Farming has always been a challenging business. But one issue stands out: farmers often aren’t paid quickly or securely.
This is the problem Emma Weston (CEO & Co-Founder), alongside co-founders Bob McKay and Ben Reid, set out to solve with AgriDigital.
The root cause lies in pervasive archaic systems. Agriculture remains the least digitised industry globally, particularly across supply chains, leaving inefficiencies and risk at every stage.
How to change a broken system
All that is changing and AgriDigital is at the forefront of this innovation.
Founded in 2015, AgriDigital is changing the game for the agriculture industry through the world’s first cloud-based, multi-participant, commodity management platform that is blockchain enabled.
The co-founders share an impressive 80 plus years of deep agricultural experience. This allows them to inject efficiency, transparency and trust across the supply chain. The technology behind AgriDigital evokes this deep knowledge of agricultural supply chains by connecting the dots all through one ultra secure network, which puts farmers first.
Emma explains, “We are a farmer forward organisation. We really think about what the impact is on the farmer, even if they’re not the primary user of a particular feature.”
The company achieved a milestone through the world’s first settlement of a physical agri-commodity on a blockchain between a farmer and a buyer in NSW in December 2016. They also won the Finnies Award for Excellence in Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology in 2017 and 2018.
Now, they’ve seen 3.9M tonnes of grain and cotton transacted across their platform, with over 2,250 active users and payments of over A$750 million.
Lessons along the way
“We have a very clear view around the need for single source of truth data in the industry, and that’s why we’ve been passionate about exploring the potential of blockchain.”
Speaking on the phone, Emma reveals what risks they took during the early stages of the startup and how each of these risks effectively snowballed into success.
A big risk they took was in steering clear from raising money in an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) in order to not damage their reputation. They didn’t want to go out guns blazing saying that they could solve everything with blockchain, when they were still experimenting with the technology.
“We backed ourselves as Founders, as we funded the business ourselves for the first couple of years before securing venture capital.”
She continues, “We didn’t hide what we were doing as we believed that if we told more people what we were doing rather than operating in stealth mode, it would be good for us. And it really turned out that way.”
Emma explains that the success behind AgriDigital comes from a dedicated and committed team, going above and beyond to get things done in true startup style.
“It’s a team effort. It’s building out a great team and making sure that they’re actually passionate about the work they do.”
How to find community
Working out of Stone & Chalk in January 2016 after spending a short amount of time in a garage and around the kitchen table, Emma says moving to Stone & Chalk was crucial.
“The reason we moved to Stone & Chalk was because we wanted a sense of community when we didn’t necessarily have that cultural piece yet.”
“Everything from connecting with community members, through to Government, through to visiting delegations. The whole gamut of what comes with Stone & Chalk, we just took every opportunity.”
A founder's journey
Although, Emma may seem like superwoman, being a former lawyer, and now CEO of a leading agtech company, as well as mentor to several startups, she admits that she came from a non-technical background which proved a personal challenge.
In hindsight, she says that a personal learning curve for her was in understanding some of the technical depth to the decisions she made early on in the startup. Given the chance to do it all again, Emma says she may have done things slightly differently. Who wouldn’t?
When asked to give one piece of personal advice, Emma shares that she wishes she had reached out earlier to the amazing female founders network out there, which she finds herself leaning on from time to time. Whether it be grabbing a coffee to share a story or asking for advice in how to tackle a certain problem, having a support network is vital.
The winner of the 2017 Female Fintech Leader of the Year and Emerging Fintech Leader of the Year, humbly reflects, “Personally, I would’ve had more people helping me as CEO, in understanding how I could personally scale and how that impacts the company.”
Final thoughts
Going forward, AgriDigital is getting ready for its platform launch in Canada and the U.S in 2019.
If you’d like to find out more about Australia’s fastest growing agricultural supply chain innovator, get in touch with the passionate team or RSVP to hear directly from Emma about her incredible startup journey.
