This episode of the Voices of the Valley podcast is brought to you today by the Western Growers Association. Supporting producers that grow the best medicine in the world. Find out more at WGA.com.
From a robot obsession while attending Harvard Business School to traveling 2,700 miles and sleeping in his car just to meet with farmers, Charlie Andersen has achieved his dream: to build a robot company that solves agriculture’s labor woes. Charlie’s company, Burro, recently raised $10.9 million Series A funding and plans to release 500 self-driving wheelbarrows into ag within the next year. These small robots, akin to Disney’s Wall-E, automate some of the hard manual labor within ag. Listen as Charlie outlines his recipes for success (hint: persistence), analyzes the future of agtech (think: startups building on other startup’s tech) and how to quickly grow a robot army from 1 to 500. Bonus: Charlie, who won $250K at the Western Growers AgSharks Competition in 2018, shares the top tips on how to leverage collaboration to successfully build people-scaled products (aka tech that works alongside people to help them work more productively).