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Latina-Founded Agtech Startup Taps The Entrepreneurial Community To Succeed


Globally, 30% of food produce is wasted along the food supply chain. It’s a consignment industry—farmers provide food to retailers without payment upfront. When food is wasted, farmers pay the price in lost revenues, commented Martha Montoya, CEO at Agtools. 

Complicating the picture is the multiplicity of stakeholders involved in the food supply chain, increased emphasis on reducing food wastage, and delivering safe, nutritious, high-quality food to consumers. Weather, pests, and diseases also make farming very challenging. 

The supply chain wasn’t working well before the Covid-19 crisis, but the pandemic aggravated the problem to the breaking point. “With the coronavirus pandemic, we’re facing a crisis the likes of which none of us has experienced before,” said Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation. As a result, last year, more US farmers filed for bankruptcy than ever before. Agtech can improve the odds of success.

More than 25 years ago, Montoya started her career as the person who ensured no one put drugs into the boxes of flowers being air shipped from Bogotá to Europe. She immigrated to the US, continued her agricultural logistics career, and helped farmers get paid for what they grew. 

In 2017, she ran the logistics side of an agricultural company when she was recruited to attend the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative, an education program in collaboration between Stanford GSB Executive Education and Latino Business Action Network. “The first thing the professor said to us was if you’re not increasing your revenues 10% to 20% per year, you’re in the wrong business,” she sighed. Her company was not. 

Montoya knew the pain points of the food supply chain industry and saw an opportunity to make an impact on a larger scale. Collecting and sharing data with customers was something she had always done. Digital technologies offered a new, more efficient, and effective way to provide real-time data that could help farmers maximize crop yields, increase profits, and reduce waste. 

“Data was the new gold,” exclaimed Montoya. For both to achieve their high value, they have to be refined and processed from a raw state. Like gold, companies make the most money not from sourcing it but by selling the extracted, processed, and designed product. 

While attending the Stanford program, Montoya put together the business plan for Agtools. With Agtools real-time data and analysis, farmers know which produce is selling for the highest prices and is the most profitable. They can track the weather and other potential issues, saving money and reducing food waste. 

In 2018, Montoya won a scholarship to attend a UC Davis Continuing and Professional Education program for Food, Agriculture, and Health Entrepreneurship. There, she refined her business plan and started working on the minimum viable product (MVP) for Agtools. 

UC Davis recommended her to the UCI (University of California, Irvine) Beall Applied Innovation program. UCI provided resources, including researchers, access to data, and interns. She co-led a research project to understand how to overcome the barriers that prevent farmers from adopting digital tools and practices and identify the innovators and early adopters who could speed acceptance. 

Interestingly, she discovered that it’s the wives, mothers, and sisters who do the financials and run the back office of family-owned farms. Women farmers are Agtools’ target market. Charter Communications, a customer, is funding their training to use the service. 

Reverend Jesse Jackson was working with Microsoft to make the technology industry look like America. Together, they conducted a global competition focused on machine learning and artificial intelligence. Montoya was recruited to compete and won a place in Wilson Sonsini’s female-founder accelerator program. 

Wilson Sonsini is a storied Silicon Valley headquartered law firm that has represented many technology pioneers from startup. There, she was introduced to an angel investor who invested $250,000 to pay for the law firm’s services. 

Montoya needed money to build out the Agtools platform. Even though she had raised tens of millions of dollars for banana, blueberry, and mango projects in emerging markets worldwide, no angel or venture capitalist in the US would listen to her. They didn’t recognize a woman of color capable of leading an emerging company. 

Her first investor, Janet Lustgarten, who had pioneered the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence, coached her on the language of equity investors. She founded Kx Systems, a data analysis software developer in 1993. Her second angel investor, Marcela Lopez, head of Global Transfer Pricing and Controversy at PayPal and a minority woman, invested $200,000. 

In March 2020, Agtools won the San Diego Angel Conference 2020 and received an investment of $200,000. It also received a $60,000 grant. In San Diego, Montoya met her first male angel investor, Benton Moore. He not only made introductions but urged colleagues to invest. Since starting the company, she has raised $1.85 million from angel investors.

Montoya was accepted into the Women in Cloud Microsoft Accelerator, an immersive six-month program where women-led tech companies co-work with Microsoft. Montoya also got into the Ad Astra Ventures accelerator, which invests and supports female founders who are redefining the future of business. There, she continued her education on understanding the equity investment world and how male venture capitalists make decisions.

Next Agtools won first place for “Best Investment Opportunity” in Next Wave Impact’s Founders of Color Showcase 2020, which I wrote about. 

“I applied to TechStars because it was one of the best accelerators in the world and it had a farm-to-fork program,” said Montoya. “They spoke my [industry] language and connected me to mentors in my industry.” The virtual program began in July of 2020. 

Agtools has signed multi-year contracts with some of the largest foodservice companies, including the largest celery companies and the largest carrot company. It will continue to fundraise—the next round will be a $10 million raise. 

How will you bring your business to the attention of funders?



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