Overcoming agricultural labor shortages with autonomous technology with Igino Cafiero of Bear Flag Robotics

Maren Kate
Welcome to From 5 to 50. The podcast dedicated to helping startups and founders survive and thrive through the early stages. I'm your host, Maren Kate, and we're here with Igino Cafiero from Bear Flag Robotics. Welcome to the show.

Igino Cafiero
Hey, Maren. Thanks for having me.

Maren Kate
Absolutely. So just to jump in, when did you found Bear Flag?

Igino Cafiero
So my co-founder Aubrey and I founded Bear Flag in the summer of 2017.

Maren Kate
Okay, and in 90 seconds or less tell our audience what you do and the why behind starting?

Igino Cafiero
Oh, absolutely. So Bear Flag Robotics builds autonomous technology for farm tractors and what you can really glean from that is we're not interested in building the machines themselves, rather we build the technology that goes on them. So our model is to procure the machines from the OEM, so consider your New Holland, Case, John Deere, AGCO, Fendt, etc., bring them into the shop, add the sensors and actuators and compute to those machines necessary to then deploy them to growers for autonomous operations. We're here in Sunnyvale California. Our first customers are specialty crop growers in Salinas, Hollister, Gonzales but we're also looking at corn, soybean, alfalfa in the Midwest.

Maren Kate
Cool. And so what was the why moment? What made you really passionate about this space in particular?

Igino Cafiero
Yeah, my career is previously as a software developer and I had a fortunate series of events in my career where it gave me a chance to really rethink how I wanted to spend the second half of my career and effectively the rest of my life. I spend a lot of time with my in-laws in rural Oregon and the thing about my in-laws is that they have a multigenerational construction aggregates mining operation. So talking about Uncle-in-law and his son and learning how they go about their day and how they think about their work it became evident very clearly very early in that conversation, labor was a major challenge for them. They had all this equipment and they paid it off and so they have wheel loaders and haul trucks and all sorts of things on their property but just finding labor that makes sense with the wages that makes sense for the economics of their operation is really challenging. So I came back to California and I started thinking about how can technology help folks like my in-laws and other people in mining and smaller operations? I knew they had autonomous machines in large mines in Utah and in Australia but how can we help folks like Tom and his son really move the needle in their operation? And through that journey, I started reaching out to quarry owners in California, and in that journey, I was introduced through friends to some people who are now new friends in Wheatland, California they own rock quarries but they also own a ton of tree nut orchards. They said, Ignio, we know what you're trying to do in mining and rock quarries and that's cool and we own the rock quarries too and we have a labor problem there, too. That's true. But truly our most acute problem is right here on the farm. We have harvest coming up. It's a mechanized harvest and we just need to put butts in seats to help us get through this or we're gonna have fruit literally dying on the vine, nuts that won't be harvested from the trees and that's a big deal for us. That's where we make our money and we really need some help. Would you be willing to look at this problem? So, of course, I love learning and this was the exploratory phase of what I wanted to do next. So Aubrey and I went out to Wheatland, California and one day turned into two days turned into weeks turned into a month turned into the summer of 2017 just talking to as many growers as possible all over. Not only in California but the country. I mean, you name a crop you talk to them. Corn, soy, wheat, alfalfa, tobacco, citrus, cotton, almonds, walnuts, pistachios, obviously, broccoli, spinach, lettuce, cilantro, beets, like you name it we've talked to someone who's grown it and we started to connect the dots on what this labor problem looks like not only in our own backyard but across the country. That's really where the inspiration for Bear Flag was born. It's a problem that we not only got intellectually attached to how to build incredible autonomous machines that will safely and reliably operate at levels that exceed a human level but also we got emotionally attached to it as well by talking to these growers and understanding their problems and getting excited when we heard them get excited about what we were working on and that just grew and grew and here we are.

Maren Kate
Yeah, and you think about it it's like you're serving the people that are creating or farming the food that feeds your family, everyone you know.

Igino Cafiero
Oh yeah. I mean, I'm guilty of this too. It's so easy to think that food comes from the supermarket and, obviously, that's not true. So how are we going to help continue to feed not only through cool things we talked about in the Bay Area and other places like increasing organic food but really material problems. When we look back 50 or 100 years from now, how will we say why wasn't there this population leveling off? Like, how did the population continue to grow? Why wasn't there massive starvation in certain parts of the world? I'm not so like arrogant or naive to think that Bear Flag solves all these because there are big advances that need to happen in biotech and supply chain logistics and people need to eat more plants and animals. But the part of the puzzle that Bear Flag is really passionate about we’re all passionate about here in the room is fundamentally answering how can we grow more food on fewer acres with less resources? That's what we’re fundamentally trying to answer and that's what I'm passionate about. I always say this, watching one of our machines go through the field and do an operation, or not screw up like it used to screw up, or do something new and cool we all get excited and we high fived each other and pat one another on the back and say congratulatory things but really the reason that we come in is for this bigger cause to literally move the needle on food production and that's what gets us through the troughs is that mission.

Maren Kate
Yeah, the purpose. Okay, so how do you guys make money? What's the business model?

Igino Cafiero
Yeah. So that's something that I think is really underrated certainly in robotics. I always say very quickly we have two fundamental challenges or opportunities. One is building these safe, reliable, autonomous machines and the other is to go to market. And a lot of really smart sharp teams have built incredible products but stumbled going to market because they underrated the challenge of that. So we really think about it in three phases. The first really relies on this thesis that autonomous will be a service in agriculture before it's a product. What that means is that right now we're out there doing operations as a service. So literally, yesterday, we’re out in Gonzales, California, I'm doing some secondary tillage in a broccoli field for a grower and it's great because we make revenue from that but we also learn and get to interact with that grower and understand how they go about their operations and expand our capabilities and what we're able to d. But we don't see an ability to really scale through autonomous service. Putting tractors on trucks and moving them around is not the most efficient way to go farming. So what we'd love to do is partner with some growers to really embed our machines in their operation and then operate them either on-site or remotely as we start to develop that partnership and really get hours on our machines and help them move the needle on their operations. And then lastly, turning the autonomous operation over to the grower themselves so they're the ones that are mapping their fields and designing the paths that the tractors need to go on and then monitoring and commanding and controlling those operations themselves. And when we're able to do that, we really have moved the needle and effected change and add a utility to how these growers are doing their operation.

Maren Kate
So I'm taking it, especially because of the technology this requires, that you guys took on some funding.

Igino Cafiero
Oh, yes.

Maren Kate
I mean, can you share any numbers with that?

Igino Cafiero
I think it's publicly available. We're a seed stage company. We’ve raised a little less than 5 million dollars.

Maren Kate
I saw 3.5 on CrunchBase. Okay, you said a little less than 5 million. That makes sense.

Igino Cafiero
Yeah, we did 3.5 in a seed round.

Maren Kate
Okay, cool. And then what's your current size? What does the team look like?

Igino Cafiero
So there's eight of us right now.

Maren Kate
And where are you guys located? Are you co-located? Are you all in the office?

Igino Cafiero
We're all in the office. Some folks work remotely a number of days a week but the whole team comes in a couple of days a week to our office in Sunnyvale.

Maren Kate
Got it. What made you pick Sunnyvale? Just the ease of the farming?

Igino Cafiero
You know, on one hand, we live here. Aubrey and I as we founded the team we lived on the peninsula in the Bay Area south of San Francisco but also stumbling upon this in Sunnyvale. The South Bay is one of the ideal places to grow an ag-tech company and this is something that wasn't actually obvious to us from the start but it's become obvious now and it's really a stroke of luck. This sort of trifecta of access to capital and investors, access to some of the best robotics and engineering talent in the world in the Bay Area, and also being within 100 miles of all these growers in Salinas and Central California and Gonzalez and Paso Robles and Los Banos and all these other hubs of agriculture in California.

Maren Kate
And is there a booming ag-tech kind of culture there?

Igino Cafiero
Oh, absolutely and that's one of the fun parts too. Becoming friends with a bunch of other c-founders. So, Lewis at Traptic is building a strawberry harvesting robot. Christine Moseley at Full Harvest is thinking about how to solve the food waste problem. Sebastian at FarmWise is doing a lettuce thinning robot. And of course, we're doing autonomous tractors. And all of us see agriculture from a slightly different lens but I think, by and large, we're also newcomers to agriculture so we're learning about this in real-time and it's awesome to share learnings in chat with these folks, and when I see them at conferences or over beers or whatnot.

Maren Kate
Does it give you a special edge or a different way of looking at the problem space because you came from technology and now you're digging your hands in, so to speak, in the agriculture side?

Igino Cafiero
Yeah, you know, I think it has to. I think that's true. The one thing that I would really emphasize is just how much humility we need to approach agriculture with. Again, it's probably a little less than two years, or just about two years now, and I'm talking to folks who are multigenerational farmers who've been growing on the same land for the last 100 years. It's important to listen a lot more than we talk and ask the right questions too. My humble observation is that a lot of ag tech companies that come before us failed because they thought they knew what was best for the grower and that just couldn't be further from the truth. We are technologists and now we have ag professionals on our team too, which has been a massive game changer for us. But really just when you talk about the importance of product-market fit and understanding your users, that's 100x in agriculture. The two things I've learned, and I'll share this with you really quickly, the two things I've learned about farmers is they always shoot you straight and it's not always comfortable but it's always helpful and they always know what the bottom line is and they don't care what color the machine is or that can share photos or like do any other. They just want to know how it helps increase either productivity or reduced costs in their operation and if you can do one or, better yet, both of those you’re going to be successful in agriculture.

Maren Kate
I feel like you've mentioned a few times how much you've talked and, more importantly, listened, asked questions, and listened to your end user. Did you kind of stumble upon that or did you do that very purposefully? Sometimes they say you need to go out and talk to 50/100 of your target users before you start your company to really understand what you think versus what the reality is.

Igino Cafiero
Oh, Maren, I can't underscore that enough. We haven't done everything right. In fact, we've probably done more wrong than we’ve done right but talking to our users has always been a priority. You know, Aubrey and I go out and we spent a lot of our time standing in equipment yards and talking circles, listening to growers, understanding how they think about their operation. That's the only way we can build this business.

Maren Kate
Where did you learn to do that? That's not always natural. I mean, obviously, you've been in the tech world for a while so you've gotten to see, but I would say I noticed this, especially with first-time entrepreneurs, I did this myself years ago, is you get an idea, you start cranking on the idea, and you don't go and talk to people and then you spend six months building something that nobody wants.

Igino Cafiero
Well, no, that's certainly tempting. I mean, sometimes it's easier to stay in the garage and work on the tech that we know well but I think it's been, pushed a push to make an answer on the spot, I think it's helped that we know relatively so little about agriculture coming into this and so just needing to get out there and learn as much as possible because we knew the assumptions we were making were probably incorrect.

Maren Kate
I like that. I think that's so true. I've gotten into a few different businesses but one recently really understanding recruiting and not coming from a recruiting background coming from like a founder and an internet background it's fascinating to have to ask and learn questions because you just don't know. I think there's other corollaries where people build businesses that they're not necessarily the expert in and thus they actually have to get curious and be humble. So I think that cannot be driven home enough the importance of talking to your end user and being humble and asking way more questions before you start building.

Igino Cafiero
On all levels of the stack too, right? Same thing on recruiting right? People come in here and they asked, what are you building? What are you doing? And it's so easy for me to get started on all the awesome things we’re doing and the great reasons that we're doing them and the cool tech we're working on and the possibilities and everything. But sitting down and asking them, what do you want to be working on? And really hearing what they're saying and understanding what part of our business is attractive to them and if they are a good fit or if they're not a good fit and really listening to what people are saying, for sure.

Maren Kate
I mean, it's that old thing they used to tell us in school, you have two ears and one mouth for a reason. It's so simple but especially in business and especially as you start to maybe have a few successes and feel like, quote, unquote, you're smart, you almost have to double down on the humility and listening because that's how people stumble, when they stop listening. That's amazing. I love that. Okay, final three questions. So in the last year, what is your favorite book or podcast that you've consumed? And it could be in any space.

Igino Cafiero
Present company excluded, the podcast I'm really into is the one that Will Schroter does at startups.com. It speaks to me as a founder just 100%. I don't know him personally. I don't have any shared network with him.

Maren Kate
Interesting. He actually purchased my last company. So funny.

Igino Cafiero
Oh, that's awesome. I hope that was a good experience.

Maren Kate
I didn't even know he had a podcast.

Igino Cafiero
It's awesome. They talk about all sorts of things from how to get advice, to how to think about funding, how to think about recruiting, founder-to-founder issues, and how to manage startup anxiety.

Maren Kate
What's it called?

Igino Cafiero
It's called startups.com and I think if you just put that in your favorite podcast platform.

Maren Kate
Yeah, I’m looking at it. Startup Therapy Podcast. Got it.

Igino Cafiero
And they send out a monthly a weekly letter and I think there's a way to become a member. I haven't even done that yet. I look forward to doing it. But yeah, it's great founder-to-founder advice, especially for early-day founders where there's so much impostor syndrome going on. You're not sure if it's gonna work. You know, there's so much convincing that goes on even in your own head and with your spouse and with your team and with your social peers and with just everything that goes on with starting a company from nothing. Being employee one at your own company. And I think they do a really good job of capturing that and talking to it.

Maren Kate
They actually swooped in and bought my last company when we were pretty much in our eleventh hour. A bunch of crap went down.

Igino Cafiero
I read about that. It was a while back. I don't know the details but it sounds like a really incredible story.

Maren Kate
Yeah, I mean, you learn a lot of lessons. As they say, success is a poor teacher. So luckily, we get to learn a lot from this one and the great thing is it teaches you, well, like you said, the asking questions, the getting curious, the humility. It's kind of amazing. When you're at your second or third run you're just like, “oh, wow, like I knew nothing when I tried this the first time”. I wish I had known how little I knew. Yeah, okay, cool. So then what business tool could you not live without? What do you guys really rely on?

Igino Cafiero
Yes, Slack is a good one. I couldn’t imagine life without Slack. We didn't use it when it was four people and then the fifth person came on because we were just texting each other and emailing each other and it was no big deal.

Maren Kate
Even with you all being in the same office?

Igino Cafiero
Oh, that's the best part is that we have an open office and so anytime someone asks someone else a question it's disruptive or like broadcasts that question it's completely disruptive and so asynchronous communication, even in the same room, is super helpful.

Maren Kate
Wow, that's amazing. That's why Slack is doing so well as a company. Okay. So lastly, for founders listening, who are in the early stages, what's the best piece of advice you've received in growing Bear Flag Robotics or that you could give?

Igino Cafiero
Sure, and here's the thing about advice, right, and Will Schroter talks to this, advice is pretty much crap so rather than advice I'll just share my experience. The thing I've observed and I've been fortunate enough to meet a lot of founders and met a lot of other founders through like Y Combinator and other groups that we've been in and been involved with, and certainly, the True Ventures community is really good for this too, perhaps one of the best communities there is, but trying to classify what makes a successful founder, I kept looking for this answer that the smartest folks or the most experienced folks or the most charismatic folks or the most fearless folks or the snappiest dressers or I don't know what I was looking for to characterize what makes a successful founder and the only common thing that I've observed between successful founders is just this relentless perseverance. Like, how much bull crap can we just land on your plate? How quickly can you move on? What's your next place speed? How quickly can you put something behind you behind you and move on? That’s the similar characteristic I see among successful founders is said relentless perseverance. Certainly what I'm espousing to be myself.

Maren Kate
Yeah, it's the grit aspect and I agree so much. It's like you can overcome so many things if you just get back up no matter what happens. You just continue to get back up. At some point, something clicks. Awesome. It has been so great chatting with you and learning more about Bear Flag Robotics. So tell people where they can find you and find Bear Flag online.

Igino Cafiero
Oh, absolutely, yeah. We're bearflagrobotics.com. We’re on Instagram. Check us out.

Maren Kate
Oh, nice. That’s probably fun.

Igino Cafiero
Yeah but it's like underscores and spaces bear_flag_robotics. And then my email is Igino@bearflagrobotics and connect with me on LinkedIn too, please.

Maren Kate
Awesome. Thank you so much.

Igino Cafiero
Thanks, Maren. Looking forward to being in touch.

Maren Kate
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