Agtech - So What?

AgTech companies make promises to investors to grow fast and be quick to iterate or change direction. But they also make promises to customers who think more in seasons instead of product development cycles, and who value long-term relationships with a mutual investment.
These are difficult pressures for agtech marketers to manage. In this episode, we hear from Camille Grade, Chief Marketing Officer at Bushel, and Travis Martin, an agtech marketing consultant and founder of industry newsletter Magnetic Ag, on how they balance the demands of fast-growth tech with the long memory and unique market structure of agriculture.
Hear both guests share their insights on:

• Why authenticity and integrity are more important than ever when communicating your agtech brand
• How to reconcile new media and marketing strategies with an industry that still relies heavily on in-person connection
• What opportunities exist with your early adopters and biggest fans
• How to manage your brand promise over crucial periods of growth, experimentation, and change

Companies: Bushel, Magnetic Ag • Topics: marketing-brands, ag-tech-adoption, business-model, ag-retail

Balancing the desire to do good with the need to build a business that can scale is a challenge for every entrepreneur. Particularly in agriculture, finding strategies that solve for both the users of the product as well as beneficiaries of the solution is key. For Marissa Cuevas Flores, Founder and CEO of MicroTERRA, it took several iterations before her team settled on a workable value proposition that could contribute to massive global challenges like preserving fresh water and feeding the world.
In this episode, you’ll hear more about:

• Why farmers, for the most part, cannot afford to carry the financial burden of sustainability
• What it took to shut down one circular economy startup and transition into a new field & business model
• Tips for new-to-agtech entrepreneurs when it comes to pitching new solutions to farmers
• How MicroTERRA turns duckweed into a high-value product that pays farmers and powers the plant-based food industry

Companies: MicroTERRA • Topics: ag-tech-adoption, business-model, venture-startups, agtech-ecosystem

Managing the genetic quality of a herd can be a wicked challenge for Australian farmers. We’re a country with a small number of animals relative to the rest of the world, and formidable, complex biosecurity protocols.
Fortunately, Belinda Cardinal, Founder of breeding and genetics company Caprotek and career dairy goat farmer, enjoys spending time on wickedly difficult problems. After years spent strengthening the genetic diversity of her herd of dairy goats, Belinda attracted all kinds of coverage after importing the genetic material to breed the nation’s first Valais Blacknose Sheep in 2021.
In this episode Belinda shares her insights on:

• What it’s like to transition from researcher and scientist to a full-time farmer
• How diversifying genetics and improving herds of livestock in a small country can be uniquely challenging for farmers
• What it’s like to tackle an industry challenge no one has attempted in over 100 years,p
• The similarities between farmers and startup founders when it comes to scaling novel technologies and doing hard, controversial things

Companies: Caprotek • Topics: genetics-breeding, biosecurity, livestock-dairy, ag-data

The science and technology of soil is rapidly evolving, but translating it into a scalable business that can offer viable products to farmers has long been a tricky proposition. But it’s one that Adam Litle, the CEO of Sound Agriculture, has devoted much of his career to answering.
Adam was part of the executive team at Granular, the farm management software company acquired by Dupont (now Corteva) for $300M. Now, at Sound Ag, he’s leading a company that’s raised more than $95M to develop a product which activates microbes in soil to increase the uptake of nitrogen and phosphorus, thereby enabling farmers to use less fertilizer.
In this episode Adam shares his insights on:

• Striking a balance between scientific rigor, technological innovation, and investor returns
• Why the SaaS business model is challenging in agriculture
• How to build trust in a startup team of scientists and industry people, while bringing in commercial experience.
• Why soil innovations are receiving an increase in attention as farmers continue to grapple with the rising costs of fertilizer.

Companies: Sound Agriculture, Granular, Corteva • Topics: soil-health, business-model, venture-startups, ag-data

Originally released: 20 February, 2020
We’ll be back with new episodes in January 2022, but for the holidays we thought we’d bring back a favorite episode from the vault!
Mark Ferguson or “Ferg,” is a sheep geneticist who’s paying attention to how both consumer demands and emerging technologies are impacting growers. He’s the co-founder and Director of neXtgen Agri, an online livestock consultancy, and Genesmith, a startup applying facial recognition and machine learning to the global livestock industry.
Drawing on his experience with dozens of clients around Australia and New Zealand, Ferg shares his insights on:

• How to build relationships in a digital world.
• What the future of extension and consulting in livestock holds.
• The role of cutting edge technologies in the sheep industry (facial recognition for sheep!)
• His vision for a future where consumer expectations are met and growers are profitable.

Companies: neXtgen Agri, Genesmith • Topics: genetics-breeding, livestock-dairy, ag-data, ag-tech-adoption

It’s fair to say most entrepreneurs (and farmers!) aren’t big fans of government rules and regulations for fear of being slowed down by red tape and bureaucracy. However, the political environment in which a startup develops can have a big impact on its ability to find investment and support, especially in agtech, where ecosystems are still very new for most countries.
The United Arab Emirates is investing heavily in agtech, seeking to make Abu Dhabi the global center for innovation in agriculture. Their focus is on vertical farming, aquaculture, and hydroponics. And they’re working to be strategic in attracting investment and solving for food security, while also developing a knowledge economy.
Salvatore Lavallo is the Head of Foreign Direct Investment at the Abu Dhabi Investment Office. He’s had a unique, and perhaps unlikely journey, to this position. Growing up in Indiana, his interest in economic development led him to become, at the age of 27, one of the youngest people to travel to every country in the world. Along the way, he became a farm owner in Tanzania, and later, a consultant with McKinsey in Africa and the Middle East.In this episode, Salvatore discusses:

• Challenging conventional economic indicators to understand what actually benefits local communities
• Abu Dhabi’s bold plan to create Food Tech Valley, a hub for agtech innovation in desert environments.
• The tension between too much government regulation and too little

Companies: Abu Dhabi Investment Office • Topics: government-policy, agtech-ecosystem, finance-investing, innovation

Where are all the women founders in agtech, especially at later-stage startups? What does an acquisition really feel like, and when does it make sense? In this Bonus episode, we answer both these questions, as well as build on the key insights from our latest series: “Later-Stage Agtech Startup Lessons”.
This episode features:

• Anastasia Volkova - co-founder and CEO of Regrow*, an independent measurement reporting and verification platform. Regrow, (formerly Flurosat), recently acquired US agtech company, Dagan, and raised $17 million in Series A funding.
• Matthew Pryor - co-founder of Tenacious Ventures, and partner at the Agthentic Group. He previously co-founded Observant, a precision ag water management company, which was acquired by Jain Irrigation.

Companies: Regrow • Topics: venture-startups, women-agtech, business-model, ag-data

Farmers Business Network is one of the most well-funded startups in agtech. Just recently, they announced a $300M Series G round, bringing their total funds raised to $870M and their valuation to nearly $4 billion.
So, where did it all begin?
In this episode, FBN co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer, Charles Baron, explains how his Silicon Valley upbringing unexpectedly collided with rural Nebraska, resulting in an idea for a new kind of agribusiness- one that would connect farmers and increase their bargaining power for chemicals and seeds.
In the eight years since the startup began, FBN has frequently encountered opposition from incumbents due to its push for competition and transparency for input pricing. In this episode, the last in our three-part series, Charles talks about several key factors in the company’s success, including:

• Questioning Silicon Valley’s ‘founder obsession’ to instead create a ‘farmer-centric’ ideology
• The importance of telling your company’s story through your own channels (rather than relying on others).
• How FBN makes decisions about which strategies to pursue, including their Gradable platform and recently announced partnership with ADM

Companies: Farmers Business Network • Topics: venture-startups, ag-retail, ag-data, business-model

“When you say, ‘can I have your money?’ Then, people speak the truth.”
Paul Lightfoot is a serial entrepreneur who has learned several lessons the hard way, from raising money to communicating purpose to hiring (and firing). After spending much of his career as a software CEO, Paul wanted to follow his “calling” to enter the world of sustainability and foodtech.
But this meant moving from a familiar career trajectory to an industry that, 10 years ago when Paul was entering it, barely even existed. In 2011, Paul founded BrightFarms, which uses hydroponic greenhouses to produce locally sourced packaged salads in the US. Along the way, he has made several critical decisions for his startup’s success. This includes an incredibly rare and difficult decision for any founder to make- Paul voluntarily stepped back from the role of CEO and hired someone he believed could do a better job.
Now, BrightFarms has 300 employees, five greenhouses, and in 2021, it was acquired by Cox Enterprises. In this episode, Paul talks about:

• How to distinguish between what your ego is telling you and what’s best for your company.
• How he raised capital in the early days, as well as more recent strategic partnerships to support the growth of BrightFarms.
• Why establishing core values and purpose is not simply human resources ‘fluff’, but rather integral to success throughout every phase of a startup.

Companies: BrightFarms • Topics: venture-startups, business-model, agtech-ecosystem

In this 3-part series, we’ll share the lessons from agtech startup founders who have grown their agtech companies from idea to at least 100 employees. We’ll be examining what’s worked (and hasn’t), differences between agtech and other industries, and what the founders have learned along the way about the industry and themselves.
This episode, the first in the series, features Michael Gilbert, CEO and founder of Semios, a crop management platform initially focused on tree fruit, nuts and vines, based in Canada. Michael has a PhD in chemistry and started his career in pharmaceuticals and biotech, before realizing his knowledge could be applied to agricultural inputs. This initial idea has led him on a journey from biologicals, to creating a company with more than 300 employees and over $225 million in external capital raised to date.
Michael discusses:

• The importance of iterating your idea, technology, and business based on customer input
• Hiring tips and challenges as you expand from needing generalists to specialists
• How to create a culture that rewards failure (and why this is hard in an agricultural context)

Companies: Semios • Topics: venture-startups, ag-data, ag-tech-adoption, business-model