? Let's say you find because you're not going to build your own manufacturing facility, that's too expensive.

[17:52] how it gets from manufacturing to customerSo you find a partner who specializes in manufacturing, who will manufacture the product for you, package it in your packaging and provide that, you know, the crate or the box or whatever of a product, it might be shipped to a retail outlet on your behalf. If you do have a retail outlet, it might be shipped to you so that you can then package and sell it yourself. It's rare for a Co man to handle direct to consumer sales for you. They'll typically send it to you to then manage yourself, your own warehouse, your own distribution centre. And as you build your business, you see a lot of entrepreneurs managing that. But there are increasingly companies who are also stepping in to manage that process for entrepreneurs because there are economies of scale when you do this. And in fact, one of them who I you might want to speak with miss an alum, Franco Mora. He's an alum from the Business School who recently identified this as a actual key need for small food entrepreneurs. How do you build, how do you get to economies of scale as a, as an entrepreneur who needs a food or beverage product distributed? And so he's developed a new online platform called Dusto Market. And the idea is that they'll provide that service back end for entrepreneurs who aren't quite ready to build their own infrastructure and need help with it, particularly in terms of finding smaller retail outlet specialty food carriers who might be interested in carrying those products for on their shelves. And it's difficult to identify all of these folks. So Franco's idea is, let us do this for you and we'll build the economy of scale for a whole cadre of food entrepreneurs. And then like when the when you're a food business, it's like growing bigger and more people know about it. You're in a couple of retailers like what's the typical exit plan for one of these is? Certainly this industry historically has grown through acquisition. You know, you sell to a Nestle, you sell to a richest products, you sell to some other player where there's a complementary skill. So larger food companies definitely are open to acquisitions, buying out small companies where there's a really good product fit. You'll also see some private equity players in this space. And there's always this question of what's the valuation? Am I going to get a decent multiple? What happens next? Can I work in this space? Again, you know, is there a non compete? Do I want to start another business? There's a whole variety of psychological as well as financial issues to to deal with if you plan on an exit, but it's generally rare for companies to go public in this space. It's the exception rather than rule. You have to have quite a large critical mass to think about going public. It's usually some sort of private exit and the question is finding the right strategic fit. Like what are the typical stages on the route to exit? Are there like benchmarks you hit on the way?

[20:56] benchmarks to hit in a food businessThey can be typically folks want to see, you know, you've got good traction in commercial outlets, you've got, you know, you've got a relationship with Walmart, you've got a relationship with Whole Foods, you know, whatever that is is they want to see that you're on a really good growth trajectory that that justifies them continuing to invest in growing the business and that you're going to get to the scale where there is a real clear vision of that's going to continue. There's a lot of the front end as you know, you've got to invest in manufacturing, you've got to invest in recipe development, you know, regulatory issues, it's costly at the front end. So you've got to have that clear pathway. I think the person you might want to chat with, I'm referring you to a lot of people, Tony. Yeah, You know, but you can kind of see a lot of what I do is connect folks to the experts in this area, you know, leveraging my network to say I think what you're doing fits with so and so because I can't hope to be an expert in all of these spaces myself. But what I can do is guide you to folks who can help you in a more in depth manner. So one of the folks you might chat with who's a fellow alum is Stu Sturmwasser. He's managing director of Green Circle Capital Partners. It's a boutique food venture firm, Mezzanine Investment Bank. I guess he'll probably argue with me over that exact definition. But they specialize in advising food and beverage entrepreneurs on exit strategy. They've got a really great playbook on what's the right timing White, when's the right stage? Who are the right kind of strategics to look for as an as an acquirer. And he knows a lot about this because he built a beverage brand and business himself that he sold and before he got into this space. And he also runs a seed fund that invests in food entrepreneurs and mostly technology, food technology tools, but also occasionally product oriented. And Stu's a great person to really give you an in depth answer about what's the right timing, who's the right fit, what's the right price? And the fully do like, is it like a platform where you have like 1 product and then you have a second product and you have a third product and then you sell to a bigger company where you usually just ride the one product?

[23:13] build a portfolio of productsI've rarely seen one product deals think that's probably a rarity. Folks like to see a product line. You know that you do have some, you know, different flavours, different formats. It's more than a one hit wonder because often that implies it's it might be a fad. What happens if consumers turn in a different direction? If you've got traction with a portfolio approach, it kind of hints that there's a real breadth of interest in that product line. You've got more than one opportunity if the product goes S the core product for whatever market reason. So I think this de tendency more to have a variety of flavors if it's a beverage, you know, complementary on the go versus a family size pack versus something that's suitable for a school lunch box. If it's, I don't know, a cookie product, for example. So you'll see some things like that. I think it's, in my experience at least, it's rare to see something that's just a one hit wonder be acquired. Gotcha. So typically the entrepreneur would have one product that does well and then they would expand to a couple of like adjacent, I mean. You really want to show there's some longevity and there's some different options for consumers. You know, if it's a baked good, maybe there's a gluten free, maybe there's a chocolate version, or there's a nut free option that reaches different consumers and gives you some bread. Gotcha, gotcha. Because I can see a lot of like marketing, maybe it's like a one off, you get a huge spike and then drops down to a more baseline steady level. So like how does the entrepreneur know whether it's one of those like one hit wonders? We're not. You can't know without going and talking to the market and trying to launch products and getting consumer feedback. I wish there was an easy answer to that because then so many more food entrepreneurs would be successful. It's just tough. You don't really know until you go out and talk to consumers and you put a product sample or a prototype in front of them and, and you get their feedback And sometimes things exceed your wildest dreams. It turns out there's way more traction than you thought there would be because it, there really is an unmet need and there really is, you know, product that maybe doesn't deliver the way consumers would like it to or there's no product at all. So fingers crossed you find something that's a really great opportunity, but the risk is also there's a lot of Me Too products out there. Folks have tried something, it hasn't gone over well. There's some attribute to the product, the mouthfeel isn't quite right or the flavour isn't quite there, or there's a better option or a cheaper option from a competitor and you really don't know until you go out and talk to consumers. So I guess like the consumer only eats so much in one day, so there's like a share of it that you want to establish over time. Yeah, you want something that they eat once a week or something. So then they'll. Continue We're in an environment now with, you know, GLP ones and

[26:07] effect of glp-1sthese weight control medications where consumption is going down. Food industry is worrying about, you know, snacking. Are consumers going to change their dietary habits? How are they going to change? What impact is that going to have on consumption patterns and therefore purchase patterns in the grocery store, you know, in the snack aisle, in the meat aisle, the dairy aisle, whatever. I'm if you're only eating a limited number of calories, you want those calories to have a really positive impact. So that's actually a big concern in the industry right now is where are purchase trends heading in a life where a lot of Americans are using GLP? That's so interesting. How about what the share of what the retailer is willing to put on the shelf? Like what are the retailers thinking when they're thinking we should put this cookie on the shelf rather than that cookie? Yeah. I mean, that's a whole other field in and of itself. And I'm going to refer you over to the food marketing program, the food industry marketing program to talk about that in more detail. It isn't. As I said earlier, it's not trivial to get onto a shelf and a lot of it is based around buying the space or having the relationship with the retailer to get onto that space, and that's a whole other field in and of itself. Are they usually trying to build a category so that every consumer could find at least something that they want? Stores, I think, clearly do that. The question is always consumer fatigue. You know, if you've got 25 or 30 different cereals, if not more on an aisle, does a consumer get overwhelmed by that choice? And there's certainly studies and arguments that say, yes, they do. There is an upper limit. Probably. It's why stores like Trader Joe's and ALDI are often very successful is because they narrow it down to just a few choices. It's easier to make that decision when it's like, do I want Rice Krispies? Also, do I want cornflakes? And you just pick the one. As opposed to I've got 5 different flavour variations of Rice Krispies, I've got 5 different Special K variations, I've got honey smacks, and I've got all of these other options. How do I make a choice? And it's easy to get overwhelmed in the grocery store environment. And so this sort of sense of narrowing where you just have a couple of options is one that's actually quite popular with consumers. And there's quite a few studies showing that it's decision fatigue. You want to be able to pick good options quickly and get on with your life. Yeah, that's so interesting. So let's turn to the conversation towards Cornell now. I went to the hackathon a couple of times, the food hackathon. You were gonna It's Yeah. It's great we remember seeing you there. Did you share more about the hackathon? But what? Is there? So Cornell has been running

[28:56] the food hackathon is so amazinghackathons for over 10 years now. There is a dedicated hackathon office run by my colleague Amy Stewart. And Tony, I know you've met Amy. And so actually this weekend is the Digital AG hackathon, which I'm going to go and mentor at this weekend. So the idea is behind all of the hackathons, get a bunch of really smart students together for a weekend. Have some real world challenges set by industry partners, problems that students can attack the family. Come in with minimal preparation. You're working probably with people you don't really know. You've got to learn how to work together. You've got to work rapidly to attack a problem, develop a solution, and then pitch that solution to a judging panel that happened. That's process starts on a Friday evening and runs through Sunday afternoon. The pitch competitions are usually on Sunday morning. So generally that's the structure. The hackathon takes that model and seeks to address particular issues in the food industry. Think about dairy product innovation. We work very closely with Dairy Management Inc, and they've set challenges for our students. How do we deliver products to women that address concerns about bone health? How do we incite consumers to think about products when they are, but they want something sweet and they are shying away from artificial sweeteners. Is honey a platform or an opportunity that resonates with them? And we've sort of seen that through hot honey. So what's the next hot honey? That's that was one of our challenges with the National Honey Board. So we set issues like this that are focused on food and beverage innovation. We asked the students to work together in teams of four to six or seven students apiece. We bring in, I think we had about 3035 industry mentors, many of whom are alums. They come in to work with the students as mentors and sounding boards as they develop their ideas and the concepts that they're going to pitch, help work through pitch development. And then there's the pitch competition. There is cash prizes up for grabs as well as opportunities to go to conferences to visit our partners. Last year the Upcycle Food Association gave us some student memberships in their association for one year. Memberships for the students. E Ship at Cornell has graciously donated tickets for Celebration Ezra, the Grow New York competition that I mentioned earlier, has donated tickets for winning teams so that they can continue that exploration of food entrepreneurship. You know, if the student team has a great idea that they pitch well, what happens next? How do you turn that into reality? If the students are interested in doing so, we have the tools to help them actually think about starting a business and building a prototype of that product concept. And so our hope is that we actually can courage A continuation beyond the hackathon weekend event itself. And we're starting to see some payouts in that approach in terms of helping support new student entrepreneurs. So it's an exciting, fun event. All of them are the hackathons cover a whole variety of topics. As they said, the Jag is this weekend. The animal health hackathon was last weekend. They do one in hospitality. I think there's a fintech 1. Amy can give you the full roster of what's planned for this year, but the Food Hackathon will be again this November. Anybody listening? If you're interested in getting involved, we're always looking for sponsors. We're always looking for mentors. We'll get you on the list. We'll talk to you about what's involved. If the dates work for you, come and join us. I always love how excited all the students are about the food hackathon. It's fun.

[32:35] students love the food hackathonIt really is. I mean, it's, I think part of it is that everybody has an opinion about the food they eat. And so that makes it attractive to say, oh, you know, I've got an idea here. I'd love to see if this is viable. How would I pitch this? And so I think that's part of it. Part of it as well, I think is that it's a little bit different technical hurdle to participate. It's not like you have to code. You don't need to be an engineer. We have one of the widest participations, if not the widest participation of any hackathon across campus. So the first everyone. Eats food. Everybody eats, everybody has an opinion about foods. The food hackathon in 23 we had the first ever students from the architecture, Arts and planning school AP participate. First ever student from the law school to participate in a hackathon. 10 years participated in the food hackathon and both those students were actually on one of the winning teams. I think they were on the grand prize winning team. We've continued to see students from every college and every school participate, which is really exciting. We don't want this to be just about the food scientists or just about people in nutrition. This should be an opportunity for students from all sorts of disciplines to get involved and hopefully get excited about what it's like to work in the food industry and what the opportunities are, because there are opportunities in all of these disciplines. You know, marketing needs people with those insights. They need design people. People need to think about packaging. We need to make these products. We, we need engineers, data analytics, you know, understanding both the manufacturing data, food safety data, product design data. I mean, there's so many areas where data analytics and data management are increasingly important in the food industry. We worry about supply chain, We worry about where are our raw materials coming from? Are they sustainably produced? Are they safely produced? You want a cookie? Well, we need flour, we need butter, we need eggs and so on. We need to deliver those products safely. The opportunity in the food industry for students interested in exploring that career opportunity, it's not just about food science. Yes, that's an important part, but it's broader than that. And it's really great when we see students from all of these other degree programs come and participate and get that exposure to what we're doing and the kinds of issues that the food industry is facing. So they show up at the hackathon. Like what is it like for the next couple of days? We publish the challenges in advance and we encourage the students to read them and come prepared, having thought at least a little bit about which challenge they would like to work on before the hackathon actually starts. Amy and her team host two team building sessions. If you, if you're in a hackathon, and this doesn't just apply to the food hackathon anyone. If you have fellow students who you want to work with and you're all admitted to the hackathon, you're absolutely free to form that team on your own. But we don't want to say to students, you must have a team to participate. Come and apply, come and and participate. Even if it's just you. We will help you form a team. And because there are other students who are in the same boat as you, and hopefully they want to work on the same challenge challenge that you do. So there's a couple of sessions where we help students form teams of four to six members, find the folks who are interested in the same problems you are. Then when you arrive on Friday evening for the kick off of the hackathon, we confirm your teams are all set, which area you're going to work on. And then Friday evening is usually a what's called a fast start workshop. It's how to approach problem solving, how to break down the challenges, how to think about what the deliverable is on Sunday morning in the pitch competition. And so we sort of work through that process with the students. There's dinner, they go off and start working. Saturday the teams are working on the the particular challenge, the the problem they're trying to solve, and they spend all day on that. We have roving mentors, as it were, mentors who walk around, check in with the teams. Can we act as a sounding board? Where do you need some technical help? Where do you need some business help? The mentor may have the expertise or may not, but hopefully there's somebody on the mentoring team that we can send over to you. Resource all the challenges. Also have data packets with background information and deeper dives into some of the the issues. So those are available to the students, but they basically spend all day Saturday working on that and then Saturday evening there's a pitch skills workshop. Most of the students have done presentations, but they haven't necessarily pitched in a competition or and particularly pitch day business concept. So the hackathons on Saturday evening will usually run a pitch skills workshop so that students get up to speed and have the basics of what they're aiming to pitch on Sunday morning. They'll spend Saturday evening working on refining their presentation, and then Sunday morning they come in and they pitch to the judges. They they try to sell the judges on their proposed solution. And the judges? And multiple layers too, right? Like. This is, I mean pitch in the number of teams there are in the size of the the hackathon. For the food hackathon we have usually around 30 teams in that ballpark. Wow. So we have three parallel sessions, 3 rooms of 10 teams running first thing on Sunday morning and the the winners of those, those team rooms as it were, then advance to the finals and they pitch again against. So the winners from each of the rooms, each of the tracks will will pitch a second time and then the judges will award prizes. Every hackathon is a tiny bit different and it's logistics depending upon the number of challenge themes, how the sponsors would like to organize it, the number of students participating. We have around 150 participating in the food hackathon. So that's why we get, you know, 28 to 32 teams every year. That's amazing. Is there like a more entrepreneurship, more of a culture of hackathons and entrepreneurship over time? Well, I think entrepreneurship

[38:53] more entrepreneurship at Cornellin general, we're really fortunate that we have, you know, the Entrepreneurship at Cornell platform. And I've been here at Cornell for I guess 10 years now in a couple of different roles. And there's I certainly see an uptick in the number of students who are interested in the food entrepreneurship as well as faculty interest. I think that's certainly increasing. I don't, I don't have as much a window as to what's happening in other areas, but it but it feels like there's a really robust ecosystem and it's growing and it's just great to work with all of these student entrepreneurs. I mean, they've, they're so creative and they have so many wonderful ideas. Yeah. So it, it's just a lot of fun being involved with that community and, and seeing the excitement. And if we can help in some small way, we love to do so, yeah. Do you also see like the the Cornell? Do you see also see like professors also getting involved in entrepreneurship?

[39:47] more professors become entrepreneursNo, we do. There's a lot of programs that that help support that. I mean, we have quite a few faculty entrepreneurs not just in food, but but certainly also in food. The the Center for Technology Licensing, CTL, holds faculty intellectual property rights that are created here at Cornell as part of their teaching and research responsibilities. And they're very supportive of them working with faculty to put those technologies to license those technologies to start up companies. That are frequently Co founded by the faculty member. We have two incubators here on the Ithaca campus, the Life Sciences Venture Center and the Praxis Venture Center, which are homes to several of those faculty LED startups. There's also a food innovation space at Geneva adjacent to Agrotech called the Technology Farm, which is where a lot of our food startups end up. So there's a really great ecosystem both to help faculty get off the ground, figure out the intellectual property rights, manage their time working with the company and advising them versus their core responsibilities to Cornell, help them find space, help them find funding, help support them along that pathway. Yeah, there's tons of great spin off companies if you go to the CTL website and for technology licensing, there's a directory of all of the startups to which they have licensed founding technology Cornell. Those companies may or may not have been Co founded by Cornell faculty member. Yeah, but it's but it's a great resource to see. Wow. You know, these are all the things that came out of Cornell technology. Reggie like what's your like personal path towards like this food the entrepreneurship world well.

[41:32] Rajni's path to food entrepreneurshipI don't know if you know this Tony, but I Co founded a company that was a spin off from the USDA in Peoria. I raised money in that business and did their strategic partnering. That was part of my role before I my job, before I came to Cornell. I also before doing that, I worked with a company that was a spin off from the University of Chicago and I was not a founder, but I joined them in their late stage and I negotiated their exit and their acquisition. It's a company in the fine chemical space. So I've done both the founding part of this as well as the exit side of the of this field. I also helped take a company public when I was on the industry side, but part of that pathway, even earlier, I worked for the University of Chicago's venture fund that was involved in spinning off companies and licensing University of Chicago technology. And that was really where I got my start in this space. So I've been interested in the space for a while. My interest, though, my fundamental interests are less about entrepreneurship and more about how do you commercialize early stage technologies and how do you enable that, whether it's, you know, through financial tools, management tools, strategic partnering and so on. How do you build that ecosystem to commercialize early stage technologies, whether they come from an academic or a corporate environment? So pretty much all of my career, particularly on the industry side, was focused on commercializing early stage technologies and innovations. I used to work for Ligand Pharmaceuticals and part of My Portfolio was managing all of the academic relationships and the technology acquisition. Those are the early stage ones, yeah, I mean. When I worked at Abbott, I was part of a team that commercialized the technology that came from Bob Gallows lab. And so really from the get go, my first job out of school when I graduated from Cornell was working on early stage technology in an industrial environment, but the technology came from an academic federal innovation and how do we get that commercialized? And the last 40 years of my career have been looking at various aspects of that problem. So Rajini, for the closing question, I always ask the guest, what's the kindest thing anyone's ever done for you?

[43:53] closing questionI don't know about the kindest thing, but I do want to give a shout out. I just wrapped up hosting a 2 1/2 day visit from colleagues from Takasago who came up and they brought me some beautiful flowers as a thank you this morning, which I'm now sitting on my desk. So that was just a really sweet thing for them to do and really not necessarily but but it was just a really kind gesture that was very thoughtful of them. So I will have some wonderful flowers at home this weekend. And so that was really very kind of them. Super. Thanks for sharing, Rodney. Yeah, my pleasure. It's great to talk to you, Tony.