The Secret to Connecting Food Supply Chains

Transcript

• Steve Statler 0:00

  Welcome to the Mr. Beacon Podcast coming to you from Boston, Massachusetts. I'm in a hotel room with my trusty podcast microphone. This week, we're going to be talking about the secret to connecting food supply chains and all sorts of other product supply chains using starfish. So Starfish is a brand new company. It came out of the team that bought you IBM Food Trust. So some IBM alumni who have really in depth experience in the world of traceability and supply chains, Blockchain, GS, one standards, all these things that are basically the key to being compliant to food safety standards and to if you are a retailer or a manufacturer or someone that sells software to Those companies, if you're interested in end to end traceability, seeing all the way up the supply chain, all the way down stream, connecting customers with manufacturers, then it's relevant too. But probably the most pressing thing is those of you that are struggling with how am I going to share the data with the people that ship me things, or the people I ship things to. It's a nightmare, and it's super complicated, and starfish makes it simple. And Wiggs Civitillo is the CEO and co founder of Starfish, and we've got him here to explain how it all works. The Mr. Beacon ambient IoT podcast is sponsored by Wiliot, bringing intelligence to every single thing with Welcome back to the Mr. Beacon podcast. Things have changed a bit since we last saw each other.

  Wiggs Civitillo 1:58

  They have indeed. Yeah, thanks for having me, Steve. Well,

  Steve Statler 2:02

  I mean, you've gone from working for one of the most established, biggest, oldest companies in the world to one of the youngest. And I think what you're you're doing with starfish, is gonna turn you into a big company, a really big company, actually, but it's definitely the opposite end of the spectrum from the hundreds of 1000s of people that were your colleagues. Tell us about starfish and what made you leave this amazing institution in high tech and decide to jump in with both feet and do your own thing? Yeah,

  Wiggs Civitillo 2:39

  it's a it's a difficult decision to leave such an incredible company and leave such a group of people that I really loved and always, you know, supported me and worked really well with I think IBM is an incredible company, and I I'm really pleased to say that even even having left, I've still maintained so many good connections and so many good friendships, but still, leaving is taking a leap of faith, and especially starting a new business, is a very big leap of faith that that you really have to be confident in and and so, you know, my my story and recap the very short version, but you know, I, I've been in the software world for about 13 years, building different types of software products. And I was in the financial space for a while. The past six and a half years, I was at IBM, where I had the opportunity to build a number of incredible software products within IBM software division, including all different types of software for supply chains. So we did fulfillment services, we did Procurement Services, we did inventory optimization, even getting into environmental intelligence and sustainability. And IBM's offerings in these spaces is incredible, right? You've got brilliant people, brilliant assets coming out of IBM Research. But over the years, my true passion was for product called IBM Food Trust, which was incubated within big blue right? It was one of the startups that was created within IBM at a time when IBM was making big investment into the blockchain space. And this was a use case where, using Blockchain, everyone in the food supply chain could upload their data and have it shared in a trusted way. And it was an incredible run over the past, you know, six years of building this business based on return on investment, right? There were no mandates in place. There was no no requirement for traceability. But companies that could see the benefit of being able to trace every unit of products really invested and saw incredible, incredible gains, incredible returns on that investment. Now, specifically for listeners that aren't as familiar with traceability, just an explanation of what traceability is. We're talking about the digital flow of information, of data to reflect the physical flow of products. Now this happens quite a bit today. All. Ready, right? And if I were a supplier and I was shipping romaine lettuce to Steve manufacturing plan or Steve retail location, Steve grocery I would ship that product to you. I'd let you know somehow, digitally, that I'm shipping you 20 pounds of romaine lettuce. You would pay me for 20 pounds of romaine lettuce, and we're all good now, that scenario is not actually traceability, because at the end of the day, we don't know which lettuce you received. We don't know which lettuce was shipped. And that could have been five lots of lettuce. It could have been one lot of lettuce, again, we don't know what lettuce it was, which is really important if there's a recall or a situation where you need to identify where your products flow. So in a recall scenario, for example, if we have someone that got sick from that lettuce, we don't know where the lettuce came from, and we don't know where other bad lettuce may have gone. So at the end of the day, we have to throw out all of the lettuce. We lose all the opportunity to have sold and earn a margin on that lettuce. So your store is affected. My Store has to pay for the recall, and then consumers are concerned because they might not be willing to go buy lettuce because we didn't know where the bad lettuce was in the first place. How are we going to know that the lettuce on shelves today is actually safe? So there's an erosion of consumer trust. Now traceability is the idea that you can trace every single unit of product as it flows through the supply chain. So if you have a single carton or clamshell of lettuce, we actually know where it came from. And if there's a bad situation like E coli or listeria, we know exactly where that bad product would have gone. So so that's the foundation of traceability, and that's one of the benefits of traceability. We saw benefits in food safety. We saw benefits of reducing food fraud, we saw benefits of supply chain efficiency, where you could drive more efficiency with your logistics, your forecasting, or demand forecast for different products. And then finally, you know, the most exciting part is the consumer engagement right now, with the story of every single unit as it flows to the supply chain, you can tell the story of where your product came from, right? Where did the beans in my cup of coffee actually come from? As opposed to some generic marketing story that would say this is where they might have come from, right? And as you sip that coffee, you actually get the gratification of knowing what farm or what Co Op they actually came from. So you can really tell a compelling story. This helps with marketing teams. It helps build a brand that is sustainable, right, that actually adheres to the values that you know, these these brands are claiming, and backs it up with real data. So we built IBM Food Trust on a foundation of this return on investment six years, and we built what became the largest blockchain based traceability network in the world. Now that's a wonderful claim, and I'm really proud of that, and I'm proud of what we built. But traceability still has yet to be widely adopted. It's difficult to put labels on every single unit of products, right? It's difficult to scan those labels every time they come through a distribution center or through a grocery store, right, or through a manufacturing plan, and I will do a shout out to to Willie, right. There are technologies that are making that a lot easier, like IOT or ambient IoT tags, that can automate that process, but it takes investment, and it's difficult to do now, the landscape in 2000 22,022 in January fundamentally changed when the FDA finalized the Food Safety Modernization Act, Rule 204, D, the FISMA food traceability rule. So officially, it went into federal law that all food companies have to now trace their products, and if they don't trace their products, they're subject to criminal and civil penalties, right? It's actually a law that has teeth, right? And companies need to adhere to it. Not only that, it affects companies internationally that ship products to the US. So if you have a product that is on the affected list, then you could have your imports blocked at the border. So this, this really does pose a risk to food companies. So the landscape has changed fundamentally, and we're looking at a dramatic surge in demand for traceability capabilities, traceability technology. Many of the companies out there are in well positioned to do really well to support food businesses on this journey. And the exciting thing is, once you have all this traceability data, you can generate such a stronger return on investment for your businesses. So faster recalls the FDA can do their jobs better. We can save lives. We can reduce the impact of foodborne illness. And you know, we both know there have been huge, huge articles, right? Huge recalls, very prominent in the news recently across deli meats, across butter, eggs, right?

  Steve Statler 9:34

  Hamburgers, onions, billions of dollars, billions of dollars coming off the valuation of some of the most revered companies in the world, and we've found we don't have the traceability information to know why people are dying, why people lots, 1000s of people are getting sick, because we don't have the traceability information and. Traceability is something that is a win, win, win. For producers, for consumers, for retailers, they can charge more for their products with traceability information. They can waste less if they have the traceability information. And you know, there's a moral imperative to not kill people with food, and we can just have so much better experience enjoying our food if we know where it's come from. So what is the gap that is stopping us getting to this win, win, win, and how is your company starfish, planning to fill it? Excellent.

  Wiggs Civitillo 10:43

  The the gap is traceability requires data to be shared between every company in the supply chain, right? And and that's a difficult task, right? Many companies can collect what they do about every product they ship. Right? If I'm a distributor, I receive a product, I ship a product, and I I need to track which products I receive and I ship, otherwise I might be shipping the wrong product to the wrong person, and that's that's an issue. But I need to also, with this federal law, share that data with the people that I ship it to. So on a daily basis, I ship to different people, and it's an evolving landscape, right? And it's very difficult to share that data in a trusted way, right? And so I need to share what I do with each item, but I don't want to share what I do with the other items, right? Because if I ship to 10 different grocery stores, every grocery store should not see what I ship to the other grocery stores because they compete with one another. So this data sharing is imperative for traceability to work, but data sharing in a trusted way is really difficult, because you need to identify every product as it's shared. So starfish is meant to address this challenge, right? Meant to address this gap where data exists in many siloed, disparate systems. It's a very fragmented marketplace, but starfish is a platform that simplifies this data sharing across the food supply chain, acting as a universal foundation for seamless integration, right? And it's not just seamless integration, it's a trusted integration where only the right data flows to the right person, right? It's a very sophisticated piece of technology that does a very simple thing, right? It gives the data to the right people at the right time, so that they can be compliant with the federal law, but also see a return on investment of traceability data understand what happened to their products at different locations through the supply chain. So on the technical side, we actually provide intelligent connectors that translate data from these disparate systems into the standardized GS one protocol, which ensures this consistent and secure communication between all supply chain partners, no matter what their existing technology is.

  Steve Statler 12:51

  And so GS one, this is the standards body that we've featured. We've had representatives on the podcast, but for people that have are not aware that these are the people that basically define this, the standards for all of the barcodes that you see on every product that you're you're buying, what, what is the standard of theirs that you're using specifically

  Wiggs Civitillo 13:14

  so GS one has a standard called EPCIS, and EPCIS is essentially a way to identify these critical tracking events when they happen in the supply chain. So when we tell the story of the product and we do traceability, it really is telling a story right, when was a product harvested right from the original ingredients? When? When were they shipped downstream, and when were they received? When were they transformed, maybe multiple ingredients into a certain final good, and that final good was shipped to a place where it was sold or consumed or served right in a restaurant. So the story of the who, what, why, where, when, is the key data elements that fills into this story, and the GS one EPCIS standard is actually fully compatible with the federal law and the FDA laid out a standard of critical tracking events and key data elements to tell this story of every product as it flows to the supply chain. How

  Steve Statler 14:09

  is this different to what's out there today? Because EDI has been around for donkeys years. There's advanced shipping notices, there's bill of laden all that sort of malarkey. How is, how does this relate to all of that?

  Wiggs Civitillo 14:25

  Yeah, this, it's complimentary, but it is unique and independent, right? So what, what's traditionally been shared, and I mentioned this earlier, is the information necessary to track inventory and identify when payment should be issued, right? EDI allows for companies to get paid for the products that they ship and Bill of ladings, right? Show, show kind of the contents, right? And the actual additional information about what's what's in these packages and how they flow through the supply chain. Traceability data shows certain events at different points in time that fill in the gaps. Right? You may know that you ultimately received. Product. And you know, when, when a product is received at a restaurant, you pull out the sheet, and you tick off the boxes say, I received X, Y and Z, and we're good. And you throw out the piece of piece of paper, and you issue payment, right? And that's, you know, that's what a lot of these existing systems are designed to do, which is facilitate the business transactions, the actual money exchange, the inventory tracking, traceability is one step further right, which tells the where, the when and the how of what's happening through the supply chain, and this is beyond the four walls of your company, right? So you know, typical visibility is just transactional documents and transactional data with partners that is relevant only to your company, right? And in cases, in some cases, traceability data can show the full chain of custody or the full history of a product as it flows.

  Steve Statler 15:49

  So who, who are you targeting as customers? Who are your customers? What's the persona?

  Wiggs Civitillo 15:55

  Yeah, so this is a really unique thing about starfish that differentiates us in this marketplace, and this is a realization of six and a half years of lessons learned with IBM Food Trust being a traceability software vendor in the market. And that learning is there are incredible vendors out there that specialize in many different parts of the industry. However, those vendors are having a very hard time sharing data between platforms, and if I have, let's say, a retailer like a Walmart using something like IBM Food Trust, and Walmart has suppliers that are using another supplier or another technology system. If Food Trust is not connecting to every one of those individual systems, then there's no way to actually share that data. So there's a huge gap in the industry from a data sharing perspective, where the existing solutions are not currently sharing that necessary data that is required by federal law, but also required to realize the return on investment that these companies can realize from traceability data. Now the two primary reasons I think this is happening is number one, in some cases, these solution providers compete with one another, so it's not actually in their interest to share data with a competitor that might see additional value or provide better value to a competing solution. The second reason, which is a stronger reason, is there are disparate systems that are very complex. There are some legacy systems, and there's a lot of inconsistency in the market, even EDI, which is a very well known and well adopted standard, has so much disparity in the type of messages this formatting of the messages right. ERP systems are very, very inconsistent. They add quite a bit of value in a company's operations. But these enterprise resource planning solutions don't always treat data in the same way. So the difficulty of sharing data isn't possible in a trusted way unless all that data is normalized to a consistent format. So starfish is approach is actually to serve the technology businesses of the industry, right? And in order to do that in a trusted way, we are completely neutral, right? Our goal is to serve them. We will never compete with their business, right? We will never take any business away from them. Our customers are these technology businesses, where I believe I can add quite a bit of value through starfish to these businesses to say today, they can't share data with all the supply chain partners with starfish, they'll be able to tap into the entire network regardless of what solution other trading partners of these food companies use. So this solution provider that we serve now can tell their customers, hey, we can connect you with everyone, because we use starfish, right? And by connecting them with everyone, they can provide their customers a better service. They can add this traceability data to other auxiliary services like product quality assessments, like inventory management and other types of inventory optimization that they offer to their end food companies. So starfish is being treated as an embedded microservice. We're just a small piece on the back end that provides trusted data sharing and trusted data processing. The data processing is something that we learned how to do over the course of six years, and has been tested and validated by a lot of the largest food companies in the world, including Walmart, Carrefour, Nestle and others and and this is, this is the system that we're looking to provide. And fortunately, you know, we talked a little bit about the decision to leave IBM. IBM is supportive of this concept, right? We bring value to IBM Food Trust, just like we bring value to every other solution provider in the industry. So we have the support, and we've signed an official partnership with IBM that's helping support our credibility of the service that we're providing to the industry. Congratulations,

  Steve Statler 19:36

  that's that's pretty amazing, quite an achievement to kick things off with. So how would you distinguish what you do relative to IBM, food, trust, which, which, which? I think you know the the promise was always, it's blockchain, it's EPCIS, and therefore it's interoperability. Be and, you know, I could say the same thing about the folks that trust well with food, food logic is it. And feel free to set me straight here. But it seems almost like those platforms, in order to provide value, started doing more and more within the domain of the customer, the grocery company or the OEM. And in a way, what you're doing is less, and you're just kind of doing more of the connector, rather than the enterprise application piece that, you know, they, they were big companies, and they needed to add a lot of value, and so they ended up sort of having all this extra stuff, which then made it harder for them to do the interoperability stuff. Is that a fair observation? Or, if not, tell me where I got it wrong. It's

  Wiggs Civitillo 20:59

  very fair. Yeah, it's, it's spot on. And, and we, we're providing a service for a niche in the industry, very similar to the Food Safety world, traceability is important, but it's just one part of the puzzle, right? Companies like trustwell, like I trade, these companies, have very diverse sets of services and value that they bring their customers, right? And they they serve their customers on a wide range of fronts. Traceability is one of those fronts, and building complex, difficult to maintain, connectors, is not really going to be a focus or a core focus of these companies, because they have so many other ways to add value to their customers, right? They have other focal areas. So a part of this is starfish taking on a very difficult task for these companies that they don't really need to do and that, you know, they would all build themselves point to point connections. It would be the same connectors as all of their competitors. So investing in this area is not really strategic for any of these businesses, where the service we can provide can be embedded just a piece of their offering and feed data into additional value add they can offer their customers. So

  Steve Statler 22:05

  it sounds like you're going to be selling with those companies, or maybe not even in the conversation. Maybe, do you see yourself selling with them, or do you see yourselves sort of in the background, just helping them deploy a FISMA 204 the Food Safety Modernization Act 204 traceability and just being able to have the Lego blocks that are everyone's using so that they can snap and click these things together.

  Wiggs Civitillo 22:35

  Yeah, we're happy to be in the background, right? We, we are happy to support there is a scenario where, you know, I have a lot of partners that have already signed on, and I would like to help advertise their services. So if food companies come to me again, I have a commitment not to compete with the existing providers of the industry, but I can provide referrals. I can provide connections to whoever's best suited to meet their needs. So for example, in the seafood space, there are a host of seafood traceability providers that might be a good fit for a certain customer that processes seafood, and I can help facilitate that connection and help that end food company get what they need in the most efficient way possible. So so I do hope to help help improve the visibility and awareness of these solution providers as a part of the service and partnership that we're forming with them.

  Steve Statler 23:21

  And I guess the reality is that supply chains are enormous networks that stretch all the way upstream, all the way downstream from the manufacturer to the consumer, and so there tend to be very few companies that dominate end to end. And there's different size, you know, if you're a small farmer, you're probably going to be using something different to a massive producer of berries that's on in every supermarket. So size, where you are in the supply chain, the different kinds of products, there's going to be a lot of diversity. I'd like you to comment on that. And also, what the other thing I want to move on to is kind of the use cases that you're prioritizing, you know, from a willyop perspective, you know, my dream is that we can see a cold chain and look at temperature over time for lettuce and fruit, so that we can move beyond the 19th, 20th Century, used by best, by dates, and have something that's dynamic and can really help us reduce waste. But that's slightly different to FISMA 204 where temperature doesn't even come into it. It's really just the matter of having a lot code that is shared, uniform, uniformly up and down. So where, how are you sequence? These, and are you going to try and do all of them, or just a few of these use cases?

  Wiggs Civitillo 25:05

  Yeah, yeah. So initially, the main focus of starfish is supporting FISMA 204, right? Companies have a little over a year to become compliant with this rule, and we're going on the third year of the allocated time for companies to become compliant. Many need this service. They need to accelerate, and it's going to be a key focus of the industry over the next year to help help companies get there. Now the benefit is traceability data. And traceability data sharing provides a trusted foundation for sharing of additional data attributes that can be really valuable. So you mentioned temperature data, right? There is also sustainability data, right, product carbon footprint, right, in many cases, scope, three emissions, right, the emissions of a company's supply chain partners is relatively unknown, and it's very difficult to collect, because companies may not have a trusted way of sharing that at scale. They may not have a trusted way of calculating what the actual impact is. Mass balance, right? Is not a standardized calculation methodology. And again, you know, I happy to speak on more of these terms, and I apologize to use all these terms, but there's a lot of unknown in what should become coming from primary data now, with this foundation of traceability data that shows where a product flows, and an entitlement system that allows for data to be shared for every item that's that's, that flows through the supply chain, we actually have a foundation where data can be shared in a trusted way without sharing too much data, right? And that's, that's a key aspect, right? Is even with temperature data, you don't want to share temperature data for products that are not shipped to these these parties, right? So the benefit is, starfish is building an engine that provides trusted entitlements, right? Who should have what data? And once we have this foundation built, we start expanding to use cases where temperature is very valuable to identify a potential product degradation curve, right? How does a product degrade over time, and when would it be, as you mentioned, unusable, right? Now, if we have traceability data and we know that a product sat in a warehouse for five days or has been sitting in a warehouse for five days, we can actually identify and calculate automatically dwell time limits within certain facilities or certain nodes of a supply chain to say, this product should only ever be in this facility for a maximum of three days. Otherwise, when it reaches a grocery store shelf, it will only have 15 hours to be sold before it might go bad, and it'll last less long for on a consumer's shelves right, or in a consumer's refrigerator. So understanding that for dynamic supply chain, product allocations and alerts can be extremely valuable. Not only combining the history of the product right, if we know exactly when it was harvested, exactly when it was cooled and packed and shipped, we know the entire life of the product. We have that as a foundation. We can also combine that with temperature, with humidity, with vibrations, right? And interesting enough, vibrations is a leading degradation impact, right? You know, the actual vibrations of of the crate, right, on the on the truck, can actually lead to higher degradation, in some cases, than other factors that folks might expect. So that's a really exciting thing, and that's huge, because that helps us reduce food waste by spoilage. Right? It helps reduce food waste by expiration, or food waste by products not being able to be sold on shelves. Right? Which? Which is a real positive impact for our supply chains.

  Steve Statler 28:37

  Are you just going to be dealing with APIs, or do you envisage providing a dashboard which is kind of like the access control permissions list for each of the players, so that, you know, a Walmart could say, well, I this is the information I want to share back upstream, because the data can potentially go two ways, right. It can go downstream and it potentially could go upstream. Do you envisage providing a dashboard for people, and do you envisage providing data upstream and downstream?

  Wiggs Civitillo 29:14

  Yeah, there are a few different experiences right from a user interface that will facilitate, right? So one, one is actually, because we serve the solution providers of the industry, we can actually provide embeddable views, right? If a customer wants a FISMA report generator, we can go ahead and just give them what's called an iframe and have them insert that into their experience, and that makes it easy for them to present a capability backed by starfish, but presented and white label it as their own right and and so there, there are quite a few different experiences that will facilitate on that front, all embedded to support our technology partners. And in some cases, those will get down to the end user. In some cases that may down the road include, let's say, a consumer. Or application where you scan a QR code and you see the story of your product, and again, that's a really fun experience. Now, on the technical side, we will be building dashboards that include a very sophisticated view of all of the entitlements that have been granted and a full auditable history of every data element, because if you're sharing your data again, you need to know that it's handled in a trusted way, that it's not being shared with the wrong people. So you should be able to view all of the data you have for every product and understand where it came from, where it was processed, where it's been shared, and understand everything that's happening to your data. So a full audit history of every data element that's been processed in the system and analysis of those data elements, and even using modern tools like artificial intelligence machine learning, to identify potential instances of data that could be wrong, that could be inaccurate, identifying anomalies right if someone accidentally entered three extra zeros into the system, or they leaned on the computer or keyboard, and you know, had a few extra characters in there, our system will be able to help other companies identify instances of bad quality data, which is really important to make this useful. So

  Steve Statler 31:13

  will you be what data will you be storing, and what data will you just be passing up and down? Most

  Wiggs Civitillo 31:20

  of the data we process is passed up and down. So security is a really key, key aspect of what we're doing, and it's paramount to our success. My team will never be able to see any company's data, right? We don't even have the ability to see the data. The system processes the data automatically. Every company that participates in the system and every company, through their solution provider, controls their data right? They own the data, and they control how the data is shared. In some cases, we can even create custom rules on how data should be shared and create restrictions or really handle data exactly as they see fit. So again, the data has no visibility. It's all flowing directly through the system to the other partners. But on the back end, to automate all of the entitlements, you do need to store information on where the data should be going, right? So the system itself actually processes a what we call an entitlement, an entitlement map that shows who should have the data, when and where should the data be shared. And that's really important to creating automated data sharing that's a huge efficiency, as opposed to someone going in and saying, I'm going to share each data element one at a time to each of these different supply chain trading partners.

  Steve Statler 32:30

  Okay, so you won't have the data about a given Punnett of strawberries in sprouts, but you would have the access control metadata that describes the flow of the data and who's allowed to see what and what data should be shared.

  Wiggs Civitillo 32:51

  Yeah, yeah. At a simple level, it's, it's almost like a handshake, right? When, when we have someone that ships a product to someone else, right, that creates a handshake to allow for the data to flow right as it should, and when someone receives a product from someone upstream that allows data to flow to that trading partner, and all of this feeds into what's required by the FDA to track products and will be fed into the FDA when there's a recall to accelerate and really improve upon their ability to identify what products are bad, what products are good and what products should be removed from shelves. So the future that we're seeing here is such an efficient way to handle recalls that many of these drawn out recalls that get people sick over weeks or months are reduced to hopefully just a couple of days.

  Steve Statler 33:35

  Is what you're producing. Could it be seen as an optional alternative to EDI,

  Wiggs Civitillo 33:42

  hopefully a compliment to EDI. But you know, the two systems do work together. Now. We're integrated with EDI providers as well, right? And in some cases, we have key players in the industry, like Kroger that have sent out dear supplier letters stating that they would like data to flow into their systems for all products, not just the FDA required products, and that data should be flowing in EDI format. Now that's a bit of a difficult ask for any customers that are not using EDI format. So part of the value that starfish provides is actually taking data from all of these different ERP systems, GS, one, EPCIS systems, spreadsheets, wherever it comes from, and we can actually handle that data translation into the EDI format. So I do view starfish as complementary to EDI and hopefully feeding into support for customers like Kroger that have invested quite a bit in maintaining an EDI system and making sure that it's meeting all of their business needs. And how does

  Steve Statler 34:41

  starfish position versus a technology like blockchain? You've been in the business of selling blockchain for years. Interested in this? Yeah.

  Wiggs Civitillo 34:52

  So thank you for the question. It's one that I've been on a personal learning journey over the past six years. Also. It by saying, I think blockchain is a pretty incredible technology, right? It provides a very secure way to share and process data and can be very efficient and scalable. Now, some of the lessons we learned with Blockchain in the food space were a difficult reality that blockchain to be secure, data has to be submitted directly to a blockchain ledger, and the best way to do that is actually to have food companies hosting their own nodes, right, their own trust anchors that would process and provide that security. Right? This distributed ledger should be distributed among many trusted parties in the industry. Now that's not something that food companies have the technology resources, nor the margins to justify and in many cases, food companies need to focus on their operations. They need to focus on things outside of using this fancy, somewhat complicated technology that takes a lot of time to maintain and maintain data records within. So the lesson learned in simple terms, is that the food industry today does not have the margins nor the the resources to justify the use of blockchain, despite honoring and supporting the use of IBM Food Trust use of blockchain, right? That's wonderful, and once the data is on that platform, I believe it is very secure, but we've made the decision with starfish not to use blockchain because we don't think the industry is ready for it today. Maybe someday we'll get there, and I think that would be wonderful to get there, but we can still handle data sharing in a very secure way. Some of the new standards, like post, post quantum cryptography, are examples of ways that even new systems can adhere to cryptographic hashing of data in a secure way, without needing to use blockchain, but also still adhering to the best practice for data security that's publicly available. Okay,

  Steve Statler 36:49

  well, answered, and I really endorse your strategy there. What about data carriers? So there's lots of different data carriers. There's legacy barcodes, there's 4d data matrix barcodes, there's RFID, and of course, there's Bluetooth ambient IoT, and then coming in the future, there's going to be Wi Fi, ambient IoT, battery free stickers that talk directly to the radios that are in all of the Cisco access points. And also, in a couple of years, there's going to be 5g advanced ambient IoT stickers that are talking to the cellular radios that are in the telematics units in trailers and trucks, and 5g private 5g networks and all of that stuff. So I'm sure people's eyes are rolling with all of that. But what's your strategy with regard to data carriers? I

  Wiggs Civitillo 37:52

  think it's all wonderful, right? It's all the future of the industry, right? As long as it's done in a cost efficient way, right? These can drive insane efficiencies and how we collect data, how we share data, less

  Steve Statler 38:04

  labor, better visibility, more data sharing. But also kind of you've got your Heinz alphabetic soup of technologies to worry about. That's

  Wiggs Civitillo 38:16

  right, that's right. And the biggest fear is, you know, that none of the data speaks to one another, right? That it's all different data formats, different standards. I I'm a real believer in the standards bodies of the industry, right? Gs one is setting a gold standard of how this how this data should be processed, how it should be handled. They're actively evaluating, working with these technology companies and and I think if they're successful, then we'll, we'll find a way to use this data across all different companies. If we're unsuccessful, then we'll have a whole bunch of technology that just doesn't add a whole lot of value, because it's all too disparate, right? And I think it's, it's a, it's a risk of going down that path, right, depending on how this technology is built. But if we're successful, then this will drive amazing benefits to our supply chain right by, you know, identifying products and where the products are, and better prediction of inventory, better allocation of inventory, getting products to where they need to be at the right time to be of maximum benefit to you or I right the the average consumer that needs a meal, that needs something to eat, or wants something that they'd like to purchase. So I'm very optimistic. I'm very excited. And I think, you know, the standards bodies of the industry are actually doing incredible work on this front, very actively to get us in the right direction.

  Steve Statler 39:35

  Very good. Well, I, you know, just a few words on my perspective on this, I think that the ambient Internet of Things essentially the next generation of RFID radio frequency identifiers that are using the inexpensive radios that are already everywhere around us, the Wi Fi, the cellular, the Bluetooth as an alternative. To big, expensive radios that have limited presence, these next generation radios, they're everywhere. They're in people's homes, their washing machines, their fridges. They're in trucks and trailers and so, you know, I think companies like, like the company I work for for a day job. You know, our job is to use the GS one standards to interface with serial GTINs and have the ability to associate traceability lot codes that conform to the FDA requirements. So that's kind of our job. And then it sounds like your job is to make sure that the metadata, the data about the products, is passed around. So if we can provide lower cost, more reliable, more automated ways of sharing the data that's associated with fish and strawberries and meat, what we need is companies like yours that are going to share the metadata that can allow end to end visibility, so that consumers can look all the way upstream and see what farm even what field something came from, and the manufacturers can start to look downstream and do a better job of supporting the retailers, and in some in some cases, even explore new business models where consumers are buying directly from manufacturers. But in my mind, what we're doing is sort of orthogonal to what you're doing. Or to use less of pretentious words, you know, all of those data carriers I mentioned should work with, all of the GS one standards that you're talking about. I do want to ask you one nerdy question about EPCIS 2.0, is that something that you're supporting? So that's sort of the zpcis, which the the the original Season One, the version one, which, which is what I think IBM Food Trust is using. And then there's other vendors that are using EPCIS to Dotto, what are you going to be?

  Wiggs Civitillo 42:15

  Yeah, we'll, we'll support, we'll, we'll focus on EPCIS 2.0 you know, again, use of JSON is where the the industry is heading. And I think they're, they're great compliments. The interesting thing is, in this industry, right, where we have fragmented systems, 200 different solution providers, different data standards, even folks that use GS one, that might be on GS one, EP, CIS, 1.0 right, using XML data right, might not actually be able to speak as well with someone using EPCIS 2.0 so some of the gaps that we see, even for folks that are using the data standard, were surprising initially to me that they existed right. If someone's using the standard, then it should be easy to have data flowing, but that's another gap that starfish can help help provide and help help address. So, you know, many of the data, data fields overlap, right? Certainly there. There are quite a few enhancements that GS one made with EPCIS 2.0 so we will be supporting the latest and greatest standards even, you know, gdSt 1.2 so these standards work very well together, and I think it's important to be on the latest and support the latest, as far as the standard that we normalize data to, but also be able to ingest anyone using any legacy versions of these standards as well.

  Steve Statler 43:35

  I've got to compliment you on your branding. This starfish name is great because I think anyone who's listened this far, and we've been talking for almost an hour now, and not quite, but it's like, oh my god, it's a headache getting all this stuff to talk to each other. And if you can build a brand, and you've got a great name that basically says, doesn't really matter if it's starfish, if it works with starfish, if it's powered by starfish, then we can make it all talk to each other. And that's the secret to lower insurance, lower waste, more safety. And you know, we're neutral, and you can trust us. We're going to make it all talk together. I think that's your kind of branding opportunity. Yeah,

  Wiggs Civitillo 44:19

  yeah. And the starfish name is, it was always kind of a fun, fun allusion to the fact that, you know, we will have connectors right to everyone coming into a shared place. But starfish are incredible animals, right? If they lose a leg, right, that leg grows right back, right? And that's, that's kind of a beautiful analogy to the dynamic style of network and connectivity mesh that we're hoping to provide

  Steve Statler 44:42

  was a brilliant idea, and I can't think of anyone in the industry that's better equipped to make it work than than you, because you're so well connected. After all these years at IBM, you've had an inside out view of IBM, one of the greatest technology core. Operations in history, and you've seen what they did to solve this problem, and you've got a chance to kind of move in a very nimble, agile way, to use that knowledge. You know, if we look at you as CEO, how's it going? It's, it's

  Wiggs Civitillo 45:15

  going really well. So far, we've, we've just wrapped up our first, you know, month and a month and a week, and it's it's really been amazing to see the response of the industry right when, when you launch something like this, you never know how it's going to go. And already solidifying partnerships with folks like GS, one, like IBM, like the IFMA food away from home Association, the we'll be speaking at the produce supply organization. We presented the California Academy of Science. It it's just been an absolutely incredible month, and incredible response from a lot of folks that, you know, I you form a hypothesis, and you don't know whether the hypothesis is going to work out or not, until you really test, test the theory. And, you know, as we've approached these these partners, and I'm hoping to bring value to the response has been incredibly positive. So very, very excited about what we can accomplish. We're just getting started, and there's a whole lot more to do, but thanks. Thanks for asking. It's been going really well.

  Steve Statler 46:11

  Yeah. I mean, it sounds like you've got some good founder you've got a great founding team, and you've got some early investment that will allow you to actually realize a lot of this vision. So well done on that too. Yeah. Thank you so Wiggs, this is not your first rodeo on the Mr. Beacon podcast, so you've already had the music questions once, but you know, I just like talking about music, so I'm going to ask you about them again. Did you Did your choice of three meaningful songs change, or are they the same as they were last time I spoke to you?

  Wiggs Civitillo 46:45

  So, so I love this question, and it has such depth and meaning, and it forces you to reflect on, you know what, what songs you're excited about? So I'm going to share the the three that have meaning to me right now, because it changes, right? It changes. It changes very often, yeah, yeah. And, and it's been interesting, I tell you what, with the the new the new startup life that I'm leading, you know, you need some some good songs to support you to really get get the mood high. So there's one song that I absolutely love. And you know, this is a song that I can never be sad listening to. It's give it up by Casey and the Sunshine, sunshine band. Oh, I love that. It's, you know, it's retro when it comes on, retro when it comes on. You just can't be sad. You can't be upset. It's hard not to dance

  Steve Statler 47:30

  everyone. Every entrepreneur needs a high energy pick me up. That's right. That's right. I sometimes have it's normally, for me, it's like, queen, we will rock you or something like that, yeah.

  Wiggs Civitillo 47:44

  Sometimes you need the high energy, yeah. And then the compliment to that is the lower energy, but the gratitude song, right? So we've got a little van Orson days like this, when you're thinking, you know, hey, you know this, this is, this is a good day. You know, things are going really well, and I got to take a moment and be grateful. And that's, that's kind of what, what Van Morrison does for me, you know, again, you know, these are, these are classic songs, but, you know, they have a lot of depth, a lot of meaning. And, oh, beautiful,

  Steve Statler 48:15

  so true. So, so what are like, some of the things you're grateful for?

  Wiggs Civitillo 48:20

  Oh, right now, there's so much genuinely to have the opportunity to start a business that you're passionate about, you're motivated about, to have a team that you really trust and and that that that you can work really well with, and to be pursuing your dream, I think, is something that's really special and rare. And I'm blown away that I have the opportunity to do that. So you know, some days, some days are tough, right? When you compare a career at IBM versus a career in a startup, it's higher highs and lower lows. And do you have tough days and you have good days? And on the good days, you really need to take a moment to be grateful that you have even the opportunity to have the pursuit of this, this passion so well, yeah,

  Steve Statler 49:04

  and you've, you've, you've chosen each other, and you're in it together, and you're doing something big, and that's great that you feel that that way. What else is on your gratitude list? The

  Wiggs Civitillo 49:14

  last one is also a grateful one, but also, you know, brings, brings me back to my roots. This. This is, it's not a song that was written by Ben Rector, but I am a fan of Ben rector's, and he was, he was on my list last time. He's the only repeat, but he did a cover of a song called it's a great day to be alive. And this is, this is less sentimental gratitude, more, just back to the basics, right when, when we were working in the food space, and you're appreciating where your food comes from. The the effort that goes into farming, harvesting the products that we eat is incredible. What they do, what what they do to produce the food that we depend on, that we eat every single day, right? And you know, it's, it's this, this song, it's a great day to be alive. Really brings you back to your roots. And. And you know, it's good to be grateful for just the simple things, right, like a good meal on your plate, a good drink all those. Yeah,

  Steve Statler 50:09

  this is such an interesting theme, because, you know, I think a good life is all about savoring and appreciating. And you know, when you work on food, then it does give you this focus, to focus on something that you have to do, you have to eat, but if you can enjoy eating, and it's a bit like this podcast, I love listening to other people's podcasts, and this is so niche. It's probably one of the most niche podcasts you can imagine. It is in the top 1% post podcast, but I don't think it's at the top of the top 1% because it's so niche. But just doing this and having great conversations like this make me appreciate, you know, the Terry Gross, the other amazing interviewers that are kind of more more mainstream, and it's a bit like our music question. You know you you do your best with music. I'm just I can't play, but I try occasionally, and it just makes me really appreciate the people that can so well. Wiggs, thanks for humoring me with this rather odd set of questions for someone in the IoT business. But I really enjoyed hearing your answers.

  Wiggs Civitillo 51:21

  Yeah, I love the question. It's great. I

  Steve Statler 51:25

  time is the most valuable thing we have. I want to make sure that I've, I've taken a lot of it, but I think it was, for me, it was really worth hearing about what I think is a really extremely promising company that's doing something very important. It's a huge opportunity. It's a big problem. The timing is great. You know, being too early is the same as being wrong and being too late means that you're not even in the race. So I think your timing's really great, and you've got some great people and a great focus. So congratulations. Thank

  Wiggs Civitillo 52:02

  you. I really appreciate it. Thanks. Thanks so much for having me on Steve, this has been wonderful. Well,

  Steve Statler 52:09

  that was my conversation with Wiggs, who is a great guy and really knowledgeable. Great energy, great contacts, great brain, amazing experience. And I think starfish is going to go really far. I recommend that you check out starfish network, which is the name of their website. I really am grateful for all of you for listening to what we do in this podcast. It's incredibly niche, incredibly rare, but I really just makes me very happy when people contact me and say that they've found this useful. If you know other people that are designing solutions using Internet of Things, technology, supply chain technology, they're interested in digital, physical convergence, then please let them know about what we do through whatever mechanism you feel fit and appropriate. I want to thank Aaron hamk for putting this all together, and Sierra is our tireless publisher of social media and the emails that go out. So thanks to Ms wall for doing that, and again, thanks to you. Please stay safe. Be nice to each other. Don't let it get you down. Take some time to smell the roses and until next week, be safe.