Agri-business startups can be hard work

Agri-business startups need to get past the naysayers and it can take eight years before a bright idea progresses to commercial sales.

Despite the difficulties two investment-minded scientists who had started agricultural companies supported more startups during talks to about 25 scientists, researchers and a handful of students at Palmerston North’s Building Clever Companies (BCC).

Keith Morgan started a Wellington company, Elastic Green which had developed agricultural and horticultural sprays and Dr Greg Bryan is a principal scientist at Agresearch as well chief technology officer for Zeakal, a company innovating novel grasses and soybeans.

‘‘If we are going to commercialise it, so farmers can get their hands on it, we are thinking the breeding programme will be five to six years, and a farmer might get it in eight years from now,’’ said Bryan.

Morgan said Elastic Green went through the BCC’S Sprout programme, Manawatu’s national agritech accelerator, which provided mentors and matched innovators with possible investors.

He said the company had been going for eight months and wanted to provide products that helped control serious pests and diseases.

Morgan said patents were pending and the chemicals needed regulators’ approval.

The cost of science startups was trending down, as computer development got cheaper, he said.

‘‘But 92 per cent still fail, however most problems are avoidable.’’

He said some researchers were hard wired to think about investment whereas others were happy just doing research.

‘‘Don’t think every researcher has a focus on commercialising research. They don’t want to take that risk. When you recruit look for people with entrepreneurial skill. And if you are commercialising research, you need a team to do it.’’

Both scientists said it was essential to get patents to protect investment and attract investors.

In New Zealand there was a lot of startup support but not much venture capital.

Bryan said startup business people needed a thick skin to be at the forefront of a commercial operation.

‘‘New Zealand is not like the United States. People there, even if you fail, they say good on you, you gave it a go.’’

Morgan said he worked in Industrial Research before he left to found a company looking at extracting useful products from barley. He recently co-founded Elastic Green.

‘‘We should be helping New Zealand. They have supported me as a scientist all these years.’’

BCC says it is strategically placed to help scientists turn their research into potential startups.

‘‘Greg’s comments around helping New Zealand ring true. We want to support scientists that want to support New Zealand. At the end of the day, if we are all trying to help New Zealand Inc, we as a country win,’’ said Dave Craig from BCC.