Farmers produce 50% too much just not to fall short of demand.

30% of food grown does not make it to the fridge. Food going bad in your refrigerator, is a supply chain risk and it happens on a large scale across the US and the world.

Arable just raised $4.25 Million to create solutions for supply chain risks by making it more predictable via data and analytics.

They collect a lot of measurements from the field that can predict the timing, quantity and quality of the crops, which is essential to be able to plan for the future and commit to contracts.

A simple and friendly user experience on a smartphone helps farmers, packers, retailers and consumers to take these measurements and be more predictable.

Creating data for food to be more transparent.

M.T. – What kind of data does your Arable collect?

A.W. – We collect data on the plants growing similar to a satellite, like when you are flying over a field you can see what part of it is green and what part is brown.

We use a spectrometer that measures the green parts and the yellow parts and use that to know how  many plants are there, or how much biomass or chlorophyll, we combine that with measuring the micro climates which includes the rain, the sun which drives photosynthesis and long wave radiation which drives the water use.

Last year California had a big drought, this put a lot of stress and pressure on almond and lettuce farmers for consuming too much water.

Our technology gave them an to demonstrate that they were being very consciences about their water consumption, the data we collected enabled them to tell that story.

Wine is famous for having terroir, where the characteristics of this place at that time is captured in that bottle with that vintage, for other products. Our data enables that type of identity preservation, we see this as an opportunity to connect all the way to the consumer.

 

M.T. – How did you get started?

A.W. – I studied agronomy (agricultural science) in college, I thought I was gonna be a beer brewer. I was a sneaky kid in high school so I was making beer and wanted to go to Davos because I can learn to be a micro brewer.

It turned out that I wasn’t the best chemist, but I did love agriculture which morphed into becoming a full blown scientist. After getting my PHD from Stanford, I realized that there is all this technology on agriculture but its all absent of the data, its like buying a Fitbit without any of the data.

Real intelligence depends on real data, so I invented that and left Princeton as a researcher to start a company since the world can’t wait.

 

M.T. – What has been most challenging to bring your company to where it’s at?

A.W. – There are a couple of challenges, any entrepreneur knows it’s hard to find investors, but it comes down to telling the right story of the problem faced by your customers, and refining the story in emotional terms on what it is that we are doing.

Its also hard because its hidden and obscure, when you talk about produce and supply chain, people don’t know about it and don’t get excited.

Customers are reluctant to tell you how much of the cilantro they ship later goes bad, how much money they are losing because they can’t forecast production very well.

Assimilating the mindset of a lettuce trader has been a real challenge,  the professional practice is not the same as studying agriculture in college.

 

M.T. – Was it harder to create the hardware or the software?

A.W. – Each has its own version of misery, the people who engage in hardware are so strict with the professional practice of checking everything off before letting anything go, it’s designed to prevent there being any screw ups.

The culture around software is more move fast and break things, screw up if you have to until you get it right.

Each hve such a different culture in practice, so we found ourselves creating a new type of organization and new ways of working together.

Hiring practice and cost structure is so different that investors tend to view that as voodoo.

 

M.T. – How do you envision the final product being utilized by the end user?

A.W. – Our vision is that our data gets touched and used by a lot of people so long as everyone benefits.

Our initial product is there to connect the farmer with someone else they work with, in vegetable production there are grower shippers, somebody is growing the lettuce and someone is putting it in a clamshell and sending it away, so we are helping those 2 parties talk to each other using a shared set of facts..

We see our data is a well that everyone drinks out of, lets say the retailer wants to know when the next batch of lettuce is going to come in, our data can allow that communication.

Then you talk to the consumer and say the retailer knows a lot about where this lettuce came from, is that of interest to you?

While we are starting with a particular relationship, we can create additional screens or interfaces that will benefit additional parties.

Everyone needs to benefit, if one person benefits and another loses it won’t work. Because there is so much inefficiency, risks and losses in the supply chain, with Arable everyone wins.

 

M.T. – I see this as a great feature for restaurants to see what will be ready next season and be able to plan their menu.

A.W. –  Actually we were approached by a farm to table restaurant chain with 15 locations, they contract directly with 40 different farms, they want to plan the menu so customers can see a changing menu based on what’s available.

This is possible when the restaurant has a little bit of predictability on what will be available.

The holy grail of restaurants is not prediction of supply but prediction of demand, so they can say what do we need to plant in order to satisfy this fickle consumer.

Someone growing lettuce for a major grocery retailer needs to produce enough for every day of the year, often that means that there is a huge amount of food that goes to waste, they produce 50% too much just not to fall short.

Think of all the labor, machines, chemicals etc it’s a waste of resources for the world to run this way.

 

M.T. – How does this play into GMO’s?

A.W. – I am agnostic to GMO’s, but ultimately a company is too limited in the diversity to what is grown.

In specialty crops you will only see a few varieties of tomatoes out there commercially, one of the reasons they are not grown as much is that they are potentially more sensitive to supply chain concerns, shipping it, when will it be ready etc, most GMO in vegetables is to make shipping and transport more efficient.

There is only one kind of sage you can buy in the grocery store, but sage is an extremely
diverse genus of plants.

One of the things that’s exciting about what we are doing is making it possible to understand how does this variety respond differently then that variety, how does this respond to different soils, this allows us to grow more finicky varieties with confidence. 

 

M.T. – What would you say is your biggest weakness?

A.W. –  There are a few ways to answer this but I will say it comes down to focus, I get excited about a lot of stuff but I need to keep focus on what we are doing.

 

We get all kinds of inquiries for interesting projects, as a scientist I’ll think that would be a cool project, so I have other people in the company to play bad cop and tell me that makes no sense.

We just got a call from the national parks service wanting us to do some monitoring of water balance in the everglades. Can we do it? Of course we can but is that a scalable business? It’s a science experiment, it’s not something we can go build a target market out of.

Our target market is predictive analytics of timing, quality and yield of specialty crops.

 

M.T. – And your greatest strength?

A.W. – I am willing to feel dumb in ways that others are not, some people have too much pride and play it safe, I am ok with being the idiot and showing that I don’t know.

This helped me build emotional intelligence, I never learned the people skills that are central to business, real dale carnegie stuff, apparently I figured out to do something right, because we managed to build an extraordinary team that really loves being with each other, we have some real high performers and ultimately customers, investors and a wider group of people that want us to succeed.

I feel really good that I was able to invent the team to invent the product, in the act of creating a new product you get to  create a new company.

I some ways creating a new social structure is more interesting than creating a new product.

 

M.T. – What was the greatest lesson you’ve learned from a mistake?

A.W. – Not everyone has your best interest at heart, in some ways I learned this backpacking in india, you have to have this filter that cuts out all the people that want to do you harm while remaining open to letting in the cool people that help you transform yourself.

In business things can turn at you so many different ways but it comes down to money and power.

As a scientist I never had to deal with this but once you have a company you have to deal with control and equity. Within our team we never had issues, but with some potential investors they may use the perception of weakness to their advantage.

 

M.T. – What do you love most about what you do?

A.W. – Every week is so different, one week we need to hire a new controller, the next week we need to think about packaging, UI, filmmaking etc.

Everything is always changing so I need to be ready for the next ton of bricks .

 

M.T. – What book are you currently reading?

A.W. – I have 2:

1 – A Lapsed Anarchist’s Guide to Building A Good Business written by the founder of Zingermans. As someone who in my soul am not a real capitalist, this book was able to create the idea that forming a business is an act of creating an anarchist utopian society where everyone is empowered to do whatever they are most driven to do.

It has a lot of what’s the mission of your business, the vision of your success. This changed my perspective on being a business person.

 

2- Startup Leadership – by Derek Lidow.  It gets at the idea that in order to make your startup succeed, only comes out of detailed self awareness of your own limitations, and how will you mitigate against yourself.

 

M.T. – What’s a personal habit that you believe contributes to your success?

A.W. – Connecting with my wife and daughter, it’s important to stay grounded with my family, and I embrace people not having an obsessive work life.

 

I wake up early, I need to find the hours to answer my emails, finding balance. I don’t get enough time to read or take a day off, but i find time do.

 

M.T. – How do you define happiness?

A.W. – I’ll read you a poem:

“I asked the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell

me what is happiness.

And I went to famous executives who boss the work of

thousands of men.

They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though

I was trying to fool with them

And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along

the Desplaines river

And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with

their women and children and a keg of beer and an

Accordion”. – Carl Sandberg,  Happiness.

I play accordion.