We see a lot of AgriTech companies at Series A. Some have been through SBIR grants, land-grant university partnerships, pilot programs with co-ops. Others are essentially seed-stage decks with updated fonts. The gap between the two is usually obvious within the first 30 minutes of a call.
After 14 years of writing checks in this space, we've developed a fairly clear internal sense of what separates the deals we move forward on from the ones we pass. These aren't formulas — every deal is different — but these five signals consistently show up across the investments we're most confident in.
1. A Farmer Who Will Give You Their Cell Number
The most important reference check in any ag deal isn't the pilot report. It's whether the founding team can get a farmer on the phone in 24 hours who will speak candidly about their experience. Farmers are notoriously skeptical of outside technology, protective of their time, and honest when something doesn't work. If a company has built enough trust that farmers will take calls from investors, that's a meaningful signal.
We're not looking for a polished testimonial. We're looking for a working relationship. The farmer should be able to tell us roughly what changed in their operation, what didn't work initially, and what they wish the product did differently. That kind of feedback means the team is actually in the field.
2. Science That a Skeptic Would Accept
AgriTech is full of products that work in ideal conditions and struggle in variable real-world environments. A soil health product that performs beautifully in a plot trial in central Illinois in a wet year may behave very differently in a dry year, in a sandy loam, or in an operation with a different rotation.
We look for evidence that the founding team has tested their technology in adversarial conditions — not just the best conditions. We also look for scientific advisors or collaborators who are willing to be named and who have institutional credibility. A professor at Purdue or Iowa State who is genuinely enthusiastic about the science is worth more to us than a polished lab deck.
3. Unit Economics That Close Without Subsidies
A meaningful portion of AgriTech business models are partially subsidized — by USDA programs, carbon credits, conservation practice incentives, or cost-share agreements. Some of those subsidies are durable. Many aren't. We want to understand what the unit economics look like if the subsidy goes away.
If a company's gross margin depends entirely on a government program that has a two-year reauthorization cycle, that's a business risk worth quantifying. We're not anti-subsidy — we've backed companies that benefit significantly from conservation program funding. But we want to see that the core value proposition is strong enough to survive a policy shift.
4. An Honest Account of What Hasn't Worked
The clearest signal of a high-quality founding team is their ability to talk specifically about where they've failed and what they learned. Not vague "we faced challenges and overcame them" — specific instances of a product iteration that didn't work, a go-to-market approach that was wrong, a key hire that didn't pan out.
Ag is a tough industry for outsiders. It has long sales cycles, conservative buyers, seasonal constraints, and deep regional variation. The founders who have been in the field and hit real problems and adapted are the ones who understand the market. The ones who are still pitching the original vision unchanged from their seed deck are the ones who haven't learned yet.
5. Distribution That Doesn't Require Reinventing Ag Sales
One of the most common failure modes in AgriTech is underestimating the cost and difficulty of reaching farmers directly. The most capital-efficient paths to market run through existing distribution relationships — ag retailers, co-ops, crop advisors, input dealers. Companies that have figured out how to work with existing distribution infrastructure rather than build around it tend to scale faster and burn less capital doing it.
We've seen $10M+ seed rounds burned largely on direct-to-farmer sales teams that couldn't crack the first 50 accounts. The best-capitalized ag sales motion isn't always the fastest one.
We look for early distribution partnerships — even informal ones — that suggest the team understands how product moves in agriculture. It doesn't have to be a finished channel strategy. But there should be evidence that the founders have thought carefully about how their product reaches an actual grower.
What We Don't Weight as Heavily as You Might Expect
TAM. We've seen enough enormous agriculture market TAMs that have produced modest venture returns. The size of the market matters much less than whether your go-to-market can actually access a meaningful slice of it efficiently.
Also: competition slides. The competition in most AgriTech categories is diffuse — legacy practices, inertia, and doing nothing are often the real competitors. A well-reasoned view of competitive dynamics matters, but a slide claiming there are no competitors is a flag, not a positive.
If you're building an AgriTech company and heading into a Series A process, feel free to reach out. We try to give founders real feedback whether or not we end up investing.
