1. FarmSense
Mobile Farm Management for Specialty Crops
Interviews this week: 10
Total Interviews: 110
Christine
Su
Preeyanka
Shah
Brad
Allen
Jennifer
Tsau
3. We’ve come a long way! (Emphasis on LONG)
• We started off with some bad ideas…
That’s
DUMB
• And some REALLY BAD ideas…
“Deere John
Acting Troupe”
• And some that were pretty good, but small..
FarmSense
4. But we knew that with a resilient, thoughtful
team – we’d figure it out
• Role: Cust Dev & Evangelist
• Joint MBA-M.S. in Land Use and
Agriculture
• MS in Electrical Engineering (focus on
machine learning and optimization)
• Passionate about agriculture: worked on a
family dairy to a $500m industrial grower,
and three startups in the space
Christine
Su
• Role: Cust Dev & Product Lead
• Experience in web design, product design,
and leadership development
• Formerly an operations executive at KKR
Preeyanka
Shah
• Prior roles with EnerNOC, a demand
response company and Indicorps, a
grassroots NGO in India
• Role: Cust Dev & UX Architect
• Role: Cust Dev & Long-Term Eye
• MS in Civil Engineering (Atmosphere and
Energy)
• MBA
• Experience in early stage start-ups and
managing market release for products
• Mechanical engineer with experience in
computational/applied mechanics, and
hardware design and prototyping
Jennifer
Tsau
• 4 years in supply chain management with
Northrop Grumman
FarmSense
Brad
Allen
• Formerly a chemical engineer, Bain
consultant and Teach for America corps
member
5. Starting out, we knew we wanted to marry
technology and agriculture – but that’s about it
+
FarmSense
=
6. So we got out of the building:
FarmSense
… and talked to a ton of folks
7. And gained a greater appreciation for farmers and
what they value
Ron Yakota from TA
Produce told us “The issue
is there is no real good
ag accounting software
out there. We use JD
Edwards and have to do a
lot of our own
customization. It’s not
taken lightly when you
want to change a field
size or add a field. We
have our own software
engineers who do the
modification. JD Edwards
is old and has very little
support. “
FarmSense
The pickup truck is their
office and they need
mobile solutions for farm
management
-Sarai from Earthbound
Farm: “The guys fill out
the data on laptops in
their pickups”
- Dave from Blossom Hill
Ranch wants activity
recording from his
pickup onto his phone
-Doniga from Markegard
Ranch does management
from her pick up truck
8. By Week 4, we felt confident in where we could
work with farmers
FarmSense
9. Honing in on MVP idea and
initial features
MVP Features based on early
adopter input (and validated
by other customer interviews)
DEMO
FarmSense
10. But we still needed to understand how to reach
farmers and demonstrate value
… so we got out of the building
FarmSense
11. And developed some hypotheses to reach our
first customers
Week 7
FarmSense
13. We have a differentiated perspective on GTM
and development relationships in CA
FarmSense
14. What do we need to build our product?
Week 8
FarmSense
15. We have developed a plan to validate these
hypotheses about the product & market
FarmSense
16. We believe that with the right focus, we can
have a sense of this idea’s potential in 6 months
BMC Area
Metric
Value Proposition
Price: $100/month
Competitor charge: $70-100
Customer Relationships
Web CAC / CPC: $56 / $0.91
# new customers / PCA: 10
# new PCAs/month: 4
# new customers/month: 40 PCA
+ 10 web
Operating Costs
Fixed
•
$5,000-10,000 mobile + web
app
•
50k/yr each for 3 in-house
developers
Variable:
•
5% PCA referral commission
•
$500 a month for web
marketing
Revenue
ASP: $100
Lifetime Value: $2400 (2yr)
Burn rate
Burn rate / month: $2000
Months to run out: 12
FarmSense
17. Thank you
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The hundreds of people
Bob Garrow
who we talked to and have
Jorge Heraud
given us insight, support,
Steve Blank
feedback and advice!
Maura O’Neill
Jeff Epstein
Jim Hornthal
Soumya Mohan
Stephanie Zhan
EE 245 Classmates
Robert Trice
Venture Studio Residents and Staff
FarmSense
