S11E138 Kendra Armstrong/Crop Convergence - How Crop Convergence is Transforming Farming Efficiency

Harry Duran

0:00 - 0:06

So, Kendra Armstrong, co founder and CEO of Crop Conversions, thank you so much for joining us on Vertical Farming podcast.

Kendra Armstrong

0:07 - 0:10

Well, thank you very much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Harry Duran

0:10 - 0:12Ignore this for outputs

And we're not alone. Your dogs are joining us today.

Kendra Armstrong

0:14 - 0:35

Yeah, this is sprite over here. And somebody recently on a meeting told me that we look like a Carole King record cover of Tapestry whenever we hang out. And then you might, you may or may not see Yogi. Yogi is my older sort of shepherd mix, and he's probably back there napping. That's usually his spot.

Harry Duran

0:35 - 0:42

We had a dog, my parents name. His name is Yogi. Oh, that's cute. Definitely. That was years ago.

Kendra Armstrong

0:42 - 0:43

He's my Yogi bear.

Harry Duran

0:43 - 1:10

Yeah, it's always fun because, as I was saying, pre, pre recording, having been podcasting for almost ten years now, it's everything that can and will happen on a podcast has happened between the connection going out or doors being opened or the laundry kicking on or the weed whacker or the landscapers coming by at just the right time. So I think I've seen and heard it all at this point. Where's home?

Kendra Armstrong

1:10 - 1:14

For you, it's the joys of working from home. I think that's always the case. Yeah.

Harry Duran

1:15 - 1:16

Where's home?

Kendra Armstrong

1:17 - 1:35

So I'm in southern Indiana. I grew up in southwestern Indiana, and I'm lucky enough I get to live on the family farm. So I've got quite a view out the backyard of about 150 acres and mainly corn and soy. But I just. I love being here, I'll admit. It's great.

Harry Duran

1:35 - 1:37

So what was life growing up like?

Kendra Armstrong

1:38 - 2:10

It was. I was definitely a farm kid growing up, so, like I said, my parents, they raised corn, soy, a little bit of wheat. We had hogs. So I did the whole forage hog thing and fell in love with the farm, but realized I didn't want to farm fairly early on, but I wanted to do something for farmers, and so that's kind of how I wound up where I'm at. But growing up quite a. I think bucolic is probably the word that comes to mind. It's. Yeah, I feel very lucky to have.

Harry Duran

2:10 - 3:01

Grown up where I do is it? I grew up in the city, and I now find myself in the midwest. So it's interesting because, you know, I always had the perspective of farm country or farm life from the outside. I lived in New York City, Atlanta, and then Los Angeles as well. So both coasts. And now being in the midwest, we're here in about an acre of land, which about Amarish, and obviously, and my parents, my partner's father is a hunter, has been a hunter. So just to kind of experience that whole different way of life. And I'm wondering if you think back, looking back at your upbringing, because I've heard it on past conversations here as well. Like, people who've experienced a farm, worked on a farm, been on a farm, they've had a different upbringing than most people. And in terms of, like, quality of life, but also, like, work ethic, I think comes through a lot as well.

Kendra Armstrong

3:01 - 4:01

Yeah, I don't want to discount the work ethic that can come from growing up in a city and having early jobs and everything, but, yeah, my first job was shoveling hog manure out of a hog barn. So, you know, I've seen every stage of the farming operation, I guess you could say. And it does provide a different standpoint. I think, personally, I get my personal feeling around value, and value I bring to society is so much associated with the farm, and how can I help people, and how can I grow more food? How can I help people do that? And so I think that really does come through, and that feeling of that work ethic that's associated with that really comes through because of growing up where I did. But again, I don't want to say that that's not just a farm kid thing. I find that that's something that seems to be universal for people who are kind of drawn to agriculture and agtech, which is part of why I love the industry.

Harry Duran

4:01 - 4:12

So what were your thoughts? Because you mentioned that you probably weren't thinking you wanted to stay and work on the farm. And so as you were getting through your studies and figuring out what was next for you, what were you thinking about?

Kendra Armstrong

4:13 - 5:45

Well, you could. I think that sometimes I think back, and I'm like, what was I thinking at the time? I was. I remember I was in the car or in the truck, actually, with my dad when I was 16 years old. And he's like, kendra, do you want to farm? Because he's like, if you do, we need to start actually thinking about how we're going to get the farm ready for you to take over and all this. And I was like, no, I don't want to farm. It's too stressful. It's way too stressful. And it's just so much hard work. And again, this is where I laugh at myself on a nearly daily basis. I then went to grad school and got a degree in plant breeding. And so, you know, I went through the whole grad school process. And then I became a startup founder. And as, you know, as time went on, and so looking back, I'm like, I think I was just kind of. I think I was kind of bound to wind up in this kind of lifestyle of owning a business and everything. But the thought process initially was, good grief, that's too high a risk. No, I want to go. I want to go get a real job. Now, mind you, in my family, a real job is a running joke. Because when I was about eleven, I once told my dad, I was like, when are you going to go get a real job? So that I think I wanted a pony or something like, something ridiculous like that. And my dad has never let me live that down. And when I complain about my business and things going, you know how things are going, or somebody didn't show up for a sales call that day or whatever it is, he goes, but remember, Kendra, you can always go get a real job at the end of the day.

Harry Duran

5:45 - 5:56

So, yeah, so as you were finishing up your studies, did you have an idea where you want, you know, with that degree, what type of business, you know, industries you were looking at or what type of companies were on your radar?

Kendra Armstrong

5:57 - 8:15

When I started out, I started out more than 20 years ago as a research assistant, and I got a job as a research assistant at a plant breeding station close to here. And at the time, I really thought I wanted to go be a traditional plant breeder, which would have meant that I was out in the field. I was making selections, and I was really helping companies release varieties as time went on. And I went through school and I got into, into grad school, this is kind of part of how the company came to be, too, washing. As I went to grad school, people were telling us as grad students at that time of plant breeding, that traditional plant breeders, most of those roles were going to go away. And so this has been 1015 years ago, and a lot of those traditional roles were going to go away and things were going to be controlled through AI machine, you know, machine learning or AI tools. They were going to be, everything was going to be computationally driven. We were just going to do genomics. And so we were taught that we needed to go prepare ourselves for that particular outcome. And so I did. I actually, and I got hooked on it. And to be fair, I think I would have wound up there anyways, but I got hooked on building these computational algorithms and all of these fun tools and how do you pull in engineering and how do you pull in it? And IoT and all these different things and how do you pull these together to create tools for ad companies? And so when I graduated, the thought would be was that I was going to go work for one of these ad companies and try that for a while. It was horrible fits. It just wasn't for me. And so I went back to school for a little bit, and then as time went on, I wound up in this and working for companies that were more or less analytics as a service. I worked for Benson Hill while they were a startup for a little bit. And then as time went on, I realized, no, I really want to start my own company. I want to see what I can do. And that's when, that's kind of how we wound up here, is using all of those learnings from the last two decades of building these tools and implementing them at different companies. We just want to see what we can do for growers, and that's what we're trying to do now.

Harry Duran

8:15 - 8:31

I'm curious about that phrase you used when you went to go work in the corporate world. You said a horrible fit. And I'm wondering if there was just a clash of styles or just, you just realized you were cut out to be nine to fiverr.

Kendra Armstrong

8:31 - 9:22

It was a couple of different things. I mean, there was some personal stuff at the company. There was. But there was also, I also realized pretty early on that to function well, a big company needs somebody who's really good at sitting down and really focusing on the problem that is right in front of them. And they, that's, they need to get really, really good at that problem. And I'm not that person. I mean, I think it comes from growing up on a farm. You kind of learn to be a jack of all trades. And so I'm the person that's kind of always wanting to poke at something going, how do I make that better? What's going on over here? How do I figure this out? So that's where startups or some sort of service sort of industry makes so much more sense for the way I function my brain in general.

Harry Duran

9:23 - 9:30

So when do you remember the moment when you realized that it was going to be inevitable that you were going to start crop convergence?

Kendra Armstrong

9:30 - 10:34

I don't know that there was a real specific moment, though I will say that when I left my last position, when I left Benson Hill, I knew I wanted to go be a consultant for a while. I wanted to try working for myself. And about that same time, I received a LinkedIn message from my co founder, Liji Wong. And Li Qi was like Kendra I heard you're available. Can we talk? And at the time, he had a couple of algorithms he was trying to sell. And he's like, do you want to sell these for us? And I said, no, but I would really love to talk to you about some of the other stuff that you've got going on, and let's go see if we can build a business out of that. And in our moments of insanity, that sort of moment of insanity, we were like, okay, let's go do it. And so we talked to as many farmers as we could. And I think that moment of that LinkedIn message of in it being from Liji, who I had known from Iowa State, that was a pretty special moment to go, like, okay, now I've got this. I've got the courage to go do this now. I'm gonna give it a try.

Harry Duran

10:35 - 10:49

Did you have colleagues who had started their own businesses? Did you have any experience with people who had been through this before that you could talk to, or even just broader than that? What was your relationship with some of the mentors who I'm sure have helped you along the way?

Kendra Armstrong

10:50 - 12:00

I've had a few mentors. We've worked pretty extensively with Roger Salome, whom I met at Benson Hill, and he's been really invaluable. I've known people who've worked at or founded different companies over the years, but I will say that the way we've approached this business has been a lot closer to what I learned in terms of running a business from my parents while watching them farm than it has been a more traditional startup. So we've opted to bootstrap. And by Bootstrap, I mean we have called in just about every favor, plus some that I have. You know, we possibly could from people we have. We've done some revenue generation. We've been, you know, lucky enough to do that. And so how to make ends meet, how to do everything from take out the trash to the accounting to design a website, and then also actually run the algorithms. That kind of attitude. I think I got more from the farm than I probably did from any sort of startup background that I've had so far.

Harry Duran

12:01 - 12:45

Yeah, as an entrepreneur myself, I can definitely relate, because I was in corporate for 20 plus years, and obviously there's something about getting your paycheck deposited into your account twice a month. It just shows up there. I mean, you're doing the work, and it's showing up, but the day that doesn't show up anymore, it's kind of jarring, because you're just like, oh, I have to, like, figure this out on my own. And it's this idea of the early failures are hard because you fall in your face a lot and you're like, well, I didn't know this. Right. I wasn't prepared for this. And then you build a resiliency that I think is interesting that I've come to appreciate over the years of just, you just get up. And I'm sure it relates very well to farm life. You just get up faster. You have no time to even wallow in the mud and just like, okay, that didn't work. What's next? Dust it off and just keep going?

Kendra Armstrong

12:46 - 13:46

Yeah, absolutely. I kind of love that. It is kind of that feeling. And we've had plenty of those moments. Just like everybody else, we try to be, the three of us, try to be really open and honest about our journey and where we're at, because we find that that's a to us, if we're going to make decision making tools and help people communicate, we might as well be communicating openly and honestly. Right? So around everything. And so we're right there with you. It's been resiliency. It's been building a network of people that I know I can lean on and trust and call whenever things are going badly and they'll pat me on the head. In fact, I have one friend in New Zealand who will, if I complain too much, she will literally just text me, Pat, Pat, pat, pat. So it's been a journey, definitely. I think I'm a better, stronger person for the journey. But I might have a very different answer for you three days from now if something goes wrong.

Harry Duran

13:46 - 13:55

That's true. So for the benefit of the listener and the viewer, for folks that are not familiar with crop convergence, how would you describe what it is that you do and who you serve?

Kendra Armstrong

13:55 - 15:03

Essentially, we build decision making tools for growers and farmers, and those decision making tools allow them to figure out, or if not figure out. I kind of don't. Let's think of a different way to say that we allow growers or we in, I should say we enable growers to better understand the overall sort of scope of the decisions that they're making and how those decisions interact with each other. So our goal is really to provide people with as much information as we can in as simple, quantified, and straightforward a banner as possible so that they can understand what's going on on their farm and they can communicate it to others as effectively as possible to just essentially save time. If somebody gets to take a vacation at the end of the year and not worry about their farm. Because of the decision making tool that I built, I feel like I have really done something. I have really sort of, I've succeeded.

Harry Duran

15:04 - 15:20

So for those that may not be familiar with these types of tools and the types of farms that you work with, is there like an ideal farm size or I farms that are growing specific types of crops, or they have a specific challenge that they're trying to solve for?

Kendra Armstrong

15:20 - 17:37

I think from a, to start with the farm size, typically we're going to need a farm that is at least one to 2 ha in size, so often under glass, if that's under glass. For a vertical farm, of course, the vertical farm is going to differ a little bit. But you're going to be wanting to be producing a quantity that you could provide to a grocery store, for example, I think is a good way to think of it. Like saying a square foot square footage is a little bit dangerous on that one, but you want to be thinking at production level. And then from there, we can talk about different kinds of leafy greens or vines that we're typically working at. So if you're growing primarily leafy greens, we can analyze one farm worth of leafy greens. If you're talking about vines, we can analyze a farm worth of vines. And for the growers who, or, excuse me, for what they're looking for, in terms of what questions they're asking, we're really looking for growers who are looking to maximize their efficiency. And so that can be efficiency around profitability. So we want to maximize profitability. We could think about minimizing input costs. We could think about maximizing yield, though I will say, I don't think that's where most people are these days. They're really more in the, let's minimize the costs and maximize our profitability. But we can, we're really looking for people who have some sort of data. They're interested in using that data, and they're interested in asking questions about their farm specifically. Because this is really key to us. We don't combine datasets across farms. We want to ask and build what's called a digital twin of a given farm. And a digital twin is basically a fancy term for a computer simulation. And so I'm going to build a computer model of how a plant is going to interact with a git person's farm, and I'm going to use their historic data to do that. And so if they have the historic data and they have the interest in trying to figure out how, why and when that plant is interacting with their environment, then I think that's an awesome customer for us.

Harry Duran

17:38 - 17:49

And how do farms find you? Or I'm wondering when they get to the point where they realize, I think we need to call in crop convergence because they're having specific challenges.

Kendra Armstrong

17:50 - 19:23

This has been an ongoing question for us, too, and what we have found the answer to this is that we're looking for farms that have one to two cycles worth of growth worth of growth data. So if they have data from sensors, environment sensors, if they've tracked some of their management data, if they know what varieties they're growing and how much they've harvested. So we need to know yield data. But if they have that kind of information, then we're more than happy to work with them. We do work often with platforms, so we have a partner in Unu who can work with us for leafy greens and some tomato projects. So if your data is already going through the Uni platform, you're golden, we're good to go. If it's not, then we're also happy to talk with you about other options around analytics as a service, or even working with and building an API with you. So if you've got a couple of cycles worth of data and you want to have a conversation, please reach out. I will say that even if you don't feel like, even if a grower doesn't feel like they're quite there yet, all of us are teachers and scientists at heart. And if you just want to talk about your data, even if it's just a complain about how you've collected all of it and now you don't know what to do with it, give me a call and we can just have a couple of conversations if you want, about, you know, about how the sort of how, why and where of what to do with all of that information.

Harry Duran

19:24 - 19:37

Is there a small group of folks doing similar things? Is there like a Facebook group where everyone's just commiserating about the quality and the state of data and analytics in vertical farming nowadays?

Kendra Armstrong

19:38 - 20:22

I don't. I mean, I'm sure there is. I will say I'm a member of a couple of different slack groups depending upon, you know, what your interests are. One of them is full of computational biologists, but that one's got a big beware stamp on it because there's definitely some non PC stuff said, and that it just depends on how, how much you want to complain. I guess then I've also part of climate groups and things so there are groups out there, but I don't know that I've got one formal, one that somebody could join. But if somebody is interested and thinks that they would participate in something like that, and I get a little bit of interest, I'm happy to start something. And we can all just start, we can all just sit down and complain about, I don't know, how noisy ph data is or something like that.

Harry Duran

20:22 - 20:47

Yeah, I'm sure if there's other, I've had conversations with other folks doing similar things. So I imagine at some point there could be some commonalities there. I'm curious about your introduction or your awareness into what was happening in the world of indoor farming. Coming from open ag and maybe thinking you're going to be working with traditional farmers. I'm curious what that journey has been like for you, how you became aware of what was happening in the indoor farming space.

Kendra Armstrong

20:48 - 23:51

So, yeah, as you mentioned, I started out in outdoor farm, in outdoor crops and, but I expected to continue to work in row crops, in fact. But as I got to building out these tools, I did more and more projects in specialty crops, or, well, if you work, if you start out in corn and soy, they think of them as specialty crops, but then they're really things like tomatoes and lettuce and onions and things like that really make the world go around. But as I started working on those kinds of breeding projects for different, a huge number of different vegetables and fruits, it became really obvious that there were very, there were huge differences around the growing systems that were being used even within some of those crops, and that the way those varieties were interacting with those growing environments and those management practices, you could take the same variety and put it into a completely different management and environment, and it was going to have this completely different response. And so that's where I began to get fascinated with this, especially as we studied this, as we studied variety developments for greenhouses, tomato, I think it was beefsteak and cocktail and some cherry tomato breeding. And so it was just these huge differences in the phenotypes and everything that was being selected for. So it got really fascinated from that. And then when I was working at a company, I got introduced to a couple of the very large vertical farms and started working on some projects with a couple of large vertical farms. Got a feel for what some of their challenges were, where they felt like their strengths and weaknesses were. And this idea of, for vertical farms in particular, being able to provide a very high quality product that had a very distinctive flavor, a very distinctive sort of feel or nutrition content, something like that was key. And that's when I got really fascinated with this idea of, okay, so you've got this genetics and you've got this environment and this management practice, and they're all interacting together. How do we get them to interact in the direction that we want them to go? And how do we instruct people or provide people with the necessary information to help them get that plant where they want it to go? Because those all plants have a high degree of what's called plasticity. And you can help a plant sort of reach its potential, but you have to get the plant to talk to you first. And so that's where the historic data comes in. But essentially all of these things, as I was watching all these projects go over my desk and was participating in them, because I've worked on about 30 different fruit and vegetable crops now. It was just this idea kind of pouring around in the back of my head, how do we make this happen?

Harry Duran

23:52 - 24:09

What are you seeing now that you've spent some time? You were at the, we met actually at the indoor egg tech conference in Chicago. And I'm curious what your experience has been as you started to meet other vertical farmers and meet other people in the industry and get a feel for what's happening in the industry at large.

Kendra Armstrong

24:09 - 25:39

I will say over the last so been, I see we, we really started off in this about two, two and a half years ago. And in that two year period, of course, we've all seen it. We've all seen the trough of disillusionment for both. I think it's hit for vertical farms and now it's hitting for greenhouses in some respects. And the negative of that I've seen is that I've seen some really talented, amazing people have to find other jobs or have to find new ways of working. The positive I've seen out of it though, is that I'm starting to see these farms really function and think like farms. And to me, that is a really awesome thing because that to me is the future. And if we can start thinking of these places like farms, they're not tech companies, they're farms. And then that allows me to think like I like I now more naturally think is how do I make tech for a farm? And if I'm making tech for a farm, then it better be very resilient, it better be really efficient, and it better be sustainable on a lot of different levels. And so in some ways. In some ways, yeah. Like I said, I've been really sad to see what's happening in other ways. It's been like, there's been a part of me that goes, okay, this is a lot more sustainable now as we're getting past that, because what we have now are the people who are looking at it going, okay, I got to think like a farmer.

Harry Duran

25:39 - 25:43

What was your experience at the conference like? Was that your first indoor farming conference?

Kendra Armstrong

25:44 - 26:32

No, no, I've been at several now. So that was my second indoor ag tech. I think I've been to three indoor ag cons now. Yeah, so it's been a few. That one in particular, Washington. I thought that was an interesting conference. I will say that it's taken us a little bit of time and me a little bit of time to get, to really begin to get to know the growers and begin to have conversations, trusted conversations. And I feel like I'm finally getting there. And understandably so. They get inundated with tech providers and it's hard to know who to have conversations with and if it's worthwhile. And I just right now just kind of enjoying the process of really starting to have really good in depth conversations about where the pain points are and what we can do for them.

Harry Duran

26:33 - 27:28

I think what I love about the indoor Agtech conference, which this year was in Chicago, the previous two were in New York, which is better for me because my family's from New York, I got to visit them. But now I think I did talk to the team. It looks like they're returning to Chicago next year. But I love the, that they set aside and they have space for startups, and that's where we met because they had a couple of the smaller booths and some, we've had conversations on this show with some of the people that have had those booths, and they've been really fascinating conversations because it's, you can sense the energy, you know, the startup energy, you know, like figuring out how to make things happen. And to your point, as an entrepreneur, you know, you're, you know, when it comes to trying to make investments for the growth of the company, you know, you do look at things like where you're gonna be spending your marketing dollars, how you're gonna be spending your travel time, and so do you find that overall that the conferences seem to be providing a valuable opportunity for you to have these conversations?

Kendra Armstrong

27:28 - 28:37

I think because we come from row crops, attending these conferences is absolutely necessary for us because it's providing us with connections and insights into an area of agriculture that is highly specialized. It has its own group of providers, and we really had to go to these things to learn and to meet these people and to learn from people. So I couldn't have done that sitting on, sitting in St. Louis or sitting on the farm in southern Indiana. There's just no way I was going to manage that. So that part has been really invaluable. The next phase of this, of growth for us is really going to be starting to push to having much more individualized conversations with growers as we figure out and build these tools out. But we'll continue to participate in those conferences because there have been, you really just can't beat that in person connection that you can have with somebody where you can just sit down with them for a little bit and really find out what's going on while they've actually got a break from all the emails and the text messages and everything else.

Harry Duran

28:37 - 29:01

And then what I love about that conference, they've all got their kind of their specialty, but indoor agtech has the single track, so there's a really, like, there's really focused attention for folks, you know, the attendees, they have the, just the one single track of the speakers and then they do really coordinated breaks and they give a lot of time to the attendees to really be in the pavilion and spend time with the folks who've got the booths here. I think they do a really good job of that.

Kendra Armstrong

29:01 - 29:25

Yeah, I think Henry and the team there, they've really helped us along. They've provided us with a lot of direct, specialized input around and support when we've participated and so can't thank them enough for that opportunity. And yeah, the startup booths there really do mean that we can participate as a business in a way that we could not participate in those conferences otherwise.

Harry Duran

29:26 - 29:28

Is this your first time in the CEO role?

Kendra Armstrong

29:29 - 29:41

Yes. Before that I've done quite a bit of tech leadership, business development and I acted as a consultant, so I ran my own business for quite a while. But this is, yes, this is my first time in the CEO role.

Harry Duran

29:41 - 30:07

So what's that experience been like? I imagine, you know, there's a lot of new responsibilities and things that you have to learn sometimes on the job probably, and I'm sure that the mentors have helped, but I'm always curious for CEO's, how they think about, you know, the, all the different challenges that they face and especially things like growing the team, how to, you know, who to hire next and where to spend your resources. I'm curious what that experience has been like for you.

Kendra Armstrong

30:08 - 31:56

Well, first, I feel sometimes like calling myself a CEO at this stage is a little bit. It's a little bit lofty because, like I said, I'm still buying my own plane tickets and doing my own accounting and taking out my own trash. I think that what I've done in this role is I have leaned on all the learnings from the different corporate roles and the different technical leadership roles that I've had and I have worked towards. I've used those, those learnings to manage budgets, to identify key people. One of the best parts of being more experienced as a professional, as a founder, has been that we have an extensive network of people, so we're able to do really amazing things with folks that can still maintain their full time job. So I don't have to ask people to take the risk. And those kinds of realizations, the realizations that I can do a lot with very little, that I don't have to always have full time team members to make that work, that some of the best people out there are the people who, I've got a friend who's like, Kendra, I love working with you guys, and I'm happy to do it for guitar money. And so subsequently, I get a guy. I, you know, I've got engineers that are some of the best in the business working on our stuff, but I don't have to pay full time salaries. So that will change very quickly, I think, as we grow and as time goes on. But the valuable lessons that I've learned and the transition, I think what I've tried to do is lean on all the lessons I've learned over time. And so that makes the transition and the learning is less painful for me, and it makes it less painful for the people around me.

Harry Duran

31:57 - 31:59

What's a tough question you've had to ask yourself recently?

Kendra Armstrong

32:00 - 33:42

Oh, goodness gracious. So recently I've been having a lot of discussions and I've had a lot of thought around how do we go about making these tools as useful as possible for growers. So how do we take this from being what on the outside could look like just another shiny tech tool? It's just another yield prediction. It's, you know, and actually make it something that can be applied widely by both cEA farmers and row crop farmers in general. And so I've had some pretty tough discussions with people from everything from like a, from a bio STL generator type discussion to growers, farmers, you name it, about how do we bring the data together. So how do we make this, how do we make this usable for a farmer? I've listened to the farmers complain about how they feel like they've got tech burnout because there's been so many tools thrown at them and so many promises made and they're just like, I just don't believe any of it anymore. I'm like, I don't blame you. So it's a question of sitting down with people and having to ask this really hard question of how do we make this really useful and what does that look like? And that is a very humbling question to ask after all the education. And, you know, like, I think everybody starts off with kind of a feeling of I'm going to go make a difference in the world. And so the question is, the question becomes, how do I make this little difference in my little corner of the world and how do I make it as applicable for people and useful for people as possible?

Harry Duran

33:43 - 34:15

That's definitely very like an admirable North Star because it feels like it sounds like a simple thing, but when you think about it's not the experience they've had with previous vendors and people promising things and not delivering, I would imagine people get, especially farmers and small farms, who've also have got that startup mentality and are working with small budgets and really every dollar counts and it can really quickly burn them out and really make them feel like none of this is really worth any effort.

Kendra Armstrong

34:16 - 35:49

That's very much the case. And I think that's where we try to take an approach whenever I can of being there to help as much as possible. And so sometimes that means that I'm going to have a conversation with somebody, and I do have these conversations where I sit down with somebody and say, listen, we could potentially help you, but the truth of the matter is that you're really better off spending your money on, you know, say, a better control system or you're better off, you know, spending your money. I think I had this conversation with a leafy greens grower in Arizona recently, and he was trying to get going and it turned into more me talking with him about the different lettuce varieties and what lettuce variety he should grow. Then what, you know, what, whether or not he could actually use our tool. And it just kind of came down to, okay, I just don't think you're, I don't think we're the right fit for your dollar right now. And sometimes that's the conversation you have to have with somebody. I think if you're not, if you're not honest with somebody, there's just going to be more burnout. So that's why we're trying to identify and work with people to identify when they're good fits. And it's also why sometimes I just prefer to have a conversation with somebody if they're open to that, to determine if they're a good fit, rather than to say, I mean, I do my best to provide an answer to the question of what makes a good farm fit for us. But the truth of the matter is I'm just so much more comfortable having a conversation with somebody and saying like, yeah, I think we could do something for you. Or no, I think you're, you know, you need to go in this direction first.

Harry Duran

35:50 - 36:45

Well, what I love about that is, you know, you're thinking also about their experience with not only you as a technical provider, but also like, you know, what will their experience be down the line? Or how will they think about using services like this in the future if they had a good experience with you and maybe you didn't make a sale and maybe you just was there, were there to give them some guidance on what the next steps, the proper next steps for their farm would be. That had nothing to do with your services. It feels like it's something that's good for the industry because to your earlier point, you know, a lot of these, you know, farms are dealing with vendors who are just trying to sell them the next new shiny technology, you know, not really thinking through the question of whether this is the best fit for them. So, you know, hopefully it's, you know, you're doing your part to help, you know, build awareness about what's possible, but also helping them make a decision that's in the best interest of their farm in the long run.

Kendra Armstrong

36:46 - 38:24

I hope so. I will say that when earlier in my career when I was working with larger agtech companies and I was talking to plant breeders, and plant breeders have, and I think growers and farmers have a very similar mentality. They have a job to do and it's usually a 60 to 80 hours week job and they're trying to get home to their families basically. And I was essentially a service provider either internally or externally to the plant breeders for a good bit of that. And there was a period of time there where I was going in and going like, listen, this will solve your problems. I've got a tool and it will solve your problems. And I saw especially the people that had been there for like 2025 years, they would roll their eyes sometimes just, it was just this look of absolute pain would cross their face. And most of them were really nice because I was young enough then that they were just like, okay, it's just another kid straight out of grad school and, and we'll, we'll give her this one. So I went through that phase and I had enough lessons learned of realizing that that was not the case for a variety of different reasons, that I'm now to the phase of my career where I'm like, okay, I just need to shut up and listen a little bit. And sometimes I will say sometimes I manage that, sometimes I don't. But that is generally the goal is just to shut up and listen and to find I've got a, you know, my co founders and I, we have a skill set and that skill set has the potential to be very useful. The question is how do we make it useful right now for people, as well as how do we make it useful five years down the road?

Harry Duran

38:24 - 38:41

So maybe not five years, but let's look forward twelve months from now. If we were to have this conversation a year from now and we're looking back at the work that crop convergence has done, what would need to have happened for you to be satisfied with your progress to that point?

Kendra Armstrong

38:41 - 40:15

That's a great question. I think we've got a few goals and they're not going to be like big shiny goals, by the way, especially twelve months down the road. But we're looking to expand our research footprint and looking for various opportunities to expand that research footprint to different crops. And so successful application for SBIR grants and successful collaboration with that is a key part of that. Looking at identification of we're shooting for about five new customers in the next year. We would hope for more, but we're being cautious. Like I said, we're running this like a traditional small business right now. And so, and I think seeing this thing fully applied and implemented at you new as well as Athenae, one or two of the other partners that we're currently in talks with to additional, to also provide our tool through their platforms, that would also be a great deal of success. Personally, if I can continue to be full time at the company and we can see one or two new hires and really start to see this thing grow in scale, I will consider that to be a huge success. That's those, I mean, I understand they're small goals relative to what you're probably used to hearing from a startup, but to me these are realistic and I know I try to shoot for realistic. I think that's also, I think that resonates with growers and farmers too at this stage.

Harry Duran

40:15 - 41:09

I think that makes a lot of sense too. And obviously as an entrepreneur, you're thinking about goals that you can hit and the lofty goals are nice and they sound good. And maybe if you have an advisory board, if you have investors, it's probably something that they might want to hear. But I think being realistic, you know, about goals that you feel that you can achieve because then, you know, you don't, you know, you feel like you start hitting them, you start to get, get some confidence and you start to feel like you're making the right decisions. So I think those are perfect for where you're at and I think it'll keep you on the right path. As we get close to the end of this conversation, I've been leaving some time for any messages. You know, you've been to a couple of these conferences and you've had some experience with the indoor farming community and a lot of the listeners are your colleagues, your other leaders in the space, fellow CEO's. Is there a message that you have for them in the spirit of, you know, collaboration and just open communication that comes to mind?

Kendra Armstrong

41:09 - 42:25

Yeah, I think keep fighting the good fight. I think that that's one of the key things is I think everybody's kind of feel the pain right now and. But I think that the industry as a whole is headed in a more positive direction. I'll also say I think that the successful tech providers that I've seen work across CEA, across row crops, one of the things that they all do really well is this task of listening. And I think that's something that I see more and more of the big ag companies doing, either through direct incorporation of consumer feedback right into their breeding processes, to just sitting down and really talking with a grower about how things are going and really appreciating and making changes based upon that. I think if we can start doing that as a team and as a group and really having those painful conversations, we can avoid these kinds of things like this trough of disillusionment that we've seen and just really focusing in on our end goal, which is we're here to grow food, like that's the end goal. We're here to provide really good, nutritious food to people and let's just keep focusing on that.

Harry Duran

42:25 - 43:12

Yeah, it's definitely in alignment with a lot of the messages you've been hearing on this. So thanks for taking the time to come on and sharing a bit of the backstory. I'm always happy to connect with companies that I haven't met previously, even though we had been at the same conference for the past couple of years. And sometimes, you know, the two or three days go by so quickly, and you think, I'm gonna get some time and spend some time with some of these people. And before you know it, people are packing up their booths and heading to the airport. It goes by so quickly, but I'm just excited. It's been a great journey for me since starting the show in 2020 to just see everything that's been happening in industry, the hoopla and then that trough that's real for everyone that's going through it right now. So it's been exciting to see what companies are doing in the space to get through it as well.

Kendra Armstrong

43:12 - 43:29

Yeah. And to be fair, we blocked the floor at a lot of those shows, but we've been a pretty quiet bunch, so I think we're really just starting to poke our head up, and it's great to have the opportunity to get a chance to talk with you. Thank you so much for that, and it's been a great conversation. Appreciate it.

Harry Duran

43:29 - 43:34

So cropconvergence.com, is the website anywhere else you want to send folks to connect with you and the team?

Kendra Armstrong

43:35 - 43:52

Yes, please. Or feel free to reach out on LinkedIn to any of us. Happy to do that. And, yeah, I. It'd be great to talk with you, talk with anybody. I even welcome conversations where people just basically tell me I'm full of it because I learned from those, too, so, you know.

Harry Duran

43:52 - 43:56

Yeah. And you've provided all those links. We'll make sure they're all in the show notes as well. Thanks a lot, Kendra. Really appreciate your time.

Kendra Armstrong

43:57 - 43:57

All right, thank you.