SproutX really helped sift through noise in the agriculture space. There are a lot of what industry thinks but not a lot of what a farmer/ customer thinks. I fell victim to the same thing.

‘Connections in the ag industry and understanding the market’ was single-handedly the most valuable piece of what SproutX offers IF you put the work in behind it. I’ve learnt so much about the startup ecosystem and the help that is available if you put in the effort. I learned how to be a startup, how to think like a startup and how to fail like a startup.

I really enjoyed the producer tours, meeting with the industry and seeing things from other points of view.

I got to hear directly from breeders/farmers on their thought process, what their biggest pain points were surrounding the technology I was introducing.

I wish I can apply for the next cohort again!

The SproutX program so far has been invaluable to connect with people within the agricultural industry, alongside other (future) founders, that I would never have previously been able to connect with. What has surprised me is how generous everyone has been with their time and expertise and how collegiate the agtech industry is. The breadth of the topics for each of the sessions has allowed us to become immersed in the many different facets of the industry. They have most definitely supported me, in fact I'm not sure if there is a more powerful network in agtech than SproutX's.

Embarking on the SproutX program journey has been a transformative experience for myself as a founder, it has given me the opportunity to meet and connect with an amazing cohort of Agtech founders and experts from right across this vast industry, giving me valuable insights to help me achieve mine and Ganbu’s goals.

The most memorable part of the program so far has been the various milestone activities and resources, they have helped me better understand both the start-up eco-system and myself as a founder.

SproutX has played an essential role in my entrepreneurship journey. The team would constantly provide Plante with support and industry connections. I remember first talking to Maxie about our farm shelf design during the interview, and now Plante is preparing to launch our planter kits in the market.

My long-term goal is to turn Plante into one of the biggest platforms for plant lovers. We are working diligently to improve our technology as our recommendation engine pattern has the potential to become IP or be used in other applications like data or weather modelling. Identifying the right target customers as an early-stage start-up was difficult.

Being part of the SproutX startups, Plante was introduced to many experts in the industry and got to talk to different people to validate our solutions.

An amazing amount of exposure to experts in the agtech space - exactly what I (we) needed!! The team at SproutX is not only supporting our business through mentorship and webinars but also inviting us to industry events, introducing us to experts and mentors who’ve done it before. A key takeaway from this program is around partnerships - realising that as a startup, you can’t (and shouldn’t) do it all on your own. The journey is much easier if shared with partners who are experts in their fields. They absolutely have - a critical thing that they’ve been able to us with is connecting us with experts from different fields who have helped us tackle some of our early problems with the Proof of Concept farm.

It’s a great network and community of people. That's probably what will be the most memorable aspect of the program and I’m sure will have a significant bearing on my career here in Australia. Being new to the AgTech and the agricultural sector, SproutX has provided me with a fantastic education and a foundation to build from. We already have so much more context and understanding of the challenges and opportunities farmers face, how to partner with corporates and how other founders in the industry have gone on to build successful ventures. It’s a very holistic program.

Along comes SproutX!

Immediate connection to the right people and on the infrequent occasion when they didn’t know, they said so and then went and found them!

In finding SproutX I talked to a lot of entities so I can say with confidence that SproutX achieves the best results with the most humble and pro-active attitude.

Thanks for the guidance of the program, I did a deep-dive into the problem space with confidence: to interview corporates, farmers, and restoration practitioners about their complex challenges, understanding the slow iteration cycle. SproutX challenges assumptions and encourages evidence-based innovation.

I have been challenged by mentors to question assumptions and learned how to better validate ideas. SproutX emphasises understanding the market before building, it’s such a crucial step to avoid common pitfalls.

SproutX really empowered me to challenge the status quo, learn from other people about ‘how do we do better’, and solve big problems.

Being a producer, I feel like I know a fair bit about some of the production issues farmers are facing. But I truly really enjoyed learning about how others see the issues and how they're thinking about solving them.

The program was a helped me - someone who doesn’t have a background in agriculture - navigate the vast landscape. The SproutX mentors were helpful in guiding me to understand the industry's lay of the land, pushing me beyond my comfort zone to explore new possibilities.

The biggest uncertainty still remains around the business. Specifically, there can be a lot of resistance to change (the startup idea), and whether the business can bring that change to an entire industry is yet to be understood.

What SproutX has helped me with is being able to see that as a potential problem. Before SproutX, I would have blindly walked right into that problem and been very much unprepared. Now I can see the barriers and I have started to understand how to model the business to handle this.

Everyone was there to learn; it felt like an incredibly safe sandbox to test ideas. I actually came with an idea to the program, I discarded the idea now. But it was really good that I felt comfortable to go out there, share my failures, and understood how to pivot after learning of the viability of the idea.

I came to this program with a product we’d already built, thinking this program would help me go to market.

The program has made me grateful that I’m in the pre-accelerator part of this space. It’s helped me realised that I need to go back to talking to end users more.

With the guidance of SproutX, we transformed our idea into a fully developed agtech startup. We learned at a rapid pace, analysing our business values, relevance, and approach to achieve our goals. We’ve also went from working out our pitch from scratch to the confidence of pitching: first from an irl workshop then on stage in Sydney at a Startup Daily x Fishburner event!

Easily the most beneficial takeaway for Growave during the SproutX Accelerator Program, is the AgTech community we were able to tap into. Not only did we meet (and hired) our CEO through SproutX, but we also established a genuine and lasting relationship with the cohort, alumni, and SproutX mentors.

To any entrepreneur looking to break into the AgTech scene, we would strongly recommend SproutX's Pre-Accelerator Program in brokering opportunities and guiding you through your journey.

Without the excellent and focused work the SproutX team brings to their programs, there is no doubt that Agtuary would not be as successful today without it. SproutX’s support and investment in Agtuary has led to the creation of 8 new full-time jobs in the high-tech sector making contributions to agriculture.

I am delighted that SproutX is to be supported by LaunchVic to expand pre-accelerator capacity in the Victorian agrifoodtech scene. This is as an opportunity for the University of Melbourne to work with SproutX to create additional impact in the agrifood sector by leveraging our teaching and research translation, perhaps particularly that based at our Dookie Campus, as well as our NorVicFoods knowledge exchange activities.

The University of Melbourne takes a multi-disciplinary approach to technological and other challenges of sustainable agriculture and food production, we welcome collaboration with investors throughout this vital sector and look forward to working with SproutX.

SproutX provides word-class commercialisation support for founders tackling the agriculture sector’s biggest challenges - taking new ideas from farm-gate to plate. With support from LaunchVic, we’re delighted to see the team join forces with the University of Melbourne to take 154 aspiring entrepreneurs through The Business of Agriculture, a new initiative designed to engage non-traditional participants in the Victorian startup ecosystem.