New name, new funding: CODA Farm Technologies, an agtech company founded by two brothers with farming roots, has changed its name and landed some cash. The startup, based north of Seattle, has raised a $750,000 seed round and is now FarmHQ, which is also the name of its irrigation hardware and software platform. Customers were conflating the brand and product, said CEO and co-founder David Wallace, so the switch made sense.
Backstory: David and Connor Wallace grew up on their family’s potato farm in Skagit Valley, leaving for college and jobs. David was previously a senior data scientist with Amazon Web Services, while Connor, FarmHQ’s chief technology officer, worked in science and technology roles. The two returned home and launched their startup in 2020.
The tech: Smaller farms have historically irrigated using labor-intensive, manually operated systems. The systems could malfunction, flood crops, and operated inefficiently, requiring farmers to regularly go into the fields to check sprinklers and turn them on and off.
The Wallace brothers created a system that controls the water flow and shares irrigation data in real time to a cell phone dashboard. The internet of things (IoT) technology is added to a customer’s existing devices and deployed on irrigation pumps, valves and flow meters. The tech works with wide-ranging sprinkler setups.
Last year, FarmHQ’s devices helped save approximately 365 million gallons of water over roughly 40,000 acres on customer farms.
Blossoming business: FarmHQ, which has eight employees plus a network of dealers, is operating in the U.S., Canada, Mexico and recently deployed its first pilot in Australia. Some year-over-year stats:
- The number of farm accounts has tripled.
- Revenue is up fourfold.
- The number of agricultural irrigation dealers selling FarmHQ products and services is up fourfold.
- 95% of customers are renewing their contracts.
“Anything that grows in the soil outside, we are helping irrigate,” said David Wallace. That includes products such as potatoes, strawberries, dairy operations, sod, almonds and hazelnuts.
FarmHQ has raised just under $4 million in venture capital and will soon pursue a Series A round, according to the company. Investors in the most recent round include Fortson VC, Tacoma Venture Fund and Lowercarbon Capital, as well as several angel investors.
Close to their roots: The Wallace Farm is still operating and remains a key player in FarmHQ’s research and development.
“I’m constantly calling my dad and saying, ‘Hey, open the app. What do you think of this? Where should this go?’” David Wallace said. “When we got our new production hardware in, we’ve deployed it all on that farm to start and worked out the kinks there. So it’s really nice to have that tight relationship.”
Source: geekwire.com
