Send a text

Inform Ag: Steven Lockyer shares how to get funded in 2025

Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs 

In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.

Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners; Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.

Episode 15: Inform Ag: Steven Lockyer shares how to get funded in 2025

In this episode, Steve Lockyer from Informag shared insights about their journey in helping the farming industry achieve sustainable opportunities to reduce costs and increase yields. Fresh off a successful $7 million capital raise in August, Steve highlighted how being profitable before the raise gave them a position of strength when engaging with investors. He also detailed the unique journey of securing their lead investor, Rural Funds Management, one of their largest clients, and the challenges and considerations of opening their business to a customer-turned-investor.

Key Facts Inform Ag:

• Goal: Future-Proofing Farming through Innovation and Advanced Tech: Smart Irrigation, Farm Management, and Harvest Efficiency.
• Recently raised $7 million led by Rural Funds Management.

Alex’s Top Findings:

1. Bootstrap Beginnings. The business was initially bootstrapped using personal funds and side industrial projects. “ We bootstrapped it with their own cash for a period.  So, my background being industrial automation, one way we funded the business was every 6 to 12 months. We'd take on a large industrial project. For example, the last one we did,  we had a 500 ton crane puller. A 50 ton oven that made banana bread out of a factory and blocked a whole six lane highway, moving it into a new facility.  So that's how we built up a war chest of cash that we could then use to be the basis of running projects and generate cash flow. So we avoided external investment really by doing that.” Steven shared.
2. Full Round Taken by One Investor. Allowing a single investor to take the entire round simplified the process and strengthened the partnership. "They were keen to take the full round... it just worked.  They were the right fit for us, you know we had common values, common kinds of aspirations for the industry goals for where we saw the technology going."
3. Seeking Advice Led to Opportunity. Seeking guidance from trusted connections can lead to unexpected opportunities. " When I was in their office one day, I was actually looking for some advice and that turned into a subsequent meeting with their CEO, who then invited us to Canberra and asked us to present the opportunity to them." Steven revealed.