EP 450: 14 Ag Companies Raise $32M Using AgFunder.com with CEO Rob Leclerc

Robert Leclerc, co-founder of Agfunder – an online investment market place for global agriculture industry. He is a Forbes contributor and has five degrees including a PhD from Yale. Listen as Rob talks about the global agriculture industry and how important Agfunder is for the investors.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Mini MBA
• What CEO do you follow? – N/A

• Favorite online tool? — MailChimp
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Definitely not
• If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be? – N/A

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:44 – Nathan introduces Robert to the show
• 02:24 – Agriculture represents about 10% of global GDP
• 02:40 – Agfunder's idea is to create an online investment platform that made this space mainstream
• • 02:53 – Like AngelList in agriculture
• 03:28 – Agfunder focus is food and agriculture technology
• • 03:40 – Eventually, they will be able to offer farm lands and agri-business
• 03:55 – Technology is needed to centralize management and scale the opportunities
• 04:10 – Started as a pure market place
• • 04:28 – Taking the transaction fees
• 05:00 – Revenue in the first quarter of 2016
• • 05:11 – Raising capital funds
• 05:35 – Total revenue In 2015
• 05:43 – They are on venture-funding
• 06:10 – Business was founded late 2013
• 06:20 – $0 revenue for the first year
• • 06:40 – "We just need to know that the market works for the first year"
• 06:58 – Number of investors
• • 07:38 – Investors seek them out
• 07:56 – Number of sellers/companies
• • 08:10 – They are series A companies
• 08:30 – Take 5% transaction fee to make money
• • 08:48 – Nathan's sample scenario how to get the 5%
  • 09:45 – They we're not taking any transaction fees for the first year
• 10:07 – "In August 2016, how many investors put money into how many companies?"
• • 10:25 – There's a deal timeline
  • 10:50 – Average raise size
• 11:05 – Notes and actual equity funding
• • 11:18 – The companies set the market rate term
• 11:45 – What's so special with Agfunder?
• • 12:10 – When they started Agfunder, it was the dark ages of food and agriculture technology
  • 12:30 – Built a very progressive business model
• 13:18 – 17 team members based in SF
• 13:23 – Connect with Robert through Agfunder.com
• 15:33 - The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• It is important for customers to know things about your company – transparency is the key.
• Agriculture is as important as food.
• There's always a trial period – you either make or break it.

Resources Mentioned:

• Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn't have to hire a co-founder due to quality of Toptal developers.
• Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for cheapest price possible.
• Freshbooks – The site Nathan uses to manage his invoices and accounts.
• Leadpages – The drag and drop tool Nathan uses to quickly create his webinar landing pages which convert at 35%+
• Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5 hour drive) to listen to audio books.
• Agfunder.com – Robert's business website
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives