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Conducting thorough customer validation is emphasised to avoid these pitfalls. As part of our six month programme, we bring our entrepreneurs to Melbourne for monthly, one week sprints. Then they return to where their customer base is and use this time to generate active sales or future sales commitments, letters of support and really test the appetite in the market. We also have an early adopter programme for farmers to provide early feedback and trial early products. How do you foster collaboration between the start-ups you work with and industry? Oftentimes teams with the technology skills, computer science or engineering backgrounds may not know what the issues are in agriculture. They may have what is seemingly a good idea, but they’re not immersed in the industry to understand the nuances of the problem. We help them make connections with mentors from agribusiness and farmer representative groups to help refine their strategy and make sure they’re putting all their effort in the right direction for their customer. SproutX itself is invested in making wise strategic partners for our core business and our startups. A big issue for a new company is getting product in front of customers. To address this we have a distribution partnership in Ruralco Holdings Limited, who have 600 rural retail stores across Australia and are a tremendous enabler for agtech innovation.

How are some of the companies you’ve invested in using IoT technologies? IoT sensor and software startups make up about a third of our portfolio so far. One example that is currently operating in the market is Tie Up Farming. They are an integrated farm management platform that uses IoT to accurately predict yield on farms. This allows the farmer to better manage retail contracts (by avoiding over- or under- promising), organise transport requirements and minimise waste on farm. Combined with crop-specific algorithms, the suite of sensors consider in-field growing conditions as well as losses in the packing shed, to predict yield at high accuracy. At the end of the day, it’s no good for a farm business to have surplus if they can’t transport it or find a buyer before the product spoils. It pays to have as much information as possible. How do you make sure that what’s out there are solving the right problems? We invest $40K for 8% equity in approximately 10 companies each year. These companies must meet certain criteria set by an investment panel. Because we invest private equity, everyone has got skin in the game to prove that what they’re doing is wanted by the market.

JULIA WAITE Head of Operations, SproutX

Julia Waite is the Community Operations Manager at SproutX, an accelerator program and venture capital fund for food and agtech startups. In this role she supports the entrepreneurial community in Australia, and seeks to grow collaborative ties between the agri-RDCs, inventors and producers. Originally from Perth WA, Julia’s background is in agriculture and spatial sciences. She has previously worked in policy with the Victorian Farmers Federation, and with a GIS firm in the United States.

SproutX is doing its small part to fill the very early stage investment gap to keep skilled teams developing their product. We’re in small cheque size, high risk game. What’s your advice to start-ups on protecting their IP? Think about your IP and your brand early. For example, Twitter has a world trademark on the term “vine” through ownership of the now- defunct video streaming platform, Vine. You can imagine for a startup in the wine industry, avoiding this word is forcing them to be creative with their company names! It’s important to think early about these things before you establish an initial presence with a brand you can‘t continue with into the wider market.

and use a particular IoT service. As devices aren’t interoperable between coverage platforms, their choice may preclude them from buying products that operate on a different platform in the future. (ed’s note: wireless networks to connect low-power objects that need to be continuously on and emitting small amounts of data). Adjusting to the decision making timelines required by big corporates and Australian venture capital can also be a strain on the capex runway of early stage entrepreneurs. This is especially true when they may not be paying themselves a wage.

Not only are they an invaluable financial sponsor, they are an incredible strategic partner for agtech teams with prototypes and minimum viable products. What are some of the other challenges in the adoption of these new technologies? Some of our companies coming into the market now are coming up against barriers to trust of farmers. Originating rightly so from previous over-hype under delivering technology solutions that flooded the market in the very early days of apps and sensor solutions. Another challenge is fragmented connectivity for IoT devices creating “islands” of coverage, and limiting sales potential for the startup. For example, a pastoral company may invest in infrastructure for LoRaWAN or Sigfox coverage in order to buy

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