FarmLogs, a Midwestern Ag Tech Startup, Raises $10 Million
Featured on the Chicago Tribune
Investors continue to sow seeds in the Midwestern ag tech industry as FarmLogs, a Michigan-based agricultural tech company that launched in 2012, announced Wednesday a $10 million Series B funding round.
The news comes one week after a division of Monsanto acquired another Midwestern big data farming startup, Chicago-based 640 Labs.
The capital raise included existing investors Hyde Park Venture Partners, Huron River Ventures and Drive Capital, as well as new investors SV Angel and Y Combinator’s Sam Altman.
FarmLogs has built a free platform that farmers can use to forecast profits, monitor weather and track crop progress. The company estimates that more than 15 percent of U.S. row crop farms — those with more than 100 acres of corn, soybeans or wheat — use its service.
FarmLogs said it plans to use the funding to grow its team, doubling its 22-person staff in the next six months.
CEO and co-founder Jesse Vollmar said the company’s move to make the service free spurred market penetration. He said FarmLogs now plans to roll out premium paid features for farmers this spring.
“The starting place is getting some good software into every single farm in the country,” Vollmar said Tuesday. “To get in every single farm, we have to have a free offering, and move people up and help them become even more profitable through the premium software.”
That strategy will likely prove valuable in figuring out which features are worth the cash for farmers, said Guy Turner of Hyde Park Venture Partners.
“You never actually hear from the farmers who decide not to buy,” Turner said. “Now that we have a very, very, very large user base who we’ve seen use the product for a couple years, we can offer them better solutions that they’ll be willing to pay for.”
Vollmar said the funding is proof of the market’s momentum. Last week, San Francisco-based The Climate Corp. announced that it had acquired 640 Labs, which sells devices that plug into farming equipment and automatically collect data.
“The question in people’s heads [used to be], ‘Can technology actually help, is it going to be useful?’” Vollmar said. “That question has switched to: ‘What product do I want to use?’ Farmers are hungry for this.”