In this episode I speak with Dan Kelly about how ADAR Technologies turns waste into profit for companies and helps the environment.
Topics:
Dan’s background- criminology, MBA, FBI, Investigations, Negotiation Expect, Fuel, ADAR Technologies
What got him interested in climate related tech and joining the ADAR dream team
What does ADAR do today
An overview of their technology and process
Three main verticals they operate in- ag/food waste, environmental waste and rare earths
Specific applications- livestock waste and environmental waste
The implications for the planet and business owners
The future of waste and more efficient business processes
Links:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dankelly1/
Danny: Dan, welcome to the show.
Dan: Thanks, Danny, for having me. I'm really looking forward to our
conversation.
Danny: You've got an incredible background from criminology, uh, the FBI
negotiations. Now you're at a clean tech company. Uh, could you give our
listeners a little bit of a roadmap of how you got to where you are today and any
kind of things you're most proud about during that journey?
Dan: Absolutely. Yeah. Looking from the outside in, it could look a little bit of
a windy road. Maybe with a couple of U turns in there. And in reality, it was,
uh, it was just how I wanted it though. I, I, um, [00:02:00] so I'm from
Minnesota, um, parents were snowbirds. Uh, I know you're down in Tucson,
Danny. I actually grew up in Tucson, went to high school down in Tucson, um,
went to college in Denver.
And I was recruited out of college into the FBI. I was in the FBI for just about
five years. I actually had to take some time off of college. So I went to DU, um,
uh, to, uh, to work in the Bureau out in D. C. So I had to take some time off
there and then went back to Denver, went back to school. And I'm going to
explain how I got addicted to coffee.
Went back to DU, had to go to, uh, class during the day. Uh, for certain hours
and then go back to my task force during certain hours and then go back to
school during the night. So, I, uh, quite frankly, uh, was working full time and
was going to school full time in an interesting career path as you could imagine
at the time.
Hence why I got addicted to coffee. But good coffee. Because I lived [00:03:00]
over in... Vienna, Austria, and then I realized that most American coffee sucks.
So, so, so, um, but yeah, I, I, I worked in the criminal investigative division
within the Bureau. I love the FBI. Um, I have some of my greatest friends and
colleagues and quite frankly mentors, uh, came from my time in the Bureau.
Um, I, I love the FBI. I hated working for the government. People ask me why I
left all the time. So I just like to get this out of the way. Um, Because I know it's
on people's mind. So I love the Bureau. I hated working for the government.
The whole concept of a GS schedule is completely asinine. It's militaristic to
non, and not capitalistic.
And the problem is, is the Bureau wants to recruit the best and brightest, but
time and grade matters more than performance. And quite frankly, I was given
feedback that I was running circles around people and I was working too hard
and I realized that the G just wasn't for me. So, um, [00:04:00] so if you leave,
you leave after the, you know, within the first five.
So I did, I went into the private sector. Um, I worked for companies like Cargill.
Uh, they actually, uh, recruited me as well. They got me back to Minnesota
from, from Florida. Realize that I. I hated working for Cargill. Uh, I know this
is being recorded, but, you know, I'm an entrepreneur, now I can say this,
because people like to grow up.
And the reason is, it's not Cargill itself, it was actually the size of Cargill. Um,
because Cargill reminded me way too much of the government. Uh, the largest
privately held company in the world, if you take out the Saudi oil companies.
Um, they do amazing things, there's nothing wrong with that. And, and they're,
um, they've got great people.
But they create committees to create committees, if you will. And boys, I was
uncomfortable with that because I was like, I just like, I barely left the G, right?
And so, then progressively worked for smaller companies when I was in the
private sector as an employee. Uh, and was quite frankly trying to find the right
fit.
And then I [00:05:00] realized that quite frankly, I just don't like, I just don't
like having a boss. Um, it's a personal problem, right? Um, and so then I went
into the consulting world and I, I started my first company as a, As a private
investigative firm, uh, and we focused on supply chain fraud. Uh, and so I had a
chance to, uh, to exit that business.
I met my wife there, uh, when I was in Denver. Um, then I started another
company called the Negotiator Guru, which is what you mentioned. We call it
TNG because it's kind of a mouthful. We came up with that name. In a
crowdsourcing sort of way in the middle of the mountain in Colorado, currently
at a mountain bar.
I asked about 50 people at a bar and that's the name we come up with. So
Danny: That's a great way to do it.
Dan: liked it. Um, TNG is the global leader in Salesforce negotiations. Uh,
nothing to do with ADAR. Um, I still support that company today. I own
[00:06:00] it outright. Um, it's been a very. Wonderful and profitable firm. Um,
and that's allowed me to get into the consulting space.
But all in this whole journey, I figured out a couple things about myself. When
you and I were just talking, intro here Danny, we were talking about the
corporate America and politics and people drink the Kool Aid and I realized
that I just wanted to be a consultant. I just wanted to be part of a smaller
company.
And I wanted to do something that matters that actually made impact versus me
being part of corporate meetings where Quite frankly, I was getting no value or
I was producing very little value by being in the meetings. And that's how I got
into cleantech, actually. Um, so I had some success early on in my career here.
Um, when I went in on my own, my own ventures. And I, quite frankly, became
an investor in Cleantech. And it's because I care about the planet, I care about
sustainability, and I care about businesses that actually [00:07:00] make it more
profitable to help the planet. Uh, there's a very big difference between being a
treehugger and being a capitalistic greenbacker, I call it.
Um, and that's me, quite frankly. And, um, I've invested in lots of companies.
The vast majority of them have failed. I'm, I'm sorry to say, but I do have no
regrets in investing in them. Um, and they've invested, and I'll tell you why they
failed. They failed because, and I was quite frankly a little naive at the time
when I was investing years ago.
And just being an open book here. They failed because they had bad
management teams. Um, or they had no management teams, quite frankly. They
had great tech, and they had great engineers, brilliant people. But they were not
business people. And, uh, there's a very big difference about commercializing a
clean tech or a green tech versus just inventing one.
And so that's how I got into this space. And that's [00:08:00] ultimately actually
how I got involved with 8R technologies.
Danny: Very interesting. So a lot of different threads to pull on here. A couple
of questions that come up immediately before we go on further. Um, you know,
I don't think that there's anything kind of necessarily inherently bad about
bureaucracy or anything like that. In some ways, it's needed in some
organizations.
Are there any large companies or organizations that may be called bureaucratic
that you think do it really well, though, that are still very effective?
Dan: As far as specific companies, uh, I'm not sure I could name a specific
company that is, uh, perfect at it. What I will say is, um, bureaucracy works
only if you have, uh, clear lines of authority and delegation of authority related
to how decisions can be made inside of companies. The, what slows down large
companies is where you need Uh, uh, quite [00:09:00] frankly, decision making
and authority purely from the top or from upper middle management.
When your lower level line does not have any autonomy to make decisions
inside the company, you become stagnated and people become, uh, quite
frankly, paralyzed through analysis and middle management,
Danny: Is it maybe a level of autonomy and ownership that are given to all
employees? Is that how companies can get past this if they are big or
bureaucratic by nature?
Dan: Yeah, they need a consistent way in which they make decisions and stick
to it. Uh, and also being able to give authority to certain level of, uh, managers
or employees inside the company so that every employee feels like an
entrepreneur and an owner in the outcome. The problem is, is so many, uh,
employees inside of companies aren't actually performance based.
And so the, the more and more you get [00:10:00] people aligned to a
performance based outcome where they feel like an actual shareholder and
stakeholder inside of companies, the more effective your company will be. And
I've seen that, quite frankly, in private companies more than I have in public
companies. Um, and it's, uh, it's worked quite well.
Danny: Going back to kind of the clean tech side of things. Sorry about the
tangent there, folks. But let's talk ADAR. So were you an investor or an advisor
at first? Or what state were they in kind of before you came on full time as
CEO? And then what did that transition look like?
Dan: Yeah, no, that's, that's a good question. The inventor of the technology,
his name is Ari Boss. Uh, he actually, uh, reached out to me through a mutual
contact through another investment that I made. And, uh, we, he asked me to
become the CEO of, of ADAR. So, um, naturally I'm an investor in ADAR
because I am, uh, I am, uh, self financing all of ADAR's operations at the
moment, uh, while we are, [00:11:00] uh, still pre revenue, but we are, uh, pre
booking our.
Orders at the moment. So that's, uh, that's what's going on. So if people ask me
if I'm an investor in ADAR, uh, you're damn right I'm an investor in ADAR, uh,
Because I invest in myself and I believe in myself And that's and that's as
simple as that
Danny: So what does ADAR do today and what does it plan to do moving
forward as far as kind of its product and services go for its customers?
Dan: Sure, so, uh, ADAR Technologies, uh, has, is a commercial function of
the technology that Ari Bass invented, a specific, he's our Chief Technology
Officer, just for clarity, okay? And, uh, the technology does three things really,
really well, uh, it, we dry, we pulverize, which means make into a powder, and
we sanitize.
Or we essentially eliminate harmful chemicals in many feedstocks. So
[00:12:00] we dry, we pulverize, and we sanitize. And we do all that instantly
within a single unit that's no larger than a shipping container. And we do it
without using fossil fuels, without using heat, and without using chemicals. And
those three different verticals are what makes ITER different than the
competition and different than what the market even has available today.
And what that means is, uh, the vast majority of typical dryers in the world,
right, are using fossil fuels. And they're using heat. The problem with that is the
carbon impact on the fossil fuel, which I think all your listeners will understand.
I don't need to go into that much. Uh, and two is the heat, which not many
people think about, but heat matters because whenever you apply [00:13:00] a
significant amount of heat to any sort of material that you're trying to dry,
which, which we call feedstock, whatever you're feeding into the machine,
you're, uh, naturally killing it.
The nutrient value of that feedstock and by killing, eliminating or lowering the
nutrient value in the feedstock, the output of the material, uh, lowers its
economic value of whatever you're going to use it for. And sometimes, uh, it
has no economic value as a result because of the amount of heat it's required.
So it's a three in one solution. Typically, customers need three different devices.
Uh, to dry pulverize and sanitize materials in their process flow. It's a three in
one, all in one box, as I described it, and, uh, sometimes we have customers
where, prospective customers that we've done the economic analysis for, which
is quite hilarious how, uh, amazing the [00:14:00] results are, that it just makes
sense to buy ADAR units just because we're not using fossil fuels.
Even if it did all the same. Uh, output and it did the same, you know, same
processing power, et cetera, even if it was three different machines, the fact that
we're using electricity and we're not using natural gas or propane or, uh, any
sort of a fossil fuel makes it a huge benefit for customers because of the
taxations in certain places like Canada, California, et cetera, uh, that has a
compulsory tax on the usage of fossil fuels to create an output.
So, because we don't do that, and because we can actually use completely green
energy to power the machine, from solar to hydrogen, et cetera, um, makes it a
carbon neutral processing solution for both public and private sectors.
Danny: What are the three main verticals that you all operate in today?
Dan: We operate in the ag [00:15:00] space, uh, we always call ourselves an ag
tech, kind of clean tech technology depending on what the end customer is, so
agriculture, uh, agriculture waste to be exact. We focus on environmental waste
as our second pillar. And the third is what we call rare earth mineral. Very
different, but this is extracting rare earth minerals from waste streams, whether
it be old coal mines to, um, Uh, to coal ash, to mine tailings, uh, people mining
for gold or uranium, platinum, etc.
Uh, from tailings from little pieces that cannot, uh, be extracted currently within
their current processes. So, this is literally waste streams that is just piling up at
the site of a coal mine that they don't know what to do with. That's obviously a
problem for them because it takes up so much space and, um, and they have a
lot of revenue slippage.
So, [00:16:00] we do ag waste. environmental waste, and rare earth minerals.
Danny: And as far as specific applications go, let's talk about livestock waste
and environmental waste. Could you give us some examples of what each of
those look like specifically?
Dan: Yeah, so, so livestock waste is one that we get a lot of interest in, and, and
this is specifically animal byproducts. And for people that don't know what that
is, it's, um, it's cows to hogs, anything on farm, feedlot as an example, where
they're, uh, producing meat for consumers to eat. Um, or some sort of product
and it is all the products that animal, the animal waste that there's no real use for
today.
That means it either goes into a landfill or it gets, um, thrown into dog bones or
something of that nature, uh, where, where there's no real usage today. What we
can do is so very specific, like all the bones and the carcasses and the guts,
[00:17:00] all the nasty stuff. And it smells awful. Let me tell you. That the, that
the world cannot process today, that's literally thrown into a landfill.
We can convert that into a high protein powder. That's very consistent. So a
consistent powder, that has high protein value. And the very easy way of
thinking about the way that that benefits the end producers and the world, is we
are creating a circular economy on farm. Meaning, we are creating animal
livestock feed for the animals, which is increasing the profitability and lowering
expenses for the producers, which theoretically should create downstream
benefits from price points in, for consumers to pay at the supermarket as an
example.
So we are, uh, instead of creating impact on the landfill, we are creating a
circular economy on farm. By making this into animal feed [00:18:00] that's a
fully organic animal feed or you can make it into a fertilizer for crops, etc.
Depending on who our customer is. Um, and the one last thing I'll say on this
and this is, um, true for our use cases in the ag, uh, ag vertical.
Specifically, the kind of the organic waste space, we can pelletize things,
meaning we can make it into a very small pellet, and by pelletizing, you can do
things such as precision farming, meaning apply, you know, precision
applicators for those, for fertilizer or food within specific areas on farm, or you
can use those pellets to create all sorts of downstream byproducts, including the
creation of power,
Danny: Now, circular economies are kind of, it's a term that seems a bit, well,
maybe not overused, but used quite a bit lately, more popular than not. And then
at the same time, it seems to have a lot of [00:19:00] barriers to entry. It doesn't
seem to be occurring everywhere, although it seems to be obvious as far as a
solution goes.
What are those barriers to entry that you see from making circular economies
truly work correctly? Okay.
Dan: Well, it has to do with economic analysis. So, we challenge ourselves, uh,
constantly every week, actually right before this interview, we had our weekly
marketing call inside of ADAR, uh, where we talk about our strategy for the
next two weeks, uh, specifically what we're focusing on from an outbound
marketing perspective.
And that is always aligned around our use cases. And what use cases are we
creating the most economic value for the market at any given time based on the
data that we know coming back from our testing, from customers, et cetera,
right? The problem is, is sometimes it's just economically not viable to leverage
currently with current [00:20:00] today's technology, leverage a customer waste
stream.
to create something useful to put back into their own operations. Or, they don't
want the bother of creating a solution that's easy, uh, to put back into their
solutions. Meaning, they either think it's going to be too expensive, they have to
hire more people to worry about it, it's just easier to throw it into the waste bin
and let the landfill worry about it.
Our objective... Is to identify a way in which our customers can get an ROI
within the first year of owning or leasing an ADAR unit simple as that and
sometimes It doesn't make sense for customers We're just not a good fit as an
example, and sometimes their waste stream just doesn't make sense to convert it
into anything so it has to do with uh The [00:21:00] fundamental needs of a
capitalistic society of needing to create an ROI on waste streams, sometimes it
just doesn't exist.
And so what we know we need to do, but we're just not there yet, Danny, is
sometimes our customers are seasonal as an example. Like shrimp, just give a
very concrete example, seafood waste. The shrimping industry operates only
certain times of the year, right? Um. The head and the husks of the shrimp, to be
very specific, are typically thrown away in the waste management bin and
thrown into a landfill.
Because there's not a good, useful solution today to convert something into a
high protein powder and or ADAR. We can do that now. But, it's seasonal. So
sometimes, for a small shrimp producer, it doesn't make sense to buy or lease an
ADAR unit because the economics don't make sense. What we know we need to
do, we're just not there yet, is create processing hubs And mobile units that can
go into these smaller producers [00:22:00] and pick up and offer as a service,
uh, their waste streams and convert it into something usable for them.
And we simply charge them on a flow rate or something of that nature. We're
just not there yet. We know it needs to happen, but that's my answer to you. It's
the economics.
Danny: This reminds me a lot of, um, styrofoam removers. I was made aware
that warehouses can pay anywhere between 10, 000 a month to remove
styrofoam. And then this one company comes along that has a compressor cause
it's 99 percent air and they're like. Hey, you buy our compressor. It takes nine
months to generate ROI.
And then we will pay you 6, 000 to 10, 000 a month for your, uh, finished
compressed Xyron product. And it just seems like one of those brilliant ideas.
And just like you guys, you're, it's not just a feel good solution. It's actually
making them a profit. Um, or it should, um, if done correctly, is that correct?
Dan: That's completely correct. I mean, we, at the end of the day, this has to be
a profitable [00:23:00] solution for either the public or the private sector. For
the private sector, we've been talking about that quite a bit. It has to do with the
bottom line. For public, it has to do with eliminating a crisis. Um, you know,
and that's more on the environmental waste side, the sludges, etc.
Municipal waste space, um, the, the sludge ponds that we see down in the
southeast that are absolutely disgusting. Um, it, it just quite frankly is, is
stopping an environmental crisis, which is going to create downstream
expenses. Public is not a profit, you know, for profit it's, we're simply lowering
expenses for the public sector.
So that's correct.
Danny: Kind of bringing this back to the top. So, you know, as you mentioned,
or as I said in the intro, um, helping scientists or engineers get their IP off the
bench, out of the lab, into the real world, commercialized, assuming that you
cannot clone yourself a thousand times, how do we scale more technologies like
this?
What, what does the world need in that regard?[00:24:00]
Dan: To scale technologies that, uh, help the planet.
Danny: Yeah, more like tech transfer technologies. Yeah, as you said, you
know, ones that need that the people don't know anything about management or
business and that just need to get off the lab bench and into the real world.
Dan: yeah, yeah. But the first and foremost is to find a accelerator, I'd call it. So
if, if I'm speaking to engineers, if you will, or if I'm, which I do all the time for
many reasons, um, if I'm speaking to engineers or to inventors of the
technology, and their question is, you know, how do I get this commercialized?
The number one thing is you have to find a management team that understands
how to scale a startup. Um, and you're going to get 100 nos and one or two
yeses, and you have to find people that are comfortable. Operating in that
ambiguity to start, uh, you and I were talking about that at the beginning of our,
[00:25:00] of our show here, uh, how you gotta be a little bit nuts, uh, to enjoy
this space.
Um, and so the bottom line is finding the right advisory team to help you and to
get, uh, uh, get your foot out there. Nothing speaks success like a couple sales.
So, what you need to do is you need to get a demonstration, machine, or
technology out there that people can look, touch, feel, experience for
themselves.
We're actually doing that at ADAR as an example. I don't have a good track
record, Danny, of a lot of things. One thing that I don't have a good track record
on is hiring good sales people, to be honest. I failed most at all of it. Uh, as a
result, I have... Built businesses that are operate fully on inside sales, meaning
the customers find us through thought leadership strategies, et cetera, and we're
doing [00:26:00] the same thing at ADAR.
I'm answering your question just using a specific example in ADAR of how
these technologies can come to market. You need to create a demonstration site
where people can literally maintain the complete control of custody. Of their
materials or whatever you're trying to test and come experience it for
themselves.
We're making a demonstration center in the U S actually more than one,
probably two, but we've got one now as well as a one in Europe at where people
can literally bring whatever they want to see if they can convert into something
usable into the demonstration center, feed it into the machine themselves.
The machine only has four buttons on it. Literally easy enough. A monkey can
use it one screen, a couple of sensors outcomes. The output and they can take it
to their lab, etc. And they control the entire process and that at that point When
people realize it works the cost of the machine or the lease or any technology
we're talking about is irrelevant It's it becomes irrelevant [00:27:00] once they
understand the basic economics that they can now produce something.
They could not produce earlier and so that's that's how you get more
technologies like this into the market is you actually Create an environment
where seeing is believing.
Danny: Now, I'm assuming that ADAR Technologies is your number one
company as far as interest in investing time and money because obviously you
are there today. What would be your two and three? What other clean
technology companies, even just metaphorically speaking, would you love to be
investing in if it weren't for ADAR right now?
Dan: I would love to find, so I'm not going to name, uh, names here. Just in the
interest of me being an advisor for different clients. But here's some sectors I
would love to be in right now. Uh, that I am in, but I'd like to be more in. One is
hydrogen, uh, green hydrogen, not any hydrogen. So the creation [00:28:00] of
green hydrogen using waste streams.
Uh, this is actually one of the benefits of ADAR as well, quite frankly, and why
we have hydrogen companies as, as prospective customers or pre booked
customers right now. Uh, we make the hydrogen creation process more
consistent based on the feedstack that we're using because of that pelletization I
was talking about before.
So hydrogen is the space I would be in because it's easy to understand. Another
space I would be in. Is, um, anywhere in the renewable fuels area. Um, I think
lithium has a very short lifespan in the market. for many reasons. I, the EV
space, I always kind of make the joke, but I'm actually being mostly serious.
Uh, but this is just me speaking my own personal thoughts, of course. people
understand EVs because they understand how golf carts work. they understand
that you push a pedal down and it creates power from a battery and you go,
right?[00:29:00] the half life on these batteries, et cetera, Elon Musk is the first
one to tell you is horrible.
the, the, you know, and so what I would, another space I would do because of
the massive EV flux right now is actually lithium ion recycling. And, quite
frankly, battery recycling. this is a ticking time bomb situation that we're going
to have to deal with in about 10 years from now. is the recycling and the reuse
of these batteries coming out of these cars?
Danny: Yeah, I believe, um, Elon or Tesla's CTO, didn't he go on to start a
battery recycling company just for that reason? I think he saw it coming and
Dan: I believe so. I believe so. I'm not intimately familiar with what it is, but I
believe so. That's correct. And that's something that I'm keeping a close pulse
on.
Danny: Always our final question. So, uh, Jeff Bezos is pretty well known for
saying invest in things that don't change. Uh, for him, it was the fastest shipping
times. People will never want slower shipping. They ran a loss for 20 years at
Amazon to... Put in place the [00:30:00] infrastructure to have fast shipping.
Speaking of Elon Musk, he knew that the thing that never changes is people
want sexy cars that they feel good in.
And it doesn't matter if it's an EV, if it's not sexy, people will not buy it. For you
guys, for you personally, or for ADAR, are there any things that never changed
that you feel strongly about investing in?
Dan: Waste streams. Uh, we will always create waste. The problem is, is there's
not a lot of solutions up until now on what to do with them. Um, or. There were
solutions, but they did not make any economic sense without a massive amount
of government subsidies, which is a whole nother topic that we can address on
another episode.
On the problem with creating green tech with only economic value coming from
government subsidies. Something is wrong there, right? So, the bottom line is,
[00:31:00] people will always develop waste streams, whether it be from human
waste, to environmental waste, to industrial waste, to livestock waste, to mining
waste.
People always do it. And, um, as an example, just talking about waste.
Something that will always happen is cows will always poop, and turkeys will
always poop, and hogs will always poop, and you'll always have manure. Uh,
and, uh, I always think of Warren Buffett when I create my business strategies.
Like, number one, how do you create a really boring business?
It constantly sells throughout the year, and you have a moat around yourself,
right? How do you create a moat in a really boring business? And, um, I always
think about this. At the very basic level, what ADAR does for manure, we make
it cheaper to transport, period, [00:32:00] without losing any nutrient value. So
we elu we eliminate 80 percent of water weight from manure.
Boring. Very boring. Who wants to talk about it, but I'll tell you what. The
economy relies on it, . And so that's what I'm focused on right now.
Danny: Well, Dan, thanks very much for coming on our show. If listeners are
interested in learning more about what you're doing, where can I point them to
online?
Dan: Absolutely. So, uh, learn about aar@aartech.com. That's pretty simple.
Uh, if you want to connect with me, the best way to do that is actually via
LinkedIn. Um, I, I have all sorts of social media, but honestly the only one I'm
really active on is LinkedIn. Um, so Dan Kelly one is my. Handle on LinkedIn.
And that's the best way to connect with me personally.
Danny: I will link to all those in the show notes. Well, Dan, thanks again for
coming on. This was a pleasure
Dan: Thank you very much, Danny. I enjoyed the conversation.[00:33:00]
Danny: and thanks to you, my dear listener, for tuning in and I hope you
enjoyed this conversation as much as I have. If you enjoyed the show, please
consider subscribing and leaving a good review. Take care and see you soon.