CARLOS PEREA, CEO AND CO-FOUNDER OF TERRA VERA

BY ELLEN MARKS FOR THE JOURNAL

This Corrales farm boy who was shaped by his experience in Silicon Valley has a sweeping goal: “I want to be the chief architect of my destiny.”

Carlos Perea believes he’s been doing that — most recently by combining a simple packet of salt and amino acids with water and selling the chemical solution through his four-year-old startup, Terra Vera.

The agriculture tech company’s mission is to protect crops from viruses and bacteria without using toxic pesticides that harm the environment and people’s health. Terra Vera’s brew mimics the human body’s way of fighting infections by converting organic compounds into an “antimicrobial solution” that is safe on pathogens.

“That was really our focus: How do we make the environment and people better through the food that we’re eating, because the way we’re doing it today is awful,” Perea said.

While Terra Vera’s initial focus was cannabis crops, it is now turning to ornamental plants sold to homeowners and to such crops as strawberries that are known to have high levels of pesticides. The company is also working on targeting mites in an effort to save bee populations.

Perea thinks his interest was partly formed by growing up on his family’s farm, with its crops of chile, alfalfa and apples. (Another family venture, Perea’s Tijuana Bar and Restaurant, is an institution in Corrales.)

Perea has been a devoted entrepreneur since his college days at Stanford University.

“To me, an entrepreneur is really somebody who has a mind-set that they want to have an impact and they want to bet on themselves rather than play office politics,” he said.

And for Perea, it’s not just about creating wealth.

“In my retirement years and on my deathbed, I want to think back, ‘Hey, did I leave the world a better place than I found it?” he says. “And so that’s probably why I do what I do.”

What was the genesis of Terra Vera?

“The technology, we didn’t start from scratch. I had run a water treatment company called MIOX Corp. And MIOX had technology that had come out of the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense. The U.S. military was looking for ways to purify water without using chemistries. The original systems were much bigger versions of this, but we’d run salt and we’d get disinfectant and we’d

THE BASICS:

Carlos Perea, born in Albuquerque but grew up in Corrales; married to Tracy Perea; one daughter, Carina Perea; master’s degree in business administration, Stanford University, 1991; bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, University of New Mexico, 1987.

POSITIONS: CEO and co-founder, Terra Vera, since 2019; CEO , iAnthus Capital Management, 2017-2019; CEO , MIOX Corp., 2006-2012, and board chair, 2012-2016; founding partner, Entrada Ventures, 2004-2007; president and COO, Qynergy, 2003-2005; CFO, Novalux, 2001-2003; manufacturing manager, Intel, 1993-2001.

OTHER: Board member, VARA Winery and Distillery, since January 2024; board member, The Initiative, 2018-2022; director, Azuca, 20172021; chairman, YPO New Mexico, 2017-2019; director, InnovateABQ, 2015-2021; director, Puralytics, 2011-2017; president and director, Nuvita, 2013-2016; special adviser, Verge Fund, 20132014; adviser, Flywheel Ventures, 2004-2007.

MOO RE / JOURNAL

put it in water. We got that on naval ships, we got that in drinking water systems around the country. I had a former employee who was interested in the (cannabis) market, and I was fascinated by the medicinal benefit of the plant and the fact there were no existing players in 2016. So ... we started looking at biological systems.”

What do you think has made you successful?

“That’s funny. I always think I’m not as successful as I need to be or want to be, so it’s a loaded question.

But I think I realized that everything has risk. It’s just, do you want to control the risk or not? Some people are happy being the passengers, and some are happy having their hands on the wheel.

That doesn’t mean I’m not happy to share the wheel. My mindset is I don’t want other people to manage my risk. I want to manage my own.”

Has there been a particular hardship you have had to overcome?

“I think the first thing I would tell you .. I think of New Mexico as a phenomenal place to live, but it’s always been a terrible place to make a living, right? Hey, if I’m going to live here, I’m going to have less salary, I’m going to have less career advancement. As an entrepreneur, it’s a really difficult place (because of) the very difficult access to capital. There’s just not a lot of investors here that will help fuel companies. And we really don’t have a mindset of ‘fail fast and grow quick.’

We’re afraid of failure here, which as an entrepreneur, it’s the wrong thing. I think we still have this fascination as a state of buying our way in. We have these gems of companies here that are struggling to grow. Instead of trying to support these companies, we’re like ‘let’s go and put another call center in.’ It just doesn’t work that way to create an ecosystem.”

What was growing up like for you?

“In a way, maybe it was an entrepreneurial foundation, because there were so few of us. In our neighborhoods, we would scour to find five or six or seven folks, and we would make up games. We’re going to play cowboys and Indians, but we’re going to do it our way with sticks and rocks and dirt clods. I think there’s something about being a kid and being an entrepreneur that is very similar. As adults, we look at everything that can go wrong. When you’re a kid, it’s like what could we do, what adventure? I think entrepreneurs have to be the same way. We have to be thinking about what could go right.”

Do you have any regrets?

“It’s a long, long list. I had the opportunity to join some company called Google when it didn’t have 100 employees.

I talked to one company that became Quicken. They’re telling me this vision of what they’re going to do, and I (thought), ‘This is the dumbest idea.’ I have plenty of those stories. But life is that way. I find that so many people get wrapped around … what went wrong. It’s not good as an entrepreneur, and I’m not so sure it’s good for people in general, lamenting what could have been.”

Do you have a pet peeve?

“Zero-sum game people.

Folks who think, ‘Hey, if I give you something, I get less of it’” — particularly around information and expertise. I had really, really good mentors at Intel.

The ones who were good shared information. The ones that weren’t good, who just wanted to be in the top, were really guarded with information. They had that mindset of, ‘If I share this with you, I’m less valuable.’ It got me to thinking that life is that way.”