Ken Wall: I’m Ken. I came to Taiwan via acquisition originally, and I came back to Taiwan in order to work on product and innovation at Gogoro.

Michael Kuck: I’m Michael. I came to Taiwan originally because of my then-girlfriend, now wife. I am the tech lead, and I also co-founded a startup here in Taiwan called InLine.

Audrey Tang: Cool. I’m now feeling the peer pressure.

Audrey Tang: All right.

Ken Wall: Cool. Which would you prefer, should I start with the two-minute pitch, or should I just show you the product?

Audrey Tang: Either way.

Ken Wall: Let’s do the two-minute pitch here. What we’re focused on is a solution in the climate space. I’m pretty sure I don’t need to spell out the magnitude of the challenge.

Audrey Tang: Of course. You mean the magnitude of space? [laughs]

Ken Wall: Well, yeah, exactly. There’s a growing number of people who are more and more concerned about this, but the thing is that the vast majority of them have no idea what they can do to make it happen. There’s some people who do. They’re fighting for systematic change.

Ken Wall: They say you can’t get to systematic change, or you don’t usually, until you have about 25 percent of the population who really cares and who’s willing to take action on something.

Audrey Tang: That’s right.

Ken Wall: That leaves us asking the question, “What about the 99 percent of us?” What do you do with all the people…

Audrey Tang: We can’t go to strike every Friday.

Ken Wall: Right? Yeah, exactly.

Audrey Tang: As a public servant. We have no right to strike.

Ken Wall: That’s basically what our focus is, is how can we help these people? The angle that is to make it as easy and motivational as possible for people to make better climate decisions.

Ken Wall: I’ll skip the salesy thing. I’ll go straight into the product.

Audrey Tang: The demo?

Ken Wall: Yeah, we’ll start out fake, and then we can show real. [Conducts demo]

Audrey Tang: People could be flying to the Pescadores, right? Anyway. [laughs]

Ken Wall: That’s true. That’s true. That’s possible. User does whatever they want to. Where we identify an opportunity where they can make a better environmental decision, then we draw their attention to it.

Audrey Tang: I see that.

Ken Wall: We help them to understand why something is better.

Audrey Tang: Are they going to plant trees to offset that, or is it actually a genuine energy reduction thing?

Ken Wall: Yeah. We give full visibility into what we’re doing, and we encourage the community

Audrey Tang: Is this a browser plugin or something?

Ken Wall: That’s part of it.

Audrey Tang: It says, “Woo-hoo,” OK.

Ken Wall: Celebrating and making people feel good about themselves is one of the most motivating things you can do.

Audrey Tang: If I choose the non-friendly flight, do you say, “Boo-hoo,” or something?

Ken Wall: Well, we could say, “Boo-hoo,” or we could just say, “Hey, you can’t win them all, but if you want to…”

Audrey Tang: That’s right, and turn the boo-hoo into a woo-hoo.

Ken Wall: Yeah. Anytime we go to people and say, “You’re doing wrong,” then we get the uninstall. We’re just going to lose people with that.

Audrey Tang: Wouldn’t the customer say, “I have to download a lot of data about all the airline quality reports and things like that. Wouldn’t that be a lot of load on my hard disk,” or something like that?

Michael Kuck: It’s decentralized, so the customer installs something very lightweight, and when we send any data, it’s anonymous.

Audrey Tang: What do you mean anonymous? You certainly have the IP address in their browser…

Michael Kuck: We don’t log that. We don’t log that.

Audrey Tang: You don’t want that.

Michael Kuck: We don’t want it, and we don’t log it. We need to be transparent.

Audrey Tang: But it’s sent to you anyway?

Michael Kuck: Right, but I think the foundation of what we’re building is trust. We need to be transparent what we log, if we log it, and we need to be clear what we don’t, or what we’re not interested in. IP addresses, for sure, is not something we’re interested in.

Audrey Tang: I bring this up, because even if you are open source, there really is no way to ensure you’re not logging the IP addresses.

Michael Kuck: Yeah, you’re right.

Ken Wall: We’ll disclose and provide as much tools as we can. We’ll adopt whatever best practices we can.

Audrey Tang: What if someone asks, “Can we have an in-house, on-premises server that I can reconfigure this plugin to talk to? Instead of to your servers, I want a bunch of static JSON, perhaps, just hosted somewhere in the intranet”?

Audrey Tang: In such restrictive environments, they are not allowed to make HTTP requests, other than to whitelisted domains, anyway. We have a very strong mandate to promote sustainability awareness, and so that’s actually a real question, is that is it possible to configure, that it goes to an on-premises server that I just clone it off GitHub or something?

Michael Kuck: I think that’s definitely something we need to consider in the future. I think, as a starting point, not right now, but if we want to scale bigger, definitely. I think that’s very interesting.

Audrey Tang: Your server is currently maintained manually?

Michael Kuck: Yeah.

Audrey Tang: As in, if you want to switch to a different cloud service, there’s no easy way to just, a few Docker files or whatever?

Michael Kuck: Actually, it is.

Audrey Tang: Oh, there is?

Michael Kuck: Yeah.

Audrey Tang: Technically, you’re able to provide on-premises. OK, that’s all good.

Michael Kuck: Technically, it’s not an issue software-wise.

Ken Wall: Yeah, it’s just not a topic of conversation or a use case that we’re talked about extensively on our end, to be perfectly honest.

Ken Wall: Here’s what we’re working on, and we’ve got a lot of things to learn and to validate. We’re here talking to you, because we’re hoping to get feedback that can make us better.

Audrey Tang: Why Melio? It’s a small payment service already.

Ken Wall: It’s short for ameliorate, which means…

Audrey Tang: Sure. It’s a great name, except… [laughs]

Ken Wall: We’ve got to come up with something different. We just haven’t done it right now.

Ken Wall: Feedback would be very much appreciated, and you have the ability to support in a way that can create a huge shortcut.

Ken Wall: Our ability to tap into talent pools that care about this issue can make a huge difference for us. Enough of the pitch. Any questions?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, there’s a startup that we incubated in the last batch last year called the Sustain Hub that analyze all the GRI reports and so on of the publicly listed companies in Taiwan using machine learning. It basically extract the kind of structured data that you make visible from their company displays.

Audrey Tang: I think they’re your natural allies. They’re also, another thing called 透明足跡, the Transparent Trail. I think they just go with their Dayi, their Taiwanese Hoklo name, T-H-A-U-B-I-N-G, which is guaranteed to not have trademark problems.

Audrey Tang: They just won the Presidential Hackathon. They basically used a plugin, but in augmented reality, which is a fancy term to say that they scanned a barcode for the purchase on the supermarket or convenience store.

Audrey Tang: Instead of displaying the price for the money, they displayed the price for the environment. It’s a really good experience, allowed to just scan a bunch of cookies and see that some of them are green, and some of them, not so much.

Michael Kuck: That’s cool.

Audrey Tang: They’re, I think, also open source, at least open API, and they’re also your natural allies. They already have done all the work to get the negative environment impact stuff figured out. They convinced people to just work with the boo-hoo part without getting uninstalled.

Audrey Tang: I think that’s an important thing, because at some point, you need to do some boo-hoo, not all woo-hoo. It’s just in the very initial MVP thing – and I hear you – that it’s always better to start with a PokÃ©mon Go, like all fun part of it.

Michael Kuck: Fair.

Audrey Tang: That’s that. Also, the browser plugin is going to feel unfamiliar to younger generations. That’s a real problem.

Ken Wall: It’s a limiting factor, for sure.

Audrey Tang: Unless you magically work with Chrome on mobile, which I don’t think you do…

Michael Kuck: Not yet, no.

Audrey Tang: Right. That’s going to be a problem.

Michael Kuck: It’s a good point, and it’s something we talked about extensively.

Audrey Tang: What was your initial thoughts?

Ken Wall: We did…

Audrey Tang: …convince everybody to use Firefox? [laughs]

Ken Wall: No.

Audrey Tang: Maybe not. [laughs]

Ken Wall: We ended up testing a lot of features to basically say, “How can we create value for people down the motivational curve?” We’ve got a number of features that have been identified that really seem to work pretty well from a mobile perspective.

Ken Wall: Unless there’s some kind of technology evolution from a browser or OS perspective, we can’t do that. It’s more of a manual effort. We hope for some progress on the technical side.

Michael Kuck: Which is not unrealistic.

Ken Wall: Which is not unrealistic. I would bet that it’s going to happen, but we also have features that if we build up…

Audrey Tang: There is Web extension support in mobile browser, it’s just, it’s not a very popular browser. It’s called the Firefox browser.

Ken Wall: Yes.

Michael Kuck: I didn’t know Firefox has extension support on mobile.

Audrey Tang: They do.

Michael Kuck: That’s interesting.

Audrey Tang: They do.

Michael Kuck: Cool, I will definitely check it out.

Audrey Tang: Standard-wise, too. You run all the standard plugins.

Michael Kuck: Oh, that’s cool.

Audrey Tang: I’m just saying that, because you’re developing in what extension spec? I hope, which is cross-browser. Well, theoretically, but anyway, it should, without too much fanfare, just work on Firefox for mobile.

Michael Kuck: I will definitely check that out. That’s very interesting. Like Ken said, right now, we can’t do it for other browsers on mobile, but things are opening up.

Audrey Tang: Oh, yeah, I know, I know. Very exciting times.

Michael Kuck: Yeah, very exciting times. I am looking forward to some changes.

Audrey Tang: I’m looking forward to a change, yes.

Michael Kuck: I guess I’m saying I’m hoping further down the road, there will be more opportunity to plug into browsers on mobile, but we also have some other ideas that will work better on mobile right now.

Audrey Tang: Although I do think the US and EU is now having more success on the search front instead of on the Chrome browser front. You may take some time for the change that you’re wishing to see happen to actually happen to you.

Audrey Tang: Firefox mobile, if it doesn’t cost you too much to just test whether it works…

Michael Kuck: I will definitely do that.

Audrey Tang: …I think it’s a good existential proof, because it then motivates the younger people to think twice about choosing the default browser. Then if they go to Firefox, not because of ÂµBlock or whatever…Which is actually another very good reason.

Audrey Tang: The uBlock origin, to be precise, but also, because of the not-named-Melio, but we don’t know what extension [laughs] then that’s an extra thing for them to say. Like, “I support the open Web and the environment.”

Michael Kuck: Yeah, definitely. I was also very happy to see the changes in Safari, which now supports Chrome extensions almost out of the box. Safari on mobile, that’s super exciting. I didn’t know. I will definitely check it out, probably today.

Ken Wall: All that stuff is obviously really important and very helpful. If we end up building out some kind of trusted presence, some kind of trusted brand, then we’re hoping to have the good problem solve.

Audrey Tang: Definitely.

Ken Wall: That’s where we hope, but can we get there? Who knows?

Audrey Tang: Of course, you can. The Presidential Hackathon winners win because they mobilize tens of thousands of people. The scan thing, the top topping thing is one thing. The other thing is this Feng Cha thing, which is the tea-serving app.

Audrey Tang: What it does is that it shows you how many plastic bottles you have saved by choosing to use refill stations. Hey, we are in a Social Innovation Lab which has a refill station that offers three different water temperatures.

Audrey Tang: You can just have a, I don’t know, conversation with people around you that also cares about saving plastic bottles. The great thing is that they designed it like PokÃ©mon Go, so if you keep checking in every day, eventually, you get a sufficient number of points. That actually gets you some tea.

Michael Kuck: What’s the name of app?

Audrey Tang: It’s called Feng Cha, or the tea-serving app. The company is called Circuplus. I think it’s C-I-R-C-U-P-L-U-S, Circuplus. Yeah. Just this one, they recruited more than 8,000 people. Not too bad.

Ken Wall: Oh, that’s awesome.

Audrey Tang: For the mobile factor, I think this is really good, because then it becomes a platform upon which that you can push, I don’t know, heat warmings, drink water. It ties in, definitely is this. Also, more informed choices.

Audrey Tang: Whether it’s the barcode-scanning app, the tea-serving app, and so on, they’re based on the same thing, which is to make the external environmental cost apparent, explicit. As long as your values are aligned, I think you can just work like on a machine-to-machine API and reuse these existing, trusted endpoints, instead of just building your own Line bot or something.

Audrey Tang: Which may or may not work, probably wouldn’t work.

Michael Kuck: OK, cool.

Ken Wall: That sounds great.

Michael Kuck: Circuplus, OK.

Ken Wall: Do you have any other feedback or any other advice for us?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, I think the main thing that’s required in Taiwan is just to work with an established brand that has social trust. As I mentioned, if you say you are not looking the IP addresses and secretly selling it to advertisers, there’s bound to be someone that’s already trusted that goes out and says, “Hey, we use their API, and they’re a trustworthy bunch.

Audrey Tang: “They even allowed us to rebuild the Docker files. After inspecting the server code, even though it’s not open source, we did inspect the server code, and it’s very kosher,” and so on. Something equivalent to that must be…

Michael Kuck: It’s definitely something we’re planning to do, yeah.

Audrey Tang: All the teams, the Circuplus one, the barcode-scanning one, so on, and so forth, these are Presidential Hackathon champions that has this social street credibility. I think that’s the first step, and then I think it’s a good idea.

Ken Wall: Where would you suggest is the best source for us to tap into talent sources? We’re able to find people of pretty good technical talent, but the overlap between that and care about…

Audrey Tang: Just today is the bimonthly G-0-V, g0v Hackathon.

Ken Wall: I think we’ve got a member of our team who’s there right now, actually.

Audrey Tang: Oh, really? OK, that’s awesome. There’s going to be a very large summit in Tainan around the end of the year, the g0v Summit. That’s where all the developer communities, not just in Taiwan, but I believe from abroad as well, is going to get here.

Audrey Tang: Sometimes virtually, of course, this being 2020, but [laughs] at least their attention is here. There’s any number of unconferences. If you haven’t submitted a talk, maybe you can do an unconference. If you go to the summit website, I think it’s December 6th.

Audrey Tang: Yours truly will also be there to talk about defending democracy, very exciting stuff. Then there’s any number of unconferences where you can just mingle with people and just recruit. Most people who are there have done something like that already, like the News Culpa, which is a disinformation-fighting Chrome plugin.

Audrey Tang: There’s one about labor law violations that’s displayed on 104-1111, those job hunting websites, and so on. There’s many g0v people that have done already, in some sort, the same kind of thing you’re doing, except it’s on the social, not the environment, purposes. That will save a lot of onboarding time, I hope.

Ken Wall: That would be awesome. Any questions for us?

Audrey Tang: No, I think it’s very clear.

Ken Wall: OK, cool.

Audrey Tang: Awesome.

Ken Wall: Well, thank you very much for your time. Really do appreciate it.

Audrey Tang: I’ll send you the transcript. We can coedit and publish.

Ken Wall: Sounds good.

Michael Kuck: Awesome. Thank you very much.

Ken Wall: Thank you so much.

Michael Kuck: Very nice to meet you.

Audrey Tang: Thank you.