The Ebay for Farmers: Farmlead
I was still interested in agriculture tech and decided to see what else this burgeoning field had to offer. In particular, I wanted to shift from analyzing a company aimed at helping farmers grow crops (FarmersEdge) to seeing how else technology could help them.
Today I plan on analyzing Farmlead, the so called “ebay for the grain market” of the agriculture tech field. And having looked into the company for a bit, I decided that this company definitely shows potential. And I believe it shows potential because it really serves a “job to be done.” However, while it does this, I am uncertain of the scalability issues the company may face. But with a strong founding team, they can probably pivot and change the goals of the company to ensure the success of the startup.
Farmlead was founded in 2012 with the goal of being “North America’s grain marketplace.” They connect sellers of crops (farmers) to buyers by having an online/app based market where the price and type of crop is transparent.
Their goal is to get rid of the middle men and reduce the amount of transaction costs for both sides.
They have definitely found their product-market fit for now, with happy buyers and sellers.
However, like any social connecting platform, especially one that has buyers and sellers, are there sufficient number of people? With ~3 million farmers in America and ~300,000 in Canada, there is definitely a supply side. However, with only ~8000 grain elevators in America and ~300 in Canada (potential buyers) there seems to be a dearth of buyers. :( This seems to be a crisis!
So while Farmlead solves a job to be done, they may need to pivot. But with over $6.5 million in funding (in 2017) and a strong founder team with Alain Goubau being from one of the biggest consulting companies: Mckinsey, and Brennan Turner with his expertise in farming analytics, I believe this can be done.
