Alex Socolof

Day 2

Summary

• Alex wants people to build their own equipment where we train them in mass. This is the first time ever that somoeone offered to support DIY production - could be a historical milestone for earth.
• Business model is financing

Notes

• Discussion on 3D printer - why? Industrial parts, rubber tires + tracks, and plastic lumber
• Ag equipment + Power
• Who are other player who can do this?

• Open Source no NDA. Not worried about NDAs. Spirit of coordination. Document that memorializes what we need. Next 30 days.
• Time in Africa?
• Doable: training people
• Energime University - training operation.
• 25-50 people trained to build machines
• Africa -
• R&D under education program.
• Site that is a training center.
• Product is a microfactory. Teaching people to do this.
• Container of steel comes in
• Make as much as we can locally.
• Light power. Charcoal and biomass.
• $200k budget. Target date of Jan or Feb. Ghana, South Africa, Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Guinea Bisseau, Senegal, Sierra Leone.
• Timeline. Training center. Train people in groups. Train the leaders. Builder of machines.
• Define a 12 person team that would train a group of poeple. How many people would replicate a facility - 4.
• Where is There.
• Build here and ship to there.
• Small demo here. CNC torch table.
• R&D in the USA.
• Define what is necessary. Job 1 and Step 1. Define $200k demo.
• $10k ship, $20k materials, $20k my time, and $150k
• 1 day extreme build with 50 people.
• Right now most food is subsistence farming. One of the largest problems - with heat - food spoilage. So much of crop is wasted.
• Revenue model - principally - financing the people who build equipment. They will not have money. Financing of people who mechanize. Businesses that produce the equipment and produce at scale. Beyond that - the training model - training will have to be financed. Financing business model. Perpetual training model - need to train about 1M people.
• Sequence and timeline. Financially what it costs.
• Next step - working blueprint for $200k budget.
• What is the business model? Financing.
• Who are other groups to do ag aquipment? Others make equipment in scale. Will cost significantly more money. There won't be any interest in teaching the means of production.
• Not "buy tractors" but people making them.
• Users will be the builders - they just need to be able to produce.
• Just do a simple machine.
• Plant, plow,
• Pack containers, ship to Ghana
• People build it.
• Aquaponic facilities. Showed our greenhouse.
• And https://www.facebook.com/groups/398759490316633/permalink/932245250301385/
• Budget for $200k.

Day 1

• https://energimeuniversity.org/about/ - partner; not open source
• Got to go over one country under government auspices, that it works, and doesn't fail. Scalable, etc.
• 2 issues - open source.
• "Taking machinery to scale"
• We could do something meaningful.
• If you can demonstrate you have enough now, then we can go forward.
• "How do you convince your funders if this stuff is open source?" -M. "That is the problem."
• We just need the equipment to roll it out.
• What is the effort for commercialization compared to first prototype?
• Light mechanization. Vs heavy mech - we need more pro
• Move a little bit to the middle? -
• "Assuming we have a team and we can get it done"
• "Capital makes everything go faster". Not come and go, but more.
• "I've got people that trust me and know I can get stuff done, and some have real capital".
• Power is a great issue. Etc.
• Dig dirt, harvest, move things, etc.
• Are we ready for prime time or is it not complete enough. Is there enough there.

Questions:

what is *Move a little bit to the middle?

• "Assuming we have a team and we can get it done"

Proof of Concept

• 1 day build.
• Proof of Concept Project
• Trying to figure out if we can do it.
• Demonstrate that we can do it.
• We will build it in front of you. Labor by poor people.
• Site, piece of land.
• Sooner than later. Here's what we can build in front of their eyes.
• Take a container of equipment.
• We need to come to an understanding that we can get to collaboration. What I'm proposing and what to do about that. He represents more or less what I do.
• One thing to do this, one to train people, one to finance.
• Marry out expectations, meet in the middle. If compromise OS.
• There is a difference in becoming OS, and coming in to wreck my shit. Non-compete clause with open source equipment.
• Non-compete clause for All of Africa.
• Here is the issue I have with open source. Issue: when you commit capital, you need protection. "As long as I can get my lane, and you can get your lane". Why would you fear me if I have no capital.
• "If I finance your shit, I don't want you to get capital from someone else"
• "What appeal - heart, spirit, etc. But I'm not as far along as I could be."
• "If I become your advocate, I will come at it with everything I got" - "If you can execute, then you are good."
• Initially - 14 countries - Chad, Mali.
• Jan or Feb demo build. If demo goes well - different than anything else. First go-around is executing. One thing about Africa - for lack of a better word - "it's almost like when you say something, they want to call bullshit on it - show me that you can do it".
• Pilot - we make a presentation on something that I would like to do.
• We have a high confidence of what to do. Teaching - if I want to run a teaching enterprise.
• Front end piece - training people. Also back end - continuing support.
• Competitive advantage of Alex - is having capital - large pool dedicated to the area. Second advantage: if the training is linked to Alex - then it's.
• It's all open source. Why.
• Sometimes meeting in the middle may do it.
• I do know that when your subconscious massages it - then you will have an answer. Help me the same way that I can help you. You can be my partner if you want to. I can protect you on the training side.
• If I weren't open source, I'd get there faster.
• No question if it can be done - but how fast.
• If I can be harnessed - without harming the capital that supports it. Can't wreck your partner - it's bad business.

Advisory Content

• What I want you to do is think about it. If it is good - or antithetical. If not - that's all it is.
• Let's see if we can figure it out. Then go another round.
• Jan or Feb - they are ready. They may need to bring other people in, or we pivot to support Alex fully.
• It comes down to if it's ready for prime time.
• Whether we can do CEB, we can still do warehouses for refrigeration.
• If we can build it, great - if not - we do something else.
• https://energimeuniversity.org/executive-staff/

Communications

Oct 16, 2018

Yes, I was planning to submit a pilot writeup today. I've been swamped getting our California operations off the ground - we are planning five 3D printer builds there in November - in survival mode as we have no runway.

In short, I'm thinking of basic tractor with power take off and a spader implement, which is the most advanced soil prep technology available. But including 3D printed tires, as including 3D printing from waste thermoplastics could be a great synergy as the tech is available. We can deliver waste-to-usable 3D printing filament.

The idea here is a simple 50 person build - in one day - of a complete tractor from scratch using 4 of my staff, and 50 unskilled or semiskilled Africans. I understand that Ghana has a significant shop culture - so this actually works to our advantage.

Second, I will include a more ambitious package that I believe we can get the technology for as well - gasifier where farmers harvest biomass, pelletize it, and burn it partially to make pelletized charcoal as a flowable fuel. This goes against the prevailing religion of electric vehicles, but I don't believe that there is any more sustainable way to power machines than charcoal - if the biomass is grown regeneratively and is part of an integrated ecosystem. For the pilot, it would be impressive to stake that farmers can not only build their machines - but produce the fuel for it. If this works, then we all will have achieved a major milestone in the economic evolution of humanity towards resilient economies, which is Nobel peace prize material.

The timeline for basic tractor can be March, 2019, pending 4 months of full time development with a staff of 4, including posting an incentive challenge for ancillary technical contributions via HeroX (offshoot of the X Prize). This would work with our schedule as I need until end of November to stabilize the California operations. This is synergistic with our current development priorities of both the microtractor and waste-to-filament 3D printing.

What are your thoughts? I think just the microtrac + spader is a killer already - and the charcoal part would blow this out of the water. I'll see how the numbers look for this when I get you the details tonight.

Marcin