The Silicon Valley model for innovation has worked famously for many software based companies, such as Facebook and PayPal. However, when it comes to agtech, the Silicon Valley template for startup success hasn’t translated very well. This template, of either “user is the customer” or “user is the product” is rather limited in agriculture, where the farming population is small (restricting scale) and the stakes are high

This episode features Rob Trice, the founding partner of Better Food Ventures and The Mixing Bowl, along with Sarah Nolet and Matthew Pryor, who both lead the Agthentic Group and Tenacious Ventures. All three guests have a solid tech and business history in Silicon Valley and discuss why the business models typically used by venture-backed software companies, can’t just be copy-pasted to agriculture.

They also dig into:

• The early days of Silicon Valley, the dot-com boom and bust and where Agtech 1.0 went wrong.
• How understanding the whole supply chain and embedded incentives , will be critical to success.
• How financing models from venture capital to SPACs can better fit with the agtech revolution (or evolution), as well as the positive signs for the future growth of the industry..

For more on this topic and to read the original article this podcast was bases on, see: “How Silicon Valley Set Agtech Back a Decade”

Useful Resources

• The Mixing Bowl
• Better Food Ventures
• Tenacious Ventures
• Biologicals: snake oil or science? And how do we know? - Agtech So What?
• Andreesson Horowitz is blowing up the venture capital model (again) - Forbes
• Accelerating the Development of Agtech Solutions Worth Adopting - Agthentic for Agrifutures