Inside Sencrop’s Summer Summit
July 2019 — Cambridge, UK
Twice a year, the Sencrop team gathers in a surprise location for two days of team building, presentations, workshops, brainstorming, and a lot of fun. On July 1st, the team was instructed to meet at the train station at 6:50 AM, unaware of what was in store. As luck would have it, it was all aboard the Eurostar — destination England!
With the opening of the UK offices near Cambridge in early 2019, the Summer Summit was the perfect opportunity for the whole European team to get acquainted with UK farmers, the UK market, our new team members, and the business strategy that comes with opening a new country.
“We’re creating a new digital world for UK farmers.” —
Martin Ducroquet, co-founder
British Farming
Sencrop’s mission in the UK is to equip farmers with the tools they’ll need to combat the challenges that the agriculture industry will be facing in years to come: volatile weather and climate change, restrictive policy surrounding conservation and environmentalism — the subjects are endless and the challenges are many. To better understand the context, we took a trip to Hyde Hall, a thriving UK farm owned and operated by Sencrop user Ben Cannon.
Ben Cannon is a natural in front of a group, greeting our team with a bright, welcoming smile and launching right into the story of Hyde Hall, his family farm near Royston. The weather was perfect for a walk around a few key areas of his farm: an overview of the crops they grow on the 1000 hectares that they manage, the machines and tools they use to bring those crops to fruition, and the buildings on site that have helped them to diversify their business. In his family for well over 100 years, Ben has managed to take the farm to new dimensions by creating a thriving business center with offices for rent. Undertaking construction and renovation projects in old grain sheds and barns, today he was proud to show us the end result — nearly 150 people working on-site every day.
In terms of technology, Ben is currently running a Sencrop+ (a Raincrop connected rain gauge and a Windcrop connected wind meter). He expressed a real appreciation for our easy-to-use app with an accurate ultra-local weather forecast and a live precipitation radar. Live feedback like this is invaluable to our team and really gets us excited!
A growing international team
The Winter Summit was attended by 22 dedicated team members. Six months later, the team has grown to 41 people and won’t be stopping any time soon! The Summer Summit in Cambridge was an opportunity for us to meet our new colleagues, enjoy spending time together and making memories!
Today, our team includes members from eight different countries speaking primarily English, French, German, Dutch, and Spanish. We have offices in Lille, France and Royston, UK, with satellites in Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, and throughout France. Together, we’re proudly serving over 10,000 farmers in more than 14 countries across Europe.
…But the Summer Summit is also about having a good time together! We bike toured around Cambridge with a very knowledgeable and entertaining tour guide, spent time strolling through parks, ate, ate, and ate some more, goofed off on the train, had seconds (…and thirds) of traditional English breakfast in the morning, and so much more.
Sencrop’s thriving UK Expansion
Finding the time to get more than 40 people to sit down together in a room is tricky. It’s even trickier when we work and live in different places and spend our days in full-blown start-up mode, immersed in projects and events. The Summer Summit is an opportunity to sit everyone down, share information and ideas between teams, and build something great together.
Our first presentation actually took place in our office in Royston, following our Hyde Hall farm visit. Our UK sales manager Freddie South gave us a tour of their brand new space and brought us up to speed quickly on what’s been happening in the UK since January. Today the team serving the UK and Ireland includes seven people, three of whom are based in these offices.
Over the two days spent together we’d hear from our founders, talk about product updates from the hardware team, learn about the data strategy with our data experts, talk about business across Europe, throughout France, brainstorm contributions to our CSR project and reiterate our team objectives.
But our implantation in the UK wouldn’t be what it is today without the help and support of our local partners. Our final presentation before catching the train back to London was with Belinda Clarke, director of Agri-Tech East. Belinda came to tell us all about the Agri-Tech East organization, to share information about our membership, but also to enlighten us on UK agricultural policy. We left this meeting with a better understanding of Belinda has been our ally since the beginning and we look forward to growing our business in the UK as members of this organization!
Time’s up
After two days of working hard and playing hard, it was time to leave the UK and our British colleagues. By this time next year, our team will have expanded to over 50 people working to serve farmers across Europe.
Will you be one of them? :)
For more information about joining this adventure, contact jobs@sencrop.com.
For more information about our products and services, visit our website!
Group photo credit: https://www.jeanlucbenazet.com/
