The Silicon Review - Best Business Review Magazine 50 Most Trustworthy Companies 2019 | Page 107

What kind of responses
have you received from your
consumers over the years?
How have they motivated you
to shape your offerings/grow
the company?
Our customers come from across
the spectrum of painpoints to be
solving in their farm businesses.
The thing about agriculture is that
it is biophysical economics, which is
a highly dynamic environment for
service. This means we have quite
a number of competing systems,
feedback, requests, and so on to
work with. Pasture.io essentially
measures how much pasture is
in a paddock so the farmer can
make the best grazing decisions
on the quantity of pasture and/
or supplements to allocate. This
brings an array of mixed responses
from farmers who say “why bother
measuring grass when it just grows”,
to farmers that say “I love having
peace of mind in knowing that my
animals aren’t going to be underfed”.
Is your company a leader or
a follower? Do you formulate
your own core values?
I’d say we’re a leader, as we
formulate our own core values.
These values are core to our ethos
and what drives us to solve our
customers’ painpoints. We’re a
company with highly passionate
people who like to push the
boundaries in what we do. In saying
so, rather than meeting standard
practices, we strive to develop
leading practices. We believe this is
how we demonstrate our core values
to customers and peers alike from
improving everything from customer
acquisitions to gaining word of
mouth referrals.
What do you feel are
the reasons behind your
company’s reputation?
As an early-stage startup, I believe
a lot can be contributed to not only
producing a world-first service but a
reachable company that customers
can pick up the phone and talk
with. We put a lot into customer
success and keep the customers up
to date with what we’re doing in the
company. To be profound, without
our customers there is no company
and without trust and transparency,
there is no relationship. It is this
relationship between us and the
customer that we work hard on
improving.
Are there any factors that
have played key roles in
shaping your organization’s
road map?
A major barrier for us to overcome
was that our target market is time-
poor. This meant that we needed to
develop automation into our service
for collecting different data points
to feed into our models. We now
automate the streams of data from
external sources such as satellite
imagery and weather data and
combine this with the farm records
and activities in our platform.
If you have to list five
factors that have been/are
the biggest asset to your
organization, what would
they be and why?
•
•
•
•
Understanding the problems we
are solving first hand with our
own experience with on-going
personal links with businesses
in the industries we serve
Being completely honest and
transparent with our customers
and holding a strong moral
obligation to deliver value
Our team is passionate about
delivering value and for
working hard to meet customer
expectations
Putting social and environmental
values first with the goal to
relieve the mental burden on
farm owners and managers who
make daily tactical decisions
on-farm
•
Developing a strong focus in
our business on the customer’s
definition of value, where we
should allocate our resources
for creating opportunities,
and how we should distribute
our learnings back into the
community
Building a culture of
sustainability inside
an organization is very
important to maintain a
reputation in the global
market. How is it true for
your company?
This is very true for our company.
We’re building an environment
where we all work remotely;
everyone takes responsibility for
their areas of expertise and where
we’re all as important as each other
when decisions need to be made. We
are a small team that live across most
states of Australia. Face to face time
is enjoyable at conferences when
we make extra time to bond and
have fun together. Otherwise, we’re
in regular contact with each other
and as a group via messaging, phone
calls, and video hook-ups. Fostering
a free and empathetic workplace
culture is integral to driving our
company sustainably internally.
Where do you see your
company a couple of years
from now?
As any business owner, I would like
to steer our business to high levels
of success. This success would be
a testament to the value and core
ethos we strive to lead with and to
the strong relationships we build
with our customers.
SR
“We’re easing the daily
pressure on farmers
by automating farm
management decisions.”
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