Farmbot Monitoring Solutions reposted this
Co-CEO and Cofounder at Tractor Ventures, Chair of Qsic, Cofounder Side Stage Ventures, YPO Melbourne Yarra
Capital is boring, founder stories are not. This one is about mental health of the original founders (farmers) and real, measurable efficiency gains. 👨🌾 💧 📈 A lot of people assume farmers and country folk run at a bit of a slower pace than city folk, I did when I moved to the Southern Tablelands of NSW in 2005 but Andrew (Coppo) from Farmbot Monitoring Solutions always knew that even though they may come across that way, farmers in Australia, and around the world, are some of the smartest business people on earth. We often think that starting up a modern tech company is hard, but I'm calling bullshit. What's hard is having investing actual blood, sweat and tears into preparing your crop or flock for the next season, only to be screwed by the elements. Coppo talks about the mental health of farmers a lot, and Farmbot helps eliminate the wasted time and energy of checking your water sources, which 95% of the time are fine but that other 5% of the time can be catastrophic. Agtech is hard, your customers are busy and by default not concentrated in any one location. Your solution has to *categorically* show them that their time will be saved, or the yield on their investment increase or it's just another thing to worry about. The thing that Coppo and his team to well when it comes to scaling their company is what I call "time shifting capital". When they need it to deliver on their promises and when the customer pays for their products are disconnected, but there's profit in the transaction. Using capital that is designed to bridge that timing gap and allows the company to grow quicker than the balance sheet can absorb is smart. The risk v reward is in the right place to be able to pull forward the revenue coming, invest it into delivering and rinse and repeat. If you can do that and retain your ownership and control, you're onto a good thing. Hat tip to the Farmbot/Ranchbot team for helping farms focus on the stuff that is important for their families, and themselves. Coppo tells the long story here: https://lnkd.in/gk9cMePZ