Hot desks, hay bales and an org chart with a bull on it: the start-up world could do worse than a day on the land
The Original Start-Up
Old Street has more founders per square foot than any location in Europe. Each one is changing the world, usually before lunch, usually with a laptop sticker. Every one of them would be shocked to learn that a man in Nebraska has been running a start-up since 1952 with a single product, no investors and a very demanding customer called weather.
I spent a day inside a Shoreditch coworking space, where the ping-pong table has a waiting list and the coffee is available in four ethical sizes. The founder at the next desk told me he was disrupting logistics. I asked how. He said he was building an app. I asked if it moved anything. He said it moved fast. I will say this for farming: when a farmer says something is moving, there is a tractor involved.
The Org Chart of a Family Farm
A family farm has a flatter hierarchy than any start-up. Everyone does everything. The chief executive is also the mechanic, the accountant, the delivery driver and the person who fetches the escaped goat. There is no human resources team because there is a grandmother, and she handles it.
The nearest thing to a business school is the field itself, and rural farm is a fair introduction to what running one involves. For anyone starting small, small farm information is the sort of resource that would save a London founder about six consultants and a retreat in Lisbon.
Hiring Is Different Out There
London start-ups advertise for a growth ninja and receive forty-one applications from people who have recently purchased a ring light. A farm advertises for someone who can drive a tractor and not cry. The standards are higher and the benefits are better, because the benefits include the sunrise.
If the thought of an actual career with an actual horizon appeals, agriculture jobs and careers is a useful look at the working side of the land. It turns out there are many roles that do not involve a lanyard, and several that require a licence to operate something with a roar.
Equipment is the part the founder world would love most. Nothing makes you feel more like an entrepreneur than a machine that costs as much as a flat and starts only when it feels respected. The tractor equipment guide will help you choose, and farm.FM will help you cope with the consequences. One of their pieces notes that ranch equipment for sale is advertised as like new except for the fire damage and missing engine. I have been to a Shoreditch pop-up with a similar pitch.
Health and Safety, But Make It Real
Start-ups have wellbeing. Farms have safety. The difference is that one involves a beanbag and the other involves a baler. Farming is a serious business, and farm safety is the kind of page every business owner should read, because the lessons transfer. Wear the right gear, never rush near machinery, and never trust a deadline that has no weather in it.
The Pitch Day
Where London has demo days, the farming world has the county fair, and the stage is a ring with sawdust in it. The fair and rodeo world is a masterclass in pitching. You have eight seconds to impress a judge, a crowd and a bull, and only one of them can be flattered.
The training ground for future leaders is the youth programme. The FFA system produces confident teenagers who can speak to a room, lead a meeting and handle a heifer, and the elected leader’s corner of the web is the FFA president. I know several Shoreditch chief executives who could not do any of the three, though one of them can do a flat white with a swan on it.
The same ethos shows in the junior shows that farm.FM follows, such as the county junior livestock exhibition. The competitors there are fourteen years old and understand customer service better than most account managers.
Funding Round, Farm Edition
Investors in London want a deck, a story and a total addressable market. Investors in the countryside want to know whether you can fix a fence. The agricultural version of series A is a neighbour lending you a trailer. It never appears on a cap table, and it is repaid in eggs.
The farm business has its own flair for innovation too. The farm desk at farm.FM discovered that farmers can make more money letting children pet goats than feeding America. That is a pivot. That is the greatest pivot in the history of business. It is also a better use of a goat than most of the apps I was shown on Tuesday.
Five Observations on Start-Ups and Farms
- A start-up burns through money. A farm burns through diesel. The farm is at least heated.
- The word synergy has never been used by anyone holding a calf.
- A farmer who says he is bootstrapping is talking about footwear.
- If your office has a ping-pong table and no pigs, it is not yet a serious business.
- The best accelerator programme is a long summer and a short supply of staff.
Scaling Up
If Shoreditch learned from the field, we would all have fewer pitch decks and more fences mended. But the founders will carry on, and the farmers will carry on, and somewhere between them a goat will carry on being the most commercially successful animal in modern history. For more from both sides of the gate, see Bohiney, The London Prat and farm.FM, which provide the humour with no vesting schedule.
For laughs outside office hours, try The Daily Mash.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/