Murder by Experts. The mutual broadcasting system presents Murder by Experts. With your host and narrator, Mr. John Dixon Carr, world-famous mystery novelist and author of the recently published bestseller, The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This is John Dixon Carr. Each week at this time, Murder by Experts brings you a story of crime and mystery, which has been chosen for your approval by one of the world's leading detective writers, those experts who are themselves masters of the art of murder and can hold intensity at its highest. This time, our guest expert is the noted mystery writer, Miss Frances Crane. From the many thrillers she has read and enjoyed, Miss Crane has selected a gripping and dramatic story by Philip Andrews. And now we present, James Stevens in The Big Money. The Big Money. Yeah, I was in The Big Money. An hour and a half ago, I had $7 million. I had a wife, too, slender, dark-haired, green eyes, and a cute figure. But she's gone now. She left me one hour and 30 minutes ago. No, one hour, 31 minutes, and 20 seconds ago. And she took the money with her. That's not all she took.  I wish she'd come back. I want my life back. I don't care about the money. She could keep that. After all, it only took me a month to earn it. That's right, one month, 30 days to earn $7 million. What's the trick? You have to be born for it, born for The Big Money. And I was. I always knew it. As far back as I can remember, even back in prison, even back before that in military hospitals, while the dogs patched up my face and tried to patch up my memory, I knew I was born for The Big Money. That's why I wasn't downhearted when they let me out of the big house with the usual five-spot and a ticket to the city and no prospects. The warden tried to give me a pep talk, but I put him in his place fast, believe you me. George, I'm glad you're leaving us today. I won't keep you long, but I want to help you if I can. That's nice of you, warden. Mighty nice. The prison psychiatrist says you only have a partial memory of your military service and no memory at all of the period before that. That's right.  That's as far as back as it goes. We've checked your army career.  In fact, you were under arrest on charges of stealing government property when that shell hit the guardhouse. So what, warden? You were dishonorably discharged. But still, it might be possible to get medical treatment for your condition. Now, if you want me to contact the proper authority... Skip it. Suppose I could remember everything that happened to me. I don't want to. Growing up in a slum, being kicked around, who wants to remember that kind of stuff? But your parents, your family, don't you want to find them again? They probably forgot me years ago. I'm looking ahead, not behind me. Take the average guy with a memory. He can't concentrate. He's distracted by all the things he remembers. Me? I can look straight ahead and stick to business. And that business is getting myself into the big money. Well, if that's how you feel, I won't say any more. Good luck anyway. Thanks, warden. Thanks, anyway. So that was that. Ten minutes later, I was a free man after two long years. I hiked straight for the railroad station and caught the first express for New York. Then I ambled back to the club car and ordered a drink. I relaxed and sat back, feeling good. Very good. Across the aisle, a girl was reading a magazine, a knockout, black hair, green eyes, and lips like rose buds. Pretty soon, she saw me watching her, but she was smooth. She didn't even seem to look at me while she gave me a long, steady once over. She was interested, I knew that. She turned to a short, plump, white-haired man beside her and whispered something. White hair gave me a long look, too. Then he got up and came across smooth as butter. I beg your pardon. I have the feeling we're acquainted, but I can't quite bring your name to mind. My name's George Cook, if that's any help. Cook, Cook. Now, I'm afraid I've mistaken you for someone else. Yes, of course. You remind me strongly of my old friend, Howard Vincent. Never heard of him. The likeness is striking, but my apologies. I didn't mean to intrude upon you. Oh, you're not intruding, are you? Davenport is my name. Pilo Davenport. Mr. Davenport? Trains are pretty dull when you're traveling alone, don't you think? Insufferably dull. Perhaps you care to join me and my niece for a drink, Mr. Cook? He didn't have to ask me twice. In fact, he didn't have to ask me once, because if they hadn't picked me up, I was gonna pick them up. In 10 minutes, we were as cozy as three mice in a cheese factory. Marlene was a name. Marlene. Saying it was like tasting old brandy. Marlene and I got along fine, but I could feel them both sizing me up, eyeing my going away from prison suit, and I knew they were shop shooters with some cute game on their minds. By and by, Marlene came to the point I knew they were interested in. Very witty, Mr. Cook. What line of business are you in? Traveling salesman. Now, my dear, you mustn't ask personal questions. I don't mind, Mr. Davenport. The truth is, I'm a free traveler. A free traveler? What's that? Well, you see, they set me free this afternoon, and now I'm traveling. Very good, Mr. Cook. Very good. Such frankness is refreshing. And what business are you in, Mr. Davenport? Well, I'm part lawyer and part detective. I have a specialty all my own. I trace heirs to unclaimed fortunes. Interesting business. You ever find them? Frequently. In fact, much oftener than I have any right to expect.  Of course not, my dear. 125th Street, next stop, 125th Street. Well, this seems to be our stop, Mr. Cook. Where are you staying in town? I haven't quite made up my mind. I thought I'd look around a bit first. See, Marlene and I would like to have you come and call on us tomorrow, the next day. Wouldn't we, my dear? Oh, we'd love it if you would. Well, in that case, I will. Find out. Here's my card. Don't fail us now. Please promise you'll come, George. All right, Marlene. I'll drop in on you. Sure, I was gonna drop in on him. Philo, obviously, was up to some little game, and if I could find out what, it might pay me. So I dropped in the very next morning at 2 a.m. I didn't bother to wake Philo or Marlene. What kind of a friend would disturb them at that hour? I just let myself in with a picklock, found the living room, and started going through it. I began with the drawers of a mahogany desk. And I was just getting going when the overhead light snapped on. And Philo's voice said... Good morning, George. So nice of you to come see us so soon. I turned, nice and carefully. There was Philo in a dinner jacket and Marlene wearing a gown that started at the floor and stopped unexpectedly. Oh, now, Uncle Philo don't make George think he isn't welcome. Put away that gun. Offer him a drink. Of course, my dear. George, if I put away this gun, will you sit down for a glass of brandy and a nice quiet chat? Why not, Philo? I'll sit here on the couch. I was just looking around the room while I waited for you. Admirable. Marlene, he's our man. I know he is. Congratulations, George. I'll get the brandy, Uncle Philo. You know, George, I made a bit with Marlene. You'd show up tonight. Philo, I underestimated you. So you were waiting for me? Yes, we've been waiting for you. Since we left you on the train, I've checked your entire career. Your army record, you're being wounded, your prison sentence for robbery after your discharge, your loss of memory, everything. That's fast work. Well, it's my business. On the train, Marlene and I were startled at your resemblance to a certain Howard Vincent. Yeah, you mentioned him before. Who is he? I'll come to that in a moment. I said that my business is finding missing heirs who have fortunes waiting for them. I'm successful at it, George, because sometimes when an heir can't be found, I create one. Philo, I'm beginning to think you aren't honest. Which brings me now to Howard Vincent. He died in a train wreck in 1941. I saw his body, but only I know for certain that he is dead. I see. Go on. For four years, in a state of $7 million has been waiting for him to turn up to claim it. $7 million? And a few odd thousands? Here's the brandy, Uncle Philo. Thank you, my dear. Thank you. Here you are, George. Right. Now I propose a toast to Howard Vincent, formerly George Cook, and to $7 million, divided 50-50. This was it, what I'd always known would happen someday, the break, the big money, $7 million. $7 million just waiting for me to reach out and grab it. The three of us set up most of the night while Philo outlined the deer. Easy, George. You're perfect for the part of Howard Vincent. You look enough like him so that we can claim it's the scars from your womb that keep the resemblance from being exact. I think they rather improve your looks, George. I wouldn't want you to look too much like Vincent. In his photographs, he's rather vicious looking. Well, thanks, Marlene. I never dreamed that shellburst was going to blow me right into $7 million. $3 and 1 half million, remember? Oh, sure, $3 and 1 half. Your loss of early memory is also very fortunate. Ordinarily, we would have to fake it to explain why you didn't remember little details of your past. And that's so hard to do. Uncle Philo tried it once, but the results were very bad, weren't they, Uncle Philo? Let's not dwell on that case, my dear. In this instance, George's army medical history authenticates his condition. So he doesn't need to remember a thing. I told the warden that memory's only handicap a man. Your prison record will have to be freely admitted. Naturally, you'll be thoroughly checked. Sure. But suppose they managed to trace me back to before the army, to the time I can't remember about. They won't. You see, I am in charge of the search for Vincent. You? How come, Philo? Uh, Howard Vincent was a typical rich man, son, too much money, too much freedom. You know the story, George? Sure, I've read it a dozen times. He's back in 1941. He got mixed up in something really nasty and disappeared. Then the family got word he'd been killed in the wreck of the Western Flyer in Wyoming. You remember, 30 dead. Oh, but I forgot, you don't remember. Now look it up in the papers. Go on. Uncle Philo flew out and found that a watch and a wallet belonging to Vincent had been recovered from the wreckage. There were also three bodies, any one of which might be Vincent. I get the picture. He was a little hard to identify by that. Yes, but I recognized one of the three as poor dear Howard Vincent all the same. However, I was already foreseeing, shall we say, future possibilities? Philo, now I know you're not a... Well, I came back to report. I hadn't been able to identify any of the dead as Howard. He might still be alive. So his father kept on hoping. When the old man died in 1945, he left his money to his son, provided Howard could be found within seven years. And he left me an annual retainer to keep looking for him. And now at last you found him. No, my dear, not for several weeks yet. You see, we have careful preparation to make very, very careful preparations. Philo's plan was nice and simple. I went down to the bar and got a room and a cheap flop house. Next day, I found a job as a mechanic. Every day after that, I ate lunch in Battery Park near the Wall Street District. At the end of three weeks, Philo just happened to be walking through the park and saw me. Next day, he brought old Mr. Peoples, the lawyer for the Vincent estate, Mr. Peoples owed an odd and I was discovered. As easy as that. Of course, it didn't end there. They asked me a million questions. They traced my record, prison, army, hospital, wound, everything. They had high-priced docks. Checked me over to be sure my lack of memory was on the level. But at the end of the month, they hadn't proved I wasn't Howard Vincent. And then Philo and I gave little Mr. Peoples the clincher, the old one too. Well, Mr. Peoples, are you satisfied that we've really found Howard at last? Yeah, me and Mr. Davenport. I just can't seem to make up my mind whether he is Howard or not. I think he is, but be dreadful if we made a mistake. I'll completely right you are, Mr. Peoples. But I think I have the evidence that will settle our doubts for good and all. Well, it's a college history book. One of the books Howard used at Yale. Yesterday I had an inspiration. I searched all of Howard's old books, and at last I found what I'd hoped for. See, here on page 98. Yes. The faded fingerprint in ink on the margin. Made one night ten years ago when Howard was studying. The only fingerprint of his we've ever located. So it is. My goodness, this is important. This... This... This will tell us beyond question whether this young man is Howard or not. Yes, we only have to compare his fingerprints with this print Howard made ten years ago, and we'll know. Well, George, are you willing to make the test? Certainly I am. If I'm not Howard Vincent, I want to know it. If I am, I want to enjoy it. Very reasonable attitude. Dear me, yes. Will you make the print, Mr. Davenport? Well, Philo made a print of my index finger and little Mr. Peoples squinted at it, then at the print in the history book. He spent at least five minutes doing it, mumbling to himself. This is an important moment. Very important moment. Dear me, yes, yes, I'm sure of it. The print's match. You are Howard Vincent. Congratulations, my boy. Congratulations. Of course the print's matched. Philo had faked that print in the history book a month before. Big money at last. Seven million dollars. Yes, seven, not three and a half. I didn't have any more idea of splitting with Philo than of flying to the moon. Naturally I didn't tell him that, not yet. I sort of got the feel of things first. I settled into being Howard Vincent very, very quietly. You know how the big money works? Hush, hush. That's how I wanted it. But pretty soon I felt as if I'd been Howard Vincent all my life. I began to enjoy it. But I couldn't put Philo on forever. And the showdown came one morning in my plushy private office at the very top of the Vincent building. Philo and Marlene were both there. And they got down to business fast. Well, George, you've adapted yourself to wealth very quickly. Enjoying yourself, eh? I certainly am, Philo. I always knew I was meant for this kind of life. It seems to come natural to me. I believe I could get used to it myself. It's not the matter of my split. Of course, Philo, but it'll take time. It has to be arranged. Very smoothly arranged. Oh, we understand that, George. It isn't that Uncle Philo distrusts you. He'd just hate to have a misunderstanding and spoil our friendship. It's a big job turning over half the estate without anyone getting suspicious. Of course it is, my boy. Of course it is. And I'm going to give you two years to do it in. Three, if you think necessary. But I will want monthly installments of $50,000 until the final settlement. $50,000 a month for Philo! George, that isn't so very much. Out of all the millions you'd never have had but for Uncle Philo. Oh, all right. You win. $50,000 a month. I'm glad you're seeing it my way. And now that that is settled, we won't be meeting again, George. We won't? Why not? Uncle Philo means he'll feel safer if he's where you can't try to kill him, George. Kill him?  I wouldn't dream of any such thing, Philo. You know that. Of course I do, my boy. Especially since as soon as I leave here, I intend to write out a complete account of this interesting affair and leave it with a friend to be forwarded to the police if anything violent should happen to me. Now that's not necessary, Philo. Nevertheless, I shall feel better when it's done. I'll leave my near. Shall we go now? In a minute, Uncle Philo. I want to powder my nose first. I'll be right back. No hard feelings, I hope, George. It's only good business, you know, to take precautions. Of course there's no hard feelings. I'm still making out pretty good. Here, let me ring for the elevator for you. It might as well ride down in my private car. A private elevator? Well, great wealth has its privileges as I hope to find out. Funny. I push the button, but I don't hear the car coming. Perhaps it's already at this floor. Try the door. All right, I will. Well, how do you like that? The door opens, but the elevator isn't here. The shaft is empty. Well, that's very hardly something wrong with the mechanism. The door shouldn't open if the car... George! George, what are you doing? What are you grabbing me for? Let go of me, George! No! No! I shoved hard, and Philo went down the elevator shaft, clawing at empty air and moving his feet like a ballet dancer. He screamed coming back to me, channeled upwards by the shaft. He screamed, and then he stopped. Yes, there was something wrong with the elevator, all right. I discovered it that morning, but I hadn't reported it. Instead, I'd sent for Philo and Marlene for this showdown. Now Philo was disposed of. Accidentally, with no comeback at me, I only had to take care of Marlene. I closed the elevator door and stood there trying to act calm, but the perspiration was popping out of my brow. I'd find Philo in a moment. Was it Marlene ever coming back? Then she came. Well, here I am. Well, George, where's Uncle Philo? He's in the elevator. I'm going down with you. We'll stop at the bank. I'm making a small advance payment. In the elevator? Oh, all right. Open the door, George. Go on, open it. She wasn't close enough. I had to stall. Get her closer. The door seems to be stuck. Give me your hand, Marlene. I'd rather not. But Marlene... Stay right there, George. Don't come any closer. You see, darling, I have a nice lady-like gun in my purse. Marlene, what is this? A gag? No, I didn't powder my nose, George. I found I'd forgotten my compact and I came back. I was outside the door when I heard you talking about the elevator and then Uncle Philo screamed. Poor Uncle Philo. I thought he was smarter than that. So did he, but he wasn't. A baby could have taken care of Philo. Well, go on, grab the phone. Call the cops. I could, but what good would that do either of us? I don't get you. Uncle Philo is dead. I can't help him, any. But you're not dead and I can't help you. Sis, what are you leading up to, Marlene? I know you murdered Uncle Philo, but you'd be safe and I couldn't testify against you. If you married me, George? Maybe Marlene had a baby voice, but her mind was like a steel trap. Sure, I married her. She had the whip hand. She helped me cover up Philo's death as an accident. Then she moved in and took over. Oh, it's nice to be rich, isn't it, George? Poor Uncle Philo. How he would have loved all this. I thought we agreed to forget Philo. Oh, we did, didn't we? All right, I'll change the subject then. I saw a dream of a diamond necklace at Carter's today. No, I won't buy it.  Marlene, I... You'll do nothing, George. Please sit down and stop clenching your hands. You know you're never going to touch me.  So you're going to take good care of me, darling. And that being the case, why don't we be friends? I'm not such bad company. Am I, George? No, Marlene wasn't bad company. She was very good company when she wanted to be. And that written account to go to the cops if anything happened to her protected her better than a bodyguard could have. So I made the best of it. We got along all right. Except that Marlene spent money like crazy until one night on our private terrace 20 stories up with a bottle of Napoleon brandy opened between us. I began to feel sleepy. Very sleepy. Too sleepy. I tried to stand up and I couldn't.  And Marlene stood up and leaned over me. George? George? What is it?  Go inside? That's a good idea. I tried to stand up again. This time with Marlene's help, I made it. She stood very close while I wobbled to keep my balance. And I knew she'd put something in the brandy. Liquor by itself couldn't have done that to me. Marlene? Marlene? Yes, George? Why'd you put it in the brandy? Just a few drops of something, George dear. Steady. Mustn't fall, not yet. We're not close enough to the railing. What are you up to? You've never stopped trying to find a way to be rid of me, have you, George? But you'll never succeed because I can make plans, too. And I've made my plans to be your widow. That's crazy. You can't get away with it. Of course I can. You're going to have an accident. You're going to fall 20 floors from this balcony to the nice, hard street. Now come over here, George. Another step. No, I won't. You can't. No, but I can. What I put in the brandy has made you helpless as a baby. Match you with a butler. I'll testify how drunk you were. George, can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. George, let go of my wrist. You can make plans, too. George, let me go. But you always estimated how far gone I was. I'm pretty wobbly enough for you to push me over any round. I was just joking with you, George. I was just trying to scare you. Let go of me. Oh, no, you don't. We're going inside.  Stop struggling. Well, do you any good? George, let go of me. Maline, Maline, look out. She was gone. She went the same route Filo had taken. But this time I'd have given both arms to save her. I stood there trying to get hold of myself, and behind me I heard the French door open. I turned. It was Matthew, the butler, gargling at me. Mr. Vincent. Mr. Vincent. Matthew, you saw. Saw tried to push me over to you. You saw tried to push me and slip and go over herself? Saw her try to push you over? Mr. Vincent, sir, I saw you murder your wife. That's the story. You, Mr. Peoples, and all you others, I sure had you fooled. How it, Vincent? That's a laugh. I was born in the gutters, but born for the big money, and I had it even if it didn't last.  With those documents Maline left to be turned over to the cops? Well, I guess I've come to the end of the road. But you can't get the big money without paying for it somehow, can you? Oh, Howard. Howard, my boy. Yes, Mr. Peoples. Maline didn't leave any documents. She didn't, but she searched. No, that was just an effort to keep her hold over you. You see, shortly after we accepted you as Howard Vincent, we found a box of your boyhood toys and among them was a paint box covered with fingerprints and dried paint. And why didn't you nappy? Why'd you let me get away with it? Because they were your fingerprints. My boy, this was also unnecessary. You are and always have been Howard Vincent. And so the curtain falls on the big money, which was chosen by guest expert, Francis Craying, whose latest mystery, The Flying Red Horse, has just been published. Next week at this time, Murder by Experts brings you a story of a murderer whose victim refused to stay dead, selected for your approval by Cornell Woolridge. Until then, this is your host, John Dixon Carr, hoping you'll be with us next week at this time. The Big Money was written by Philip Andrews and adapted for radio by Robert A. Arthur and David Cogan. In the cast were James Stevens and Shepherd Eric Dressler and Wendell Holmes. Music is under the direction of Sylvan Levine and was composed by Richard U-Page. Murder by Experts is produced and directed by Robert A. Arthur and David Cogan. All characters in our story were fictitious, and any resemblance to the names of actual persons was purely coincidental. This is Jack Farron speaking. This is the Mutual Broadcasting System.


the French Wikipedia, that should be within a few seconds. That's what users will expect. And so we need to make sure that we're building systems that actually meet the user need, and not just I can write a scientific paper that claims that my decisions are fine. The purpose of technology is to serve, not to be the technology. And so if that means we're going to have to compromise on ways of doing things in some cases, then so be it. Right now, we're talking about using JavaScript in Python as our two example languages. Originally, we're going to ship with just one. And I pointed out that if we wanted to ship with multiple languages in the long term, starting to ship with just one means we'll always only have just one. Scribonto, technically, is a multi-language system. But no one's ever added anything other than Lua to it. And actually, at this point, it is so concreted in that it would be really hard to add a second one. And so that's why we shipped with two. Maybe we'll support 20, maybe six, something in the future. What those are or why we have them might change over time. We might do dynamic recompilation of things into a web assembler or something scary. And that might speed things up, but also make it harder to reason about the system. So right now, we're at a pretty simple level. All our stuff is obviously open source.  You're probably right. And I'd really love feedback or thoughts anybody has. If you want to get involved, I'd be glad to talk about it. But where we go in the future is going to be driven by the users, what we're building, who we're building that for. And so I don't really want to kind of make a decision now or even a promise now, because that may not hold true. I wanted to disagree on two points quickly.  And second, I'm not exactly sure that we really need to provide an update if something changes on wiki data immediately to the Wikipedia as like within seconds. Sure, it would be desirable. But one of the things that I did in preparation for the whole episode of Wikipedia was to try to check how quickly does right now knowledge propagate between the Wikipedia as, for example, the mayor changes of a city or something like this. And we have places where languages take up to two or three years to update if they update ever on those things. So something that takes a day or two is still better than that, right? And it would be great if, for example, it doesn't have to be automatic. It always propagates within seconds. It can also be something like, well, for this Wikipedia, I want now something like Action Purge or whatever. Kill the cashers and try to recompile it. And it will take a little bit. And it can be done in a few seconds. But in other cases, it might take a day or two until it is there. It's still faster than our current methodology, which is basically the baseline that I'm taking here. But again, we are discussing on those things. We will discuss it also with the community and see what is actually acceptable on those things and so on. We will have to find something that works with the infrastructure and that works with the community. But not all of these things are decided yet. We're going to have ongoing discussions over the next few years with all of you. So Nick, this gentleman is having his end up for a while. Sorry, Leila. Hi, so if I get it correctly, with the license that we have for wiki functions and the code for JavaScript and Python, there will be no ownership for the implementations, et cetera. I cannot say this is my implementation of this function or something like that. And so this is a multi-layered question because this is wiki functions. Can other people edit my implementation? Because different people have different approach to how to solve something. So if they do that, I don't necessarily agree with their implementation. What would happen? Or would they have to create other implementation, like multiple JavaScript implementations? And which one is better and which one is more precise, et cetera? Thank you. So on ownership, so our model is much more like the English Wikipedia. And I think most wikipedia and wikis, which is we're against ownership of objects because community members leave and the objects will stay around. And so it's important that those are owned across the community. So there aren't going to be like this is Bob's implementation and only Bob is allowed to edit it. Honestly, though, that's really not for me to say that is a community decision. And if the wiki functions community decides that they want to have named individuals and this is Bob's implementation, and as a community function, people expect only Bob to edit it, then obviously that is for the wiki functions community to decide. And they may change their mind as well. From a very practical point of view, though, once a function is approved, an implementation is up there so that you can run it as a regular user, it goes to a higher security level. Because at that point, if I then change that implementation, I potentially break all the users who are currently relying on that function. So that doesn't mean you can't do it, but we have different editing rights added in the system. The base level is a regular user who can create functions, create implementations. This is not live yet. That's how it will be. The next level up is Functioneer, who can approve those changes. They can say, yep, I agree. This is a good implementation. It passes these tests. I can add a new test case. And I say, yep, this test case is a good test case. I can also remove them and say, mm, doesn't work anymore. And then there's a super level called a function maintainer. And that has the ability to actually edit an implementation that is currently live. That is going to be a very big, scary, risky thing because it's possible for you to return false, rather than true in your code when you make a change. And that could instantly cascade out to every Wikipedia article all at once. And you break every template. So that's a big thing that we would probably want as a community to think very carefully about how that would work. Maybe instead you should authorize the implementation first, make the changes, agree the new test suite, and then reapprove it. Or maybe you create a new function and get people to switch over, whatever that is. Again, that is a community process that doesn't exist yet. And I don't want to pre-assume where that would go. Also, another thing is that a function can have multiple implementations in the same programming language. So you can have potentially several different algorithms implementing the same function. As actually, James was showing earlier for the concatenate for the join strings functions. We actually have three implementations in JavaScript. And they all free can be approved. And the system will basically look at how is it running against the use cases, how much resources does it cost, and then basically automatically decide. Actually, the community cannot really decide which of the implementations to run. Every approved implementation should be fine. And the system should be deciding based on the resource that we currently have, this is the best implementation to run. Yeah, so right now we're making a very blunt choice, which is averaged across the test suites, which is the fastest implementation. But that ignores potentially pathological cases that aren't currently in the test suites. It ignores what resources are available right now. We're going to improve that. That's definitely not long term. That's just where we got to to ship. And one thing we might end up having is different implementations get run depending on the inputs. So if you ask for the English plural form of this, then we have a function that's really fast for English because it's hard coded in. But for every other language, it's slow because it has to fetch it from Wikidata. And so we'll call you, if this function, if it's English, but if it's Hebrew or a complex language, then we'll call a different thing that has a lookup table that means it's slightly slower overall, but really fast compared to the first function. And so it's not like there's a one and done decision. That might be a dynamic impact on the system. And this is vaporware. All code doesn't exist until it's live in production, and it doesn't exist. So I don't know what it will do, but that's the kind of area we're thinking about. But I love also, for example, this is a beautiful place where I hope that external researchers or groups, for example, in the programming languages community will actually pick this up and see. This is a challenge where you can put a PhD thesis into it, and someone else will go and figure it out. And I'd be happy to just use those results. And for example, the Wikifunctions will provide a lot of, just like Wikidata, will provide a lot of places where people can contribute also as a third party, which we'll be happy to integrate. Because honestly, no matter how big the team is, we can't do everything. Leila from Wikimedia Foundation Research Team, congratulations on the milestone. So actually, Denny, I think you started touching on it. I wanted to ask, do you all have thoughts about whether something like Wikifunctions can engage people who are currently not engaged with the Wikimedia projects and help them become Wikimedians? Maybe they didn't consider it so far for a variety of reasons. Is there a particular group of people or groups of people that you think could join the community as a result of this project? Yes, yes, absolutely. So just like with Wikidata, I think that the researchers have shown that about half of the people who are active in Wikidata have not previously been Wikimedians, and about half of them come from other Wikimedia projects. I hope that we will have also an influx of new people who are interested in kind of functions. This also sounds kind of limiting, right? I mean, people who are interested in functions. Actually, I think there's an interesting space that there are certain domains which are able to be functionized for people who don't necessarily regard themselves as having a computer science background or something like that. Just to give a few examples, but the problem with those examples is I never know which one actually will turn out, obviously. And there might be something completely different that I don't have in the radar at all. But for example, how is this called? Knitting, the knitting community, for example, has over the last few two decades or so, has developed amazingly complex thing for notations and for checking whether certain knitting patterns can work and so on, which would be beautiful to capture in something like wiki functions and which they could benefit from. In music, you can do a lot of things like transpose melodies, check for keys and so on, which you could do in wiki functions. And there's so many places where you can use wiki functions. And one of the advantages of wiki functions is that you don't necessarily need to be a programmer because a lot of these things can happen with, if we have the right base functions with compositions and bring them together. This is how we want to, for example, reach out also to the natural language generation communities that they can actually work on morphological functions before necessarily being Python programmers or JavaScript programmers. That even if they just provide us with test cases, for example, this is something that they can, then one community can create a test cases, another community can actually then create implementations against the test cases and so on. So the way that wiki functions is designed by the separation of the test cases and implementations hopefully supports, for example, that people with different skill sets and capabilities can work together on getting those things out. So, and the whole idea with having the compositions be language independent, also hopefully will reach out to people who currently are not programmers simply because they don't speak English. Benjamin Marco Hill, who's also somewhere on the conference, for example, has shown in papers that the language barrier, the fact that most programming languages are based on English is actually a significant wall for people to contribute in code. So we put a lot of effort into the ability to create compositions, even if you don't speak English, that you can create compositions in Polish, as I've seen, that you can create compositions in Hebrew and so on and actually create those, without you having to learn English, without having to learn JavaScript and so on. So there is potentially a big pool of people that we can hopefully activate for this project and get in. I obviously have no idea who we will actually get. We're getting close to the end. I want to show, I have to think here, sorry, we're still showing the slides. I also want to give a shout out to the amazing team that has been working on wiki functions and apps of Wikipedia, thanks to all of them that we are now getting to this point of actually launch. We also are hiring. We have our positions out there. You can talk to us about that if you're interested. And yeah, let's go back and keep those. So we still have five more minutes for more questions. We have a session tomorrow where we want to teach actually hands-on how to work on wiki functions. And we also want to hand out the fun at the function near right to people who are here at the conference. All right.


Now, we're going to look at compiling out our own program. If you look at the screen, you can see that we've already got something built out. Go ahead and take a second and copy and paste that into Notepad++. Here's that pause.  It should look something like this. You can see suddenly that right now, I made promises. I said that Notepad++ was going to do syntax highlighting and it was going to make everything so easy. You lied to me, Mr. Guida. You lied to me. No, not really. Right now, because Notepad++ is a text editor, it thinks you're just giving it text. It doesn't know that this is Java. That's actually where this language menu item comes into play. Again, there are so many programming languages that each one has their own different kind of syntax. We have to say explicitly that we are using Java, J Java. Notice how as soon as we select it, suddenly it makes it nice and warm and comfortable. What happens if I want to compile this out? Right now, it is just syntactically Java and I have not saved this.   I like the desktop just because my desktop is pretty bare. It lets me work. And so, okay, it's very nice. So one of the things we have to do is whatever we name our public class. In our case, we named it, welcome. Public class, welcome. It needs to be named welcome.java. Whatever we have as that name is the class, that's what it needs to be named as. So we can hit save. So now all of a sudden, all right, I've got this working. How do I compile it? Well, right now, this doesn't do it. I have to actually add in or bring in another program. I have to bring in what's known as my command prompt. If you're a user of a Macintosh or a Linux machine, you're going to bring in your terminal. Now, I don't know off the time I have where it is on the Linux machine. It's very easy to find. It's in your applications. For you Macintosh users, you'll want to hit the little rocket icon. And then it'll be when you app launch, it'll be in your other section called terminal. For us Windows 7 users, we can just click on the start menu icon and type in something like CMD.   That's where you want to click, and that'll take you to your search. So I hit enter CMD. That brings me to my command prompt. Now if we take a look at this, this is giving me a look into my directory. So if we take a look for a second, this is what it looks like. I'm right here. This is my Windows Explorer machine. It's the GUI version of this. And so you can see I can mess around with it. But I said explicitly that I saved my welcome.drive file to my desktop. So how do I get to my desktop? Well, in this case I can go and double click on my desktop. All right. Yay. But that doesn't allow me to do that here. Now what I can do is I can use a keyboard command, a command prompt command called cd, cd change directory. Now by itself doesn't do terribly much. But if I add in a folder such as the desktop folder, which is inside of my user directory, I can go to it. And you notice when I hit enter, suddenly it's users aguita desktop. Now all right, what if I don't want to have this guy always around? Well, it's not a problem. For Windows machines, what we're able to use is we're actually able to use a command called dir, get my directory listing. If you are a Mac or Linux user, you are going to use ls. Windows machines don't have ls, but it does the exact same thing. It lists all of the contents of your current directory.  So you see that I have welcome.java. So now, there we are. What do I need to do? Again, I'm going to do another little keyboard command for us. This is just to clear out my screen. I've got a lot of stuff going on. CLS. I like it. It makes it a little easier on myself. So to take this code, right now, welcome.java, welcome.java is a source code file. It's text, it's syntax that we as humans can understand, but not as the programmer. So we have to actually do a little change. We have to convert it into machine language. And to do that, we use a command called javasc. Now, if you're familiar with the desktop, the command prompt, you've probably seen something like this before. You've probably done something like ipconfig, ipconfig is typically one of the things that tech support will ask you to do if your internet's not working. If I hit enter, you see that I can get, all of a sudden, just all of that information. I get a little bit about my ip address, so my ip4 address, my mac address, all that stuff. Well, now what I can do is I can go ahead and say, for my sake, instead of ipconfig, I'm going to use something called javasc. And so inside of javasc, what I want to do is I want to go ahead and say, what? What am I compiling? Well, if we just run javasc by itself, just run javasc and hit enter. You should get something like that. You should get a slew of text. If on the other hand, you get something like this, not a recognized file, make sure to take a look at setting up your environment variables in links. But javasc, javasc, as we can see, gives me the slew of these commands and I see javasc options, source files. So it allows for me suddenly to take my code and convert it into machine language. So what I'm going to go ahead and do is I'm going to say, javasc welcome.java. And if this works perfectly fine, you're going to notice I get no errors, which is nice. Now if you did get an error, take a look at what it was. Here's the source code, so compare and contrast it, see if there's anything you're missing. Now how do I run my code? Right now, I've just compiled it, which means if I take a DIR look again, I now have a welcome .class file. And just so we can take a look at that, that machine language I was just talking about, what that does is it gives me something like this, a bunch of ones and zeros that we as humans have no idea about. I mean, I understand the welcome.java part, I see the nine times two equals, that's stuff that I did right. But I don't understand what this does, it's for the computer. So now how do I compile out this code and run it? I've compiled it, javasc. What I want to do is I want to do java welcome. I don't want to do java welcome.class.java, if I do either of those, freaks out, if I do .class, freaks out, what it's looking for explicitly is for me to tell it the object that we've built. One thing, everything in Java is an object. So we've just designed our first object. Hello world, nine times two equals 18. Now I'm going to throw out just a little bit more before we take a little break in. Let's take a look at the code I've got here. I see system.out.print line. Print line is going to give me a new line. It's going to act as if I was typing out this code myself and I had hit enter. System.out.print, system.out.print on the other hand has no new line, it doesn't have that inner. And that's why all of a sudden I can see nine times two here. Now I'm going to change this. I'm going to change this from nine times two to times plus, plus, always change your comments as well. Plus, I'm going to change that.  Java C, welcome.java, java, welcome. You see we can make changes to our code now, saving it, compiling it, running it so we don't need our IDE.  What happens if I were to do this? What happens? And take a pause and run this in your code for a second. I'll wait. Okay, I'm back. I'm done waiting.  One of the things you will see is because of how programming works, nine plus two is going to equal 92. What's going on here is because Java doesn't understand how to add a string to a number. Well, it does. It has a de facto way of doing it. But if we think about the literal, how do I take a string? It could be cat or something and then plus nine to it. What are we really looking to do? So what Java automatically does is it says, screw the math, you know, you're clearly not doing math. I'm going to convert those numerical values into strings. And that's what we get. And so suddenly nine plus two equals 92.


This is Starb to Storefront. It wasn't very long ago that we as a society were told that a small amount of alcohol, say a glass of wine with dinner, could be beneficial for our cardiovascular health. But a recent study from the World Heart Federation has turned that notion upside down, saying that any amount of drinking alcohol can contribute to the loss of a healthy life. So what are we to do with this new information? Sure, there are plenty who will ignore it, but national trends show a shift in drinking habits. No and low alcoholic beverage sales have increased 33% in the past year, with the non-alcoholic beverage category predicted to grow by another 35% this year. In other words, the future looks bright for Ted Fleming of Partake Brewing. Partake is a non-alcoholic brewing company and Ted has been ahead of the curve for a while now, winning over the taste buds of casual beer drinkers and professional critics alike. But there's still a lot of work left to do, as there is still a very real stigma about non-alcoholic beer and massive companies with vested interests in maintaining the status quo. So listen in as we cover everything from why alcoholic breweries see Partake as a threat to their business, what the design of Ted's ideal brewery would look like, and taking his bike to appear on Dragonsten and getting caught in the rain. Now, on to the episode. All right, welcome to the podcast. On today's show, we're talking to Ted from Partake. People who don't know, please tell us what your company does. Yeah, I'm Ted Fleming, I'm the founder of Partake Brewing. We're making phenomenal craft non-alcoholic beer. We're expanding across the US super fast into amazing retailers and people are just loving what we're doing, really changing the game around non-alcoholic adult beverages.  Yeah, she's hired as my publicist. Let me ask you a question. How big is the category? Let's start with that. How big is the category and where is it moving in terms of non-alcoholic beer? What's the trend? Yeah, so right now we think in North America, it's about a billion, billion and a half category. We see that going to 10 billion in the next five to seven years. Really phenomenal growth in the category. Europe, as a comparative, they're at five to 10%. Even Spain is 13% of their entire beer market is non-alcoholic beer and we're just like 1% here in the US, so lots of room to grow. Where did the idea come from for you? So for me, I know when I go to London, as an example, there's a big after-work beer culture and it can turn into alcoholism pretty quickly. And so I know there they have different gins that are non-alcoholic, some beers too. And so what was the moment for you where you were like, maybe it's a personal story, where you were like, this is the thing I need to solve and maybe there's a market? No, it was totally a personal story for me. So if you back up to 2005, I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease, a bit of a slow learner. So it took me a few years to kind of figure out what that meant for me in terms of diet. And there was this key moment for me. I was on vacation in in Europe.  I had a couple of drinks and I was already starting to kind of reduce my alcohol consumption. But on vacation, I kind of let my guard down. And I ended up in the hospital, unfortunately. And I was a new dad at the time. I had a three month old daughter, my first. And, you know, that time in the hospital was really that time to myself where I could say, hey, I got to change some things and I got to make them permanent. And there's a lot of great reasons for me to do that, not just for myself, but for my family. And so when I got back to Canada, I started making a really, really concerted effort to get away from alcohol. But I was a beer lover. I love craft beer. I'd go out socialize with my friends. I'd have people would have beer after playing sports. And I struggled to stay on the path I wanted to because there weren't great options for me in the non-alcoholic category. So that was sort of the seed that got planted that eventually turned into partake brewing. Wow. What was your first step? First step was actually a friend of mine. She was a beer writer in Toronto and she was pregnant. And she wrote this article about all the best non-alcoholic beers in Toronto. And I went and got some of them and they were phenomenal, except I had to drive like Toronto's not quite as bad as LA for driving, but it's not great. It's pretty bad. Easy, easy, easy. And it took me hours to source this product. And I said, well, this isn't going to be a long-term solution. So I said, someone's got to be selling it online. There wasn't, but there was a company in the UK that was and they had a business model. And I sort of used that as a template and brought that business model to Canada. And over time, I built a customer base and I started to understand what I was doing. I was building a community and I was really this sole advocate for changing things for people like me who didn't drink and still wanted to be social and still wanted to have a great tasting product and didn't want to be asked questions. And social situations like, why aren't you drinking? And we just wanted to be social and have a good time with everyone else, not answer a bunch of questions. So I started that business model. And then the fans of ours, our consumers, they said, hey, Ted, can you get Kraft non-alcoholic beer? And went out to a bunch of breweries in our area and said, hey, I've got this really great customer base. I've got this channel. Will you help me do this? And I got the door slammed in my face, basically. So I said, hey, I'm going to do it myself. And we launched on Kickstarter in 2017, about five years ago. How much did you raise on that campaign? We raised, we had a goal of $10,000. We raised that in the first day. And then we ended up raising $30,000 by the end. And that sort of got the ship sailing. Did you reach out to that company in the UK to get any advice from them? Or because you're starting a brand new enterprise here. I'm imagining that you'd have to have some sort of roadmap other than just what you could find online from them. Like, did you reach out to them or anyone else? Yeah, I developed a bit of a rapport with the founder of that company. He didn't give me a roadmap. But it was a fairly simple business model, being e-commerce. My biggest challenge in that business was sourcing most of the products coming from Europe. And then being in Canada in the winter, shipping liquids, a lot of product froze. So that was a challenge for us as an e-commerce business. And so I started to, and it was difficult to access the US market as well. Like Canada as a marketplace is one-tenth the size of the US market. And I had fans in the US, like they could find us online, but they couldn't order or we couldn't send certain products because of labeling. And they were so mad at me because I couldn't or wouldn't do this because it wasn't legal. And so creating our own brand and own product and the shipping side of it, there were a lot of warts on that business. And creating my own brand and my own product was a way to get around that and serve the US customers that I said, you know, one day I'll get to this. Just got to figure it out. So once you had the capital and you had to go into fine-tuning like recipe development and making sure things tasted the way maybe you wanted them to taste, what was that process like? And like how long of a journey? Because it's hard, right? It's hard to get it right. Yeah, I think before we launched on Kickstarter, we had a prototype. So that was the point of like we got the prototype launched on Kickstarter, worked with a friend who's a very accomplished home brewer to kind of, you know, experiment. I'm an engineer by trade. So yeah, we were developing the recipes. We threw a lot out. A lot went down the drain. There were some pretty awful versions of that but eventually got to a point where, oh, this isn't so bad. And we, you know, a lot of, you know, success as an entrepreneur is right place at the right time.  We've got a brewery, like a new brewery that the government's funded for our school. We haven't set up an academic program around it, but we're trying to get industry partners to work on it. So I was able to work with them. We were able to access professional brewers and professional microbiologists to really take the prototype to the next level and get it commercial scale ready. That's crazy.  When it came to that, what was their goal? What was the goal for the university? Were they trying to figure something out in particular on this journey? Or was it just like, let's maybe add a curriculum to brewing? Yeah, they were trying to do a curriculum to brewing but at the same time, they were trying to work with industry and recipe development. And, you know, we didn't have a brewery at the time. Most small brewers did, so they would actually do their experimentation at their own facility. So it was actually somewhat of a mismatch between industry and academics, but, you know, again, we were fortunate to be in the right place at the right time. That's so incredible. Did they sell the beer on campus after that? They do, yeah. Yeah, yeah. They have a little restaurant and they have a local agricultural program there, so they do sort of field-to-table type stuff. Okay, walk me through the moment of like, here you are, you're getting sales, things are working, Kickstarter went well, you have maybe like six, seven, eight different flavors in the marketplace, and then you realize like, oh, you need to scale this up. Like, you see it. You have the orders coming in. What was that like? Where are these people coming from? Where are people bothering? Like, where are the emails coming? Where is the market? And, you know, what is that like for you? What was that moment like? The big change over point for me was, we started to see people coming to the brand that were like, they weren't like me. They didn't have to be in the category. They didn't have a medical reason or some acute reason to be drinking. Non-alcoholic beer, they were choosing to drink it. And they were choosing to drink it because it tasted good. We had variety across all these craft styles, so people had like these access points that they've never had before for styles they liked. And I think what's unique for us, even within non-alcoholic is like, our calorie count is only 10 to 30 calories for an entire can. And a lot of people would say, oh, you know, I like the idea of non-alcoholic beer, but you know, if I'm gonna drink something non-alcoholic, I don't want the calories. And, you know, once we had a product that had amazing taste, and we've won like world awards for the best non-alcoholic beer, and then we combine that with like, it's basically calorie-free. Like you burn more than 10 calories in the act of drinking a beer. And so- You hear that pitch? Yeah. It's calorie-free, everyone. So people started actually- It's a workout. Yes, people started making their own, you know, case for why they should drink it and what occasions. And that was when things really took office. Like the, you know, our market, our total addressable market, went from people who couldn't drink alcohol to every beer drinker. Have you ever thought about making one version alcoholic? Because if you think about it, right, so the reverse of it is if I'm a Bud Light, if I'm a Anheuser-Busch, I have the market, now let me start releasing things to the smaller niches, non-alcoholic, salters, and blah, blah. Here you are kind of going reverse, where all your customer base doesn't drink. Do you ever think about doing that? It's crossed my mind. Like, I think if we were to do that- Maybe under a different name also, like maybe- Yeah, possibly. You know, you build the infrastructure and it's easier to make alcoholic beer than it is to make a good non-alcoholic beer. But I think what we decided was like, we're here for a purpose. We serve a very specific customer and we have a specific mission. And if we did that, we would probably lose focus. So it was important to us to stay focused and stay focused for our customers. And we think this is a 20, 30-year market evolution where we can have huge positive impact, but we need to stay focused. You know, one of the things that you've talked about in other interviews, you weren't able to find a beer that suited your taste. You weren't able to find one that was worth the drive to Toronto every time to go get it. And I'm curious about the market as a whole. When you look at the percentage of growing non-alcoholic beer drinkers across like Europe, the U.S., you see that growing. But I'm curious about what you have to do to influence that along, or if you just let that kind of matriculate on its own and just supply the beer in the meantime? I think to this point, we've kind of allowed the market to develop. We've raised a lot of capital recently. And I think a big part of the reason behind that is I think we need to get much more aggressive and tell our story. I think ultimately for people that don't drink, can't drink, trying to drink less, it's a bit of a hostile environment out there. And that was my experience. You go to a bar or a restaurant and you say, hey, do you have a non-alcoholic beer? They'd often say no. They'd look at you like, why would you even want that? Like that category is awful. Here's a soda. Here's a water. And when you're out with a group of friends, you don't feel like you're included. You don't feel like you're at the kids' table. And so I think we have a bigger mission. And that's why I'm looking at this in a 20 and 30 year time horizon of like, we need to change the stigma around not drinking and make it totally normal. And there's a lot of work to do around that, but that's our mission. When it comes to your customer, who is your customer? Like if you can put them in a bucket, like for me, I'll just give you what feels intuitive. So we build breweries, as you know. And so when I go to the breweries that we build, who are they? And they're all people that are generally single, looking to meet somebody, probably, I would say mid-20s seems to be the right market. And then I'll throw my personal end of it where I think there will be a day where I stop drinking when that day is approaching. Like I know it's coming. Like I don't even drink beer anymore. I just drink wine. And so then, and I know I fit into a customer profile. And so who, like, is your customer, I'm just going to guess, like 37? Take that customer that you have at your brewery and then as they move on in age and their life changes in terms of like, they become a parent, they're not quite as athletic. They don't have the same metabolism as they did before. They've got higher, you know, they've got careers and more responsibilities. It doesn't mean they don't want to be social. They don't want to go out. They don't want to have enjoyable time with their friends and have those connections that happen over a beer. They still want all that. But, you know, they see the value in a non-alcoholic product and a low-calorie product. And that's where we fit in of like, okay, take that 28 to 45 age person who has developed a taste for craft beer and as their, you know, as their life evolves into a more mature state, like that's where they start to say, okay, there's a time and a place for that same craft beer that I love, but there's also a time and a place for non-alcoholic beer and I can just pick and choose on occasion or how I'm feeling on a given day. And it's actually a very complimentary product. I think early on in the evolution of our category, a lot of breweries saw us as a threat. And I think about a year ago for us in Toronto, which is one of our key markets, we started to see a ton of breweries just bringing our product in and just, they just saw that as like, hey, we're just serving our customers and they want this and it's complimentary. And the person who drinks non-alcoholic beer, they're usually driving where people go because they have a smaller suite of options. And so if you can serve that customer, it's not just them, they're bringing five or six other people with them. That's fascinating that they saw you as the competition, as a threat, when I would say like sense.  And then two, like you talked about just now, on the progression of people who are drinking, like you talked about your time drinking is coming to an end. I think about in my lifetime, I went from in college, just drinking to get buzzed, to get drunk, to have a good time. And now it's like I only drink for taste and that pattern is coming down for me as well. So I think of it as, you've got these breweries that exist now who are making beer and they're serving a different customer than you are and it's like a different stage along that path. So it's fascinating to me that they can't see the natural pairing of the two, like a symbiotic relationship there. Yeah, if there's any breweries out there listening, we'd love to partner with you because I think there's a lot of crossover and you're going to bring more customers to your brewery, to your tap room if you're partnering with a great non-alcoholic company. We just have brewery, cider and wine and we're missing the non-alcoholic piece. When it comes to like price point, so this is an interesting thing, right?  So what is the price point that you find works? We're a very similar line price to alcoholic beer. Some place is a little bit below, but you know. Are you a higher margin item though because maybe there's less processing time or does it not really matter? There's that, but you know, there's some ads and some subtracts from that. Like I think our product is much more delicate in terms of making it. So there's some precision brewing that costs more money and then in some cases, there's some de-alcoholization. So there's extra capital expenditure around how some brews are made. Okay. Is most of the people who drink this male? Like what is the split? I would say 60, 40. I think our brand is somewhat unique. I think probably the category as a whole is probably mirrors alcoholic beer. I think our brand skews more towards women a bit more and I think we're just seen as an accessible brand and the calorie component of what we bring to the table I think is particularly appealing. So you just closed the big round, right? Congratulations. Thank you. What are you going to do with it? What are you feeling the pressure? Pressure to a pool, dive into it. Yeah, it's super exciting. Again, I frame it up around that 20 to 30 year mission that we're on and how do we start to tell the story of the category? How do we start to tell the story of our consumers? How do we advocate for them? How do we get the product in more retailers and more on-premise? How do we change that negative stigma and make it a more employee? I want to know. Yeah. It's I think basics for food and beverage. We got to get out and sample. Like people, when they try our product, they're like, wow, this tastes good. I can't tell the difference between an alcoholic beer. It's 10 calories. Okay, where do I buy it? Like that's, it's calorie free. Mostly it's calorie free. Yeah. Yeah. By the time you're done. That's the conversation we're having and we just have to have that conversation like 100,000 times, a million times. So it's just boots on the ground, CPG, full attack, tastings at Bevmo or anywhere. And we've had our hands tied behind our back for a couple of years, right? So we're kind of itching to get out there and do that, you know, that work. The guerrilla marketing. When it comes to moving into America, is it challenging or is it pretty straightforward being a Canadian based company? Yeah, pros and cons there. Like it's certainly in some areas that, you know, you're seen as a premium product because you're from, you know, you're- Oh, there's some allure to it. Outside of the U.S. It's by Trudeau? Yeah. And then some people are like, well, it's not made in the U.S. And I want to support local. So there's some of each. And that's why, again, I think our message and our mission is really important because that resonates with people and that transcends those things. U.S. market is very fragmented from a distribution point of view, especially within beer, as you probably know, that, you know, we have to get distribution on a state-by-state basis. And even then, sometimes within the states because I was looking at where you're distributed and you've got a bunch of whole states, but then you've got Eastern PA and Southern California, like San Francisco and Pittsburgh are not on the map just yet. And it's interesting how that works where you can have all of Washington state, all of Maryland, but sections of states. Yeah. That's kind of the chicken-in-the-egg thing, which I think a lot of consumer package could brand go through, right? The retailers say, who's your distributor? The distributor says, who's your retailer? Sometimes that map gets divided up just based on, hey, we got a retailer and they have this footprint in this only this one portion of the state. Well, then the distributor for that portion of the state comes on and maybe not the whole state. Where is your highest yield, though, from a business perspective? Like where do you see the highest yield? Is it in more distribution? Or are you going direct to consumer? We actually started as direct to consumers. So we were probably the first beer brand in North America ever to start as. And was it like subscription model or was it just? There was some subscription, but it was really based off of that e-commerce store that I built originally and going into that consumer base. What quantity of beer were people buying the most of? Was it six packs, 12 packs? Like I'm thinking if I'm buying something online. Do you even sell it like that? Or do you go radically different? Do you go 10 packs? On e-commerce, we only sold 24 packs to get the shipping cost as a percentage of the total cost down. Today, we can subdivide that much into six packs. So we can do six packs on e-commerce. Is that the highest yield, the direct to consumer for you? Yeah, you're keeping the distributor and the retailer margin when you do that, so. And is that what you're doubling down on now? Or is it now? No, it's still an important part of our business, but it's really about building that retail footprint. Going back to the vision, like how do we do that? We're not going to do that through e-commerce. Like that's a great, it's a great channel, but how are we going to change society's view of non-alk and that accessibility and variety? We have to do that through retail and we have to do that through on-prem. And marketing. And telling the story to get people to, okay, it's on the shelf. Now how do they know about it? How do they choose partake? How do you think about that? The marketing side of it, is it like you're hiring CML? Are you going television commercials? Or are you going just Instagram videos?  Yeah, I think we want to do events so that we can get that boots on the ground sampling, but we also want to be able to leverage, like this is the lifestyle that this product and this category in partake unlocks is, you can still have fun. You can still be part of the event or the party fit in, feel perfectly great when you go home and great in the morning and do what you need to do. But that connection between like an event sampling and being able to amplify that on social, I think that's sort of the key. As someone who builds breweries, I just like think of like, can you imagine if we built a non-alcoholic brewery and then you have an event or you just open for business every day? And the amount of social media or just like news coverage that you would get, and it's funny too. It's like, everyone here is sober. Let's do that. It's fascinating to think about that. No, but if you think about it, like it becomes kind of your best marketing hack. It's almost like if I'm in food and I have a food truck, wherever I go, the business goes, and if there's a cool event, that's a lot of social media content for free. This is similar, right? And then you can just have shelves or fridges of alcoholic beer if people so choose, but the juxtaposition of it is so fascinating. And then you also have creative license to like make the design however you want. And so today, if I say let's go to a brewery, you're already imagining what this might look like. But if you build it on your own accord in a totally different way to break the stigma, right? Now you're destroying someone's construct or narrative that they've built up, and I think that's pretty powerful. Yeah. It's something we've actually had fun with, right? Like we can place our product in places where beer, alcoholic beer traditionally can't go. And that surprises people and it gets them to pause and say, oh, is that a beer? It's like, yeah, it's a beer. Just happens to be non-alcoholic, but it's a beer. And that's what you can do with it. You can walk down the street with it, or you can take it into places that people kind of do a double take. And so I think that's memorable. And we have some fun doing that type of thing.  You can drink and drive. Yeah. That's a good clip. We're here for it, right? There's drinking and driving. You can do legally. You can have, you can carry. You can open the carry. Yeah, you can walk around. Yeah. You can walk around with it. It does not have to be Vegas. Nope. You can do it right in LA. Yeah, let's have some fun with that. There's a lot here. I'm like super intrigued in this. You know, one of the other things that kind of ties into all of this when it comes to marketing and fundraising was your appearance on Dragonsten. And we've had a lot of companies on Shark Tank, but I think you are the first one. Congratulations to come on this show having been on Dragonsten. Thank you. And I'm curious about the similarities and differences between Shark Tank and Dragonsten. I know that Shark Tank comes from the British Dragonsten. I know that was the inspiration for it, but in terms of the specifics of the bump that you get from being on it and what the the dragons in this case do to your evaluation. So on Shark Tank, we know that from data, they typically cut your evaluation in half. And I know from the deal that you struck, they cut your evaluation in half and then some. So I believe you were asking for like 300,000 for what was it, 20%? Sounds about right, yeah. And the dragon that you made a deal with gave you 300,000 for 50%. You know, like can we just talk about like... Did that deal go through? Yeah. So yeah, first thing I tell people is you can't believe everything you see on TV, of course. Most of the deals, by the way, that have come on here, never actually get executed. In arbitration afterwards, they always fall through. DD, DD. Yeah, I do diligence. Yeah, I think about only 10% to 15%. It might be a little higher these days of the deals that happen on TV actually come to fruition in some form. I went into that with the idea that, look, you're not held to whatever deal you get on the show. You're not held to it. There's no, there's nothing binding about it. You basically agreed to talk later. And so, you know, I took the approach like I don't need to get a proper valuation. I just need to get a deal to talk about something. Yes, because then, was in your mindset that as long as they say, yes, I'm one more likely to be on air, and then two, I will get talked about as having made a deal on that show. Yeah, but there's two sides to that. I still get messages today of guys saying you would never have accomplished what you would have accomplished if you didn't have 50% ownership from this dragon person. Yeah, that's motivating, though. She and I have never, we neither of us go out of our way to say that we don't have a deal. Like, we're talking about it because you guys asked, but... Yeah, well, yeah. It looks like she got the deal of the century. Yeah, we're also, you know, she and I are friendly. Like, I can call her up and say, hey, I got an issue and she'll return my call. So we've got a great relationship. We actually happen to live in the same city in Canada, Calgary. Okay. And, you know, she's great at running her business and they're very successful and we've been very successful.  You can do it yourself. Like, I think you can do it yourself. I believe you can do it yourself. And, you know, to this day, I don't know for sure if she was trying to let me down easy or if she actually meant it. But, you know, either way, she was right. On a lighter note, I read on your blog that you actually, so you have a cargo bike that you rode to the studio that day. Oh, yeah. That's alone, remarkable. But it also rained on you when you were biking there. One, I want to, like, your blog didn't go into all the detail that I wanted. How long of a ride was that? And what went through your mind that was, like, oh, yes, this is a good idea to bike to the studio? Yeah. Well, part of the issue was like trying to put a cargo bike into a, like, a car or a van. Like, I just, I had no other, I wasn't that organized, so I had no other way to get it there. So I kind of got myself into a corner there. So I was riding along the North Shore of Lake Ontario and there's this huge storm and huge waves coming off. And the cargo bike is not aerodynamic. So you're just getting, like, blown. It's a giant box in front.   All right. And I've got this bike which had actually had a draft tap coming out the top. So I actually served draft out of the beer.  But I got there. I was wet. I still had, like, six hours before I actually got on air. Like, the waiting part is the tricky part. Yes, yes. Like, how many times can I rehearse my pitch? Like, I don't know, maybe 37. Right. Something like that. But, yeah, I dried off by the time I got into the studio. That's good. I would imagine that, you know, even if you hadn't, wardrobe could have fixed you up with something. Yeah. Like, there's no way that they're letting you go on TV soaking wet. Yeah. I was disappointed. They didn't do makeup on me or anything else. Oh, really?  I was hoping for the, you know, the royal treatment. You didn't need it. We had a company on the podcast that they were trying to solve a problem that you're probably hitting or will hit soon where they basically are trying to find a way to make beer into a concentrate. Right. And the whole concept is, at the end of the day, you're shipping water. Every beer company is shipping glass or cans and water. Right. And so they actually found a way to do it where they would, at any bar, they could just install this. It's way smaller than a keg.  Fits in easier to carry than a keg because it's empty. And then there's concentrate. And if someone wants an alcoholic beer, you know, water, concentrate, and then boom. And they can do it for like, I forget the number, but it was like maybe like 600 beers before it had to be, before the filter itself, the thing he had, the concentrate had to be replaced. Do you ever think about that? Is that something that's on your radar? Well, funny enough, if you check out our April Fools posts, we actually have a pod for a Keurig. That's our, that's our version of that.  It's not that far off from reality. Right, right. April Fool's in 2022, but 2023, it's reality. That's right. You know, a few April Fool's jokes have turned into reality over time. Yeah. Donald Trump, I heard went to Expo East because of your tweet. I heard about that. Yeah, let's not go into that one. That's how I got my social media accounts taken away from me. That's how you got canceled by your own team. That's right. That's right. But yeah, I think there's some interesting stuff happening on that front, like that, you know, that brings up questions of like, how do you like, we ship a lot of water effectively in our product, right? Like that's, that's a potential great environmental benefit, right? If you can ship a concentrate versus a, versus a lot of the liquid. So I'm excited to see where some of that stuff goes. Like I think like traditional brewed beer is going to be of a different quality than a soda beer, but it may be, may have interesting applications. Yeah. Do you have one plant right now or how many? We have two and we're looking for a third. Where do you want your third to be? In the U.S. Los Angeles? We'll see. You got a line on a brewery? Oh, I. He's got a line on a few breweries. Well, the hardest part about getting a brewery is getting the licensing. And so we have that. That's our whole skill set. We have the political allies to help us do that. We haven't gone far enough down the path to understand the licensing we would need as a non-elk brewery. It might be different. It might be different. It might be different. It might be the same. The zoning would just need to be manufacturing, but that's probably it. How do you envision it? Is it just like a production space, 10 barrel, 20 barrel? Yeah, I think it would be much larger than that. Like we're doing batches that are 500 barrels at a time. So some pretty significant volumes. Canning, a lot of canning. Yeah. Okay. We'd be looking for something that's pretty sizable. And the question of where is it located? I think we've got some work to do on figuring that out. But we've got great consumer support in California, the Northeast, Pacific Northwest. So probably in one of those markets where we're seeing really, really phenomenal traction. Tell me what it looks like in your head 20 years from now. What is the whole stigma? What is it? Is it gone? Is it different? Or is it now this group can play with this group and they can be allies or friends? Or is the market moving to more and more people are not drinking because of science coming out? Like what does it look like in your head? You have a wand. This is the energy that you see. Yeah, I don't like I'm not going to want to tell people what they should drink less necessarily. They have to come to that choice on their own. It's more our job is to make sure they have great options if they decide to do that. You know, one of the visions I have, and I explain to people what does the future look like for me. I'd love to go on a road trip with my daughter before she goes off to college and be able to go Calgary down through the Midwest and the West Coast of the US to Mexico and be able to stop into any small town and pick up my beer or go to a restaurant and have non-alcoholic beer on the menu and it just be completely normal for me to order it. No one only gives me a funny look. No one says, you know, why would you want that? Just feel like completely normal as a beer consumer.  I'm excited for it. I'm making plans already. Yeah. Are you into Tesla while you're doing this? Yeah. Yeah. Charging stations and non-alcoholic beer. That's a good future.  What does it look like? Yeah, we've already got over a dozen styles I think we'll have over 20 by the end of this year. So, you know, I'd love to have something that's, you know, we're trying to push this message of like, not drinking can be fun. It's like, you don't have to drink alcohol fun. It has to be a fun space. It has to have variety. It has to have all the best things that a taproom has, which is community, a place for people to congregate and to connect. That's what I want it to be. Do you think people drink because of the alcohol or do you think people drink because that's the only option? Like, for example, if I go to a brewery, I'm going to have a good time. And I know that. But the fact that I'm being served alcohol doesn't really matter, right? Or maybe it does. I think for some people it does, but I think for most people it doesn't. It's about who they're with. And that's, you know, that's part of our brand name, right? Like partake is about being with other people and sharing an experience and sharing a moment. And, you know, often that happens over drink. And I don't think alcohol has to be part of that. When it comes to the brewing process, though, are there any types of beers that are more difficult to make non-alcoholic than others? Well, we took the challenge from square one, right? Like we said, no one's made a non-alcoholic IPA that we know of or that's any good. And so we said, okay, if we can nail that, then we can make anything else. So that's why we started with the hardest thing. You started with that. Wow. We started with that. What makes IPAs so much more difficult? It's an experiment gone wrong and people like it. Yeah, there's so many people who love it. So they're just dialed into what that flavor profile is. It's funky. And it's usually associated with a high alcohol content. So if you can make something great like we do in a non-alcoholic format and can really satisfy those people that drink a lot of IPAs and are very honed in on what that should taste like. And that's what we did. And so we took that. That was the product we had on our Kickstarter.  I absolutely hate it. I don't know why you're making it, but I'm still going to buy 10 cases from you because you're the only person out there trying to make things better for me. And I know you'll eventually, like if this is successful, I know you'll eventually make something I like and done that. They hate IPAs, but they're like, instead of finding another beer, they're just like, I'm going to keep trying IPAs till I find one that I like. No, I don't think he bought it. Even though he's like, I'm going to give it away to other people. I don't like it, but I want to support you because supporting you today is going to get me where I want and whether he likes a blonde or a red ale. Sure. Do you see your velocities changing significantly? Like did COVID do anything to impact your sales from like just something interesting, like a data point around velocities and things picked up? Yeah, it's hard to different. Like it's hard to know what they would have been without COVID. We grow our business five times over during COVID, if not more. We're the number one non-alcohol beer in Canada, head of Heineken, a head of Budweiser, like we're just crushing it. And early stages in the US, but we're seeing that same velocity rise over time as people start to experience the brand when like going back to the sampling, they try it, they love it, they buy it, they tell their friends. Like that's how you build a business. Are they knocking at your door? Sometimes. They're knocking at my virtual door. Are they taking into space seriously? Are they actually putting some resources and time into? Like an acquisition target to me. Yeah. Come on, Ted. You mean the big companies like Anheuser-Busch, Coors? Yeah, they've, you know, we've got conversations with all of them. Like it's just a normal part of business, right, to talk to people that we could do business with. Who knows what that looks like. But I think we've earned a degree of respect that we didn't have a couple of years ago, but people from those big companies see us at the restaurants they're at and they see us at the retailers they're at and they see us at events they want to be at and they're sponsoring and they're like, oh, you know, we've got our products in this big event and what's this non-alcoholic company? We should pay attention. Yeah. So I think we're doing something that they've had trouble doing themselves. We have an authenticity of purpose that they really can't replicate being in alcohol and us being really focused on serving the non-alcohol consumers. So, you know, there could be a fit down the road, absolutely. But, you know, we're trying to run the business in a way that like we could own it forever. You seem like a really humble guy, Ted. Are you aware of what you're building? Yeah, I am. You're doubting, right? Do you want to brag a little bit? A little bit? We're pretty good. I got a great team. They make me look good. What can I say? Like we're, yeah, we're number one. We're number one. Canada's national treasure. Number one, you're beating some huge players that have endless bank accounts. You should be very proud of yourself. I am proud. Yeah, but we got a lot of work to do. That's how I like it. That's what every great entrepreneur says. I'm not done yet. I want to go on that road trip with my daughter. When you think about potential partnerships in the future, are there any events or focuses that you want to see come to fruition? Because I know from just a few triathlons that I've competed in, there's a beer company called Athletic Brewing that sponsors, I believe, Ironman now. And that to me seems like a good fit, because what you're selling is the taste of the alcohol without the hangover that's going to impact performance. So is there anything like that in your mind that seems to be just a match made in heaven, perfect pairing? Yeah, I think we've had great success with musicians. It's a culture that a lot of people think is very toxic professional musicians, particularly in rock and hip hop. But I think there's a pushback from those artists to make it cleaner. And so we're getting great feedback from artists, but also from venues and from the music and entertainment community that people want this type of product. And our branding speaks to that occasion. Even the packaging speaks to that type of occasion. So don't be surprised if you see us at your next concert. Are any of them investors? Any of these musicians investors? No, not at this time. No. 50 Cent, I just think about him. He's onto this stuff. 50 Cent if you're listening. I have your autograph, 50 Cent, please listen. Well, listen, thanks for coming on the podcast. What else do people know? Where can they find you? Where can they order more importantly? You can get us online at drinkpartake.com in California. We're in Total Wine, Bevmo, Ralph's, Pavilions. Lots of other great retailers around the country. Wegmans is a great retailer for us in the Northeast. Whole Foods in the Pacific Northwest. And we're continuing to build and continuing to add great retail partners. So you can find that all out on our website. And follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn and Facebook. Perfect. Canada's top entrepreneur, Ted. Thank you. Thanks for joining. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. That was our conversation with Ted of Partake Brewing. While I still have your attention, if you're not already subscribed, you should seriously consider doing so. If you are subscribed, then you should seriously consider leaving us a review. And if you've already done both, well, then from the bottom of our hearts, we thank you. We are found at Startup Storefront on every social media platform except for Twitter, where you can find us at STS Podcast LA. The team consists of Diego Torres Palma, Natalia Capolini, Lexie Jameson, Owen Capolini, and me, Nick Conrad. Our music is by DoubleTouch. Thank you all for listening, and we'll see you next time.