Canva billionaire funds start-up that made a digital twin of his farm

▤ Summary

You can visualise the land, water flows... and bring land management into the 21st century.Agronomeye creates detailed 3D digital maps of an individual farm, overlaying multiple sources of data to help producers see a fuller picture of their own property.The company was founded in 2015 by former Qantas commercial airline pilot Tim Howell and ex-Fox Sports journalist Stu Adam. Mr Howell had an interest and understanding of unmanned aerial vehicles, while Mr Adam had been thinking about how video and imaging technology could be used as a tool, rather than for pretty pictures.The pair spent time getting to know farmers and agronomists to understand what would help make their jobs easier putting down a credit card at the Imperial Hotel in the regional NSW town of Trangie, buying the local cotton farmers drinks in exchange for picking their brains.Originally, the founders set out to use drones to capture high-resolution imagery of crops, but when the drought hit in 2017, it became clear that farmers no longer needed imagery to tell them what was wrong with their crops.We realised we needed to capture [a high-res image] once across the entire farm using a different type of technology and then analyse that data set many many times... building a digital twin off the back of that core data set, Mr Adam said.We leaned more into manned aircraft, going from imagery that told us something about the crop, into LiDAR (a laser-based remote sensing technology) that can tell us the height of a tree, the canopy coverage and details about the landscape.The company launched its digital twin product 12 months ago, and it is now in use across 2.5 million hectares in Australia. Its customers range from vineyard owners to livestock farmers, operating both small and large-scale farms.It already has a pipeline of 5 million hectares to add to its platform in 2023.The investment adds to Mr Adams positions in companies including Brighte, SunDrive Solar, sustainable stationery company Karst Stone Paper, seaweed plastic start-up Uluu, Who Gives a Crap and sustainability advisory and investment firm Pollination.Mr Adams said he has a number of provisos he looks for when choosing whether to invest in a start-up, with the people working at the company and its overarching vision most important.You need a great idea, you need to be able to execute on it and if working with technology, you need the understanding of how to build it, and you need founders who are truly passionate, he said.I often see people tackling an area because they think they can make a few dollars out of it. Starting a business is extremely tumultuous and to get through it, you need passion and belief in the vision.

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Canva Pty. Ltd.

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