‘Courage is an interesting thing’: What makes agrifood tech founders stand out in a tough funding market?

Stumbling across innovation

It wasn’t Olympia’s girlhood dream to be a maggot farmer.

Rather, she was looking for sustainable ways to feed a livestock operation, without being subject to the market forces that affect the cost of production.

In the early days of insect protein innovation, Olympia found she could feed maggots with food waste to create a protein-rich animal feed and fertiliser, while helping to tackle the food waste crisis.

However, as a producer, that solution still wasn’t ideal.

“The cost of transporting all this waste, which is my food, would be as impactful on my business as the cost of operations as transporting wheat is to any other commercialised industrial farming system. I hadn’t solved anything,” Olympia shared.

Olympia Yarger, Founder and CEO of maggot-powered food waste management startup, Goterra. Image | Mr.Wigley Photography.

So, Olympia invented Goterra’s autonomous maggot farms to process food waste right where it’s created.

“This inherently changes the dynamics of accessibility and availability, and we can make as much protein as we like,” she said.

Both Olympia and Michael are pioneers in their sectors, breaking new ground with models that have never been seen before.

Michael launched AgFunderNews in 2013, marking a 10-year milestone in 2023.

A multimedia publication, AgFunderNews is a division of AgFunder Inc, one of the world’s most active agrifoodtech venture capital firms.

Today, AgFunder has five funds, and another in the works. In 2023, it reached $280 million in assets under management.

Creativity, courage or sheer force of will?

For Olympia, the journey has been less about courage and more about dogged determination.

“Courage is an interesting thing. I don’t have it as a tool I can draw on. I have an inability to let something go, which was aggravating at 16, but it’s important at 40 plus.”

In the face of every challenge, Olympia simply hasn’t been able to stop, because she cares too much about the problem she’s solving.

This has been especially pertinent when approaching conversations with investors, she said.

It’s one thing to design, build and refine a tech solution that will change the world. It’s quite another skill to get investors to see what you see.

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Olympia went on to explain the challenge of getting an investor to see the world as the founder does, and the inherent challenges of getting another to believe in the vision they’re building. In 30 minutes, a founder has to take all they’ve learned, the experience, the process, and bring an investor on that journey with them, all in a 30 min introduction call.

Here, Olympia says, is where sheer force of will starts to look a little like courage.

“Courage is a symptom of your inability to not go through with that process, because of how strongly you believe in what you’ve built.”

What does it take to attract investment in 2024?

Michael acknowledged the “really, really difficult” funding market for startups all over the world. The agrifood tech sector is no exception.

AgFunder’s Michael Dean and Goterra’s Olympia Yarger took to the stage at evoke^AG. 2024 in panel discussion, ‘Agrifoodtech investment: Highs and lows and predictions for the year ahead’. Image | Mr.Wigley Photography.

The AgFunder Asia-Pacific AgriFoodTech Investment Report 2023 revealed Australian startups in the sector saw a 24.5% decline in investment.

RELATED: AgFunder Global AgriFoodTech Investment Report 2024

In this environment, investors are looking to entrepreneurs “who walk through walls” to get their business up and running, and funded, Michael said.

“Am I going to be able to trust this person, when things get hard, to be able to push through?” he questioned.

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With many startups in the agrifood tech sector working on hardware – the kind of tangible, physical technologies that can’t be commercialised overnight – Michael said it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

“You’ve got to wrestle with problems. You’ve got to get your arms around them and you’ve got to wrestle with them for a long, long time before you solve them.”

It takes time, and usually multiple funding rounds, he added. But it also means it’s incredibly difficult for any competitors to catch up.

Anyone trying to replicate the model will have to tackle the same problems, and walk through the same walls.

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Olympia is now looking to raise funding to take Goterra to the next level, having proven a successful model.

If that raise is successful (and Michael is sure it will be), “she’s got clear air behind her,” he said.

“There is no one that’s going to be able to catch her … and she will have a solution that will be valuable, globally.

“Those sort of entrepreneurs are the types of people we really try to engage with, really learn as much as we can from.”

The give a Sh*t’ factor

We hear a lot about ‘what it takes’ to succeed in startups, and these conversations tend to go around in circles.

For Olympia’s part, she says the only thing that really matters is the “give a sh*t factor”.

The passion for the problem and the belief in your solution have to supersede the fear and uncertainty, she said.

“Your desire to climb the mountain, win the war, do the thing, has to outweigh the constant challenge of standing at the boundary of your own confidence.”

 

AgFunder’s Michael Dean and Goterra’s Olympia Yarger took to the stage at evoke^AG. 2024 in panel discussion, ‘Agrifoodtech investment: Highs and lows and predictions for the year ahead’. The discussion was facilitated by Robyn O’Brien, partner at Montcalm, an impact investment platform.

Download the AgFunder Global AgriFoodTech Investment Report 2024 here. 

Sign up here for more discussions about the role of agrifood tech in driving sustainability across supply chains, news from agtech startups and updates ahead of evoke^AG. 2025 in Brisbane, Queensland.