Startup culture meets farming culture, at scale.
Getting on farms to do in-field testing and due diligence is often one of the largest costs for startup companies in the agtech space. A network of farmers that started in Tennessee and has since expanded to other regions across the U.S. is working to provide an efficient, scalable solution to this challenge for early-stage startups.
AgLaunch’s unique model brings together a pool of early-adopter farmers who take minority ownership stakes in startup companies, while providing them with direct farmer insight, data, and large-scale field trials.
“We started in the Mississippi Delta region in the U.S. and now have a pool in the Willamette Valley in Oregon, the Midwest in Iowa, and we’re reaching out across the country, and, frankly, maybe into Canada,” explains AgLaunch CEO Pete Nelson, in the interview below.
“Generally it’s very early stage companies with no revenue, but with a good idea. We attract those companies from all over the world… and what we give them is farmer knowledge and insight, data, the ability to do farm trials at scale over the country, and then help build and expand their companies,” he says. “And what’s probably the most important thing is we take an equity position in each one of those companies.”
Companies that work with the AgLaunch network go through a farmer-led screening process. As of this winter, the network is collaborating with around 40 companies, which were selected from approximately 280 applications, says Nelson.
“The most important thing is odds for success [for a startup],” he says. “They go way up if you’ve got a network of farmers helping you.”
At the same time, individual farmers who tinker with new technology generally don’t have capacity to experiment with more than one or two at a time.
“Some of our farmers call us their R and D division. Even if they’re a big farm member, they’re not big enough to have their own research and development and commercialization pipeline. AgLaunch is a pool that provides that for all of our members,” says Nelson.
Success stories to come from the AgLaunch platform include drone swarm company Rantizo, which has raised over $15 million in funding, he notes. Rantizo won an AgLaunch startup pitch contest in 2018.
Nelson was in Manitoba at the CropConnect Conference earlier this month, and he stopped by for a fascinating chat about building a farmer-centric approach to agtech commercialization, the potential for the AgLaunch network to expand into Canada, and the overall state of capital investment in agtech — watch/listen above.
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