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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News.
Hello and welcome to another episode of the OddLots Podcast. I'm Traci Allaway.
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Chapter 2: How does HayWire aim to improve transparency in the hay market?
I love episodes that come about that way. All right, can I make a little confession here? Please. I've done no prep for this episode. I mean, you know, I'm often not as diligent as you are, but I was just like, you know what? I know that hay exists. I've seen it in bales. I figure something is dried. I know it's consumed. I have done no research.
You know a little bit.
I've just decided, yeah.
You know a little bit about hay, though, because we spoke with that. Was it New Mexico or Arizona now? I can't remember. The farmer growing alfalfa.
Yeah. It's like fermented, right? Isn't hay sort of fermented and dried or something?
Yeah, something like that. I mean, I guess- But one of the reasons it's good to grow hay in the desert is because you don't have to worry about it getting wet in the drying process.
Yeah. Oh, right. We did learn that.
All right. So that's the one hay fact that we all know. So we're going to be talking about hay prices today. Great. I can't wait. But beyond that, I find the hay market really interesting because-
No, seriously. I believe you. I believe you.
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Chapter 3: What data sources does HayWire utilize for its newsletter?
And we'll talk about it. But I just want to say the business that he has built in terms of becoming the man who knows about hay is advice I've given to young journalists who have asked me for a career. I've literally said this. And I'm going to drop some alpha. No. Alpha, alpha? I'm going to drop some alpha, alpha, alpha here. But now it'll be commoditized by the time I say it.
I've always thought that one way you could build a business as a young journalist or someone is find... Find a piece of public data that exists, that is out there, that is consumable for free, that nobody is regularly looking at. Gather it, become the central repository for it, and then occasionally comment on it. There's all kinds of data in the world.
A million public agencies of all sorts are producing monthly reports on this or that in PDFs that nobody is looking at. And if you say, you know what, I want to learn about X, and I want to end a newsletter, I update what X is doing each week or month or whatever, you can become the man, the X on this topic.
And the guests that you have found for today's episode, I think has done exactly what I've told numerous young individuals to do. So we'll see if this, I'm curious about Hay, but I'm also curious about this individual's business model.
It's a good market structure story and I guess technology story. And a media story. Yeah, exactly. All right. So without further ado, we do in fact have the perfect guest. We're going to be speaking with Aiden Johnson. He is the founder of, can you guess? Well, you know what the company is. Haywire, right? Haywire. It's so good. It's so good.
It's such a good name for what this company actually does. So Aiden, thank you so much for coming on Oddbods.
Yeah, I appreciate you guys having me on.
So why don't we start with the basics? What is it that Haywire is actually doing?
Yeah, so essentially what we are doing and kind of what we built our business around is pulling public data, just like Joe said, and kind of putting it all on plain English newsletters for our subscribers. So, I mean, USDA publishes reports weekly, biweekly, and then even monthly, depending on region.
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Chapter 4: How does AI enhance the data collection process for HayWire?
But you call them up to get additional pricing information as well, right?
Yeah, so we actually have Rock Valley, Iowa, Rock Valley Hay Auction as our primary data partner, which is one of the biggest hay auctions in the country. So having them to kind of get intel from what they're seeing on the ground to kind of cover the gray area between the USDA data and then the live market, what people are actually seeing on the ground.
And we are actively trying to branch off and network to more auction houses throughout the country to different regions so we can kind of get a forecast what's actually happening there.
Joe, this reminds me of the old scrap metal market where you had a broker who actually had to call up all these junkyards and ask what price they were selling.
I don't know if that's still the case, but it might actually still be the case. I remember 11 or 12 years ago, very early on when I joined Bloomberg, talking to one of our reporters, she was based in London, who was covering scrap metal. And she talked about that part of it was essentially calling up the scrap yards and say, what'd you price for?
And of course, you know, it's not that different from LIBOR, right? It's not like we think of something like these very opaque, illiquid markets like scrap metal. But that fundamental idea of we're going to ring people up or get an email or something and then triangulate the data is how some of the most famous liquid markets there are.
That's the alpha, alpha, alpha.
That's the, yes.
Calling people up.
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Chapter 5: What challenges does HayWire face in the hay market?
And yeah. That's kind of how it started. And, you know, as I got to college, I was introduced to kind of AI, which kind of started out as, you know, vibe coding websites for local businesses. And then I actually my co-founder, Cole, who is very intelligent with the AI, we kind of just started working together about it to get to the more agentic and automation type of AI.
So that kind of started a rabbit hole. I'm like, which kind of started out as a vibe code project with no infrastructure or no system at all, kind of turned into something we thought we knew that was reachable. So we kind of got into that. You know, just we basically hop on a call every day deciding how we can improve our product, improve our technology so we can produce the best volume.
And, you know, the Haymarket is very untransparent, I guess you could say so. We found a problem. You know, first week of college classes in the business class, you're going to learn, OK, you need to find a problem and then a solution to start a successful business. And that's kind of how it all came about. And, you know, we've been kind of attacking it every day.
And I'm very grateful for my dad to ask the question, what is the price of alfalfa and hay?
Do you have a girlfriend now?
Did you get one yet? Absolutely not. So people ask what type of business you run. And I just say, I try to, you know, mask it as something really intelligent. Like, yeah, I run a market intelligent AI infrastructure company and not just a market. Hey, market company. So no, I'm in the process.
All right, well, OddLots listeners in Minnesota.
Eligible young bachelor, 20 years old. We're just putting it out there. Maybe we can do some matchmaking for you. Just had your dad had this idea, I don't know, had this been 10 years earlier, like orders of magnitude, would this have been doable at all to you and your co-founder in a real way prior to AI and vibe coding as we know it?
Oh, no. Ten years ago, I don't think I would even scratch the surface of getting to the death I am here now. And that's just simply because I think the infrastructure of AI is getting smarter and smarter every day. And it makes it able for, you know, two young 20 year olds like me and my co-founder Cole to, you know, mess around and create a whole company and platform.
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Chapter 6: How do regional factors affect hay pricing?
Every market, every regional market is very hyperlocal simply because transportation costs are a lot. You can't domestically transport it across the country. And then you think like there's so many inputs, how it affects the quality of hay to produce the output. Minnesota hay may not be the same as California hay in terms of price because it's just all very hyper-local markets.
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The Big Take podcast from Bloomberg News keeps you on top of the biggest stories of the day.
My fellow Americans, this is Liberation Day.
Stories that move markets.
Chair Powell opened the door to this first interest rate cut.
Impact politics. Change businesses. This is a really stunning development for the AI world. And how you think about your bottom line. Listen to The Big Take from Bloomberg News every weekday afternoon on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Just don't let the girlfriend think you're 6'6 and you can dunk a basketball, I see on Twitter. Okay, sorry.
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Chapter 7: What impact do rising hay prices have on horse ownership?
How did you how do you go about finding farmers or growers or anyone in the business, anyone in the chain? How do you get them to discover haywire?
I guess just network and obviously discovery, a big part of that has been on the Homestead Reddit, where Tracy kind of found everything, but just actively reaching out to them, I guess, kind of just showing them, okay, this is what we're trying to do, trying to be that transparency layer, just to kind of make your guys' local markets a little easier for you and not kind of guessing and buying blind and selling blind.
So we're basically going to them and we're like, okay, this has no cost for you. Just kind of tell us what you're seeing so we can provide that clarity and transparency for hay prices. We're not going to fix the whole transparency issue. We're going to try, but we probably won't. But we just at least want to make it a little more transparent for your local region.
These farmers know their regional market like the back of their hand. And And especially these old gen farmers, they're not really going to adapt to technology like that. So it's been kind of difficult trying to get them to adapt to be like, OK, like this is technology nowadays, like this can actually really help your business.
So honestly, just networking with them, providing, you know, kind of the data we're seeing and kind of value and telling them that there's no really cost to just kind of sharing me your data.
Yeah. So Tracy mentioned the sort of timing of purchases or people trying to accumulate or stockpile at times of high stress when prices are really high. Again, maybe due to a drought or whatnot.
Do you see farmers essentially expanding their geographical search so such that they start buying hay from an auction house or a hay farm or whatever that wouldn't normally be under typical conditions economical for them to purchase from?
Yeah, you know, I actually had this question the other day and I was on a call with Rock Valley, my main go-to guy, and I was like, are you guys seeing any shipping or any transactions coming from more west of you?
Yeah.
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Chapter 8: What future developments are planned for HayWire?
Did you say something like RFD? What was the term used? Like higher, what was it?
RFV, relative feed value.
Okay, excellent.
Which basically is, which I think, I'm pretty sure it controls or it, It gets the protein contents and the fiber in the hay. And it's a base of 100. So anything like 150, I think is pretty good. Below that, you can see the lower quality hay. So like I said, the dairies are going to be using that higher quality alfalfa and supreme hay, higher RFV to have their cows on the best.
And then you're going to have the the e-client people, the horses also using this higher quality stuff because they love their horses and they only want what's best for their horses.
And then you have the lower quality type of stuff, which is going to go to like the utility and fare, which is going to go to your beef, which are, it's just a cheap way to, you know, beef up your cow for a cheaper price instead of paying the premium alfalfa. And then, yeah, there's, there's, there's so many different qualities.
Yeah. Yeah. Just real quickly. So hay made out of alfalfa is high quality. What is low quality hay made out of?
Yeah. So low quality hay, which will be lower RFV, I'm pretty sure, you know, I'm not a farm kid, but I'm pretty sure it's the amount of dryness and the protein contents. So when it rains, rain affects a lot. You have to have a dry week or forecast to produce or cut hay. And if it rains, rain can decrease the protein and nutritional value in the hay significantly.
I think the lower quality stuff is drier and doesn't have the leaf content that the higher quality stuff does because that's where the protein is in the leaf and then the fiber comes from the stem.
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