6/6/2019
Agrible, a company that provides real-time information and services for farmers, ag retailers, and consumer packaged goods companies (CPGs) to take action, incubated at Enterprise Works in the University of Illinois Research Park.
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Agrible, a company that provides real-time information and services for farmers, ag retailers, and consumer packaged goods companies (CPGs) to take action, incubated at Enterprise Works in the University of Illinois Research Park. The staff, led by director Laura Frerichs, helped connect the startup with strategic partners like John Deere, AB InBev, Caterpillar, ADM, and Dow and provided opportunities to highlight its technology and team in events in the community.
“Research Park was an ideal environment to grow a deep scientific team tackling one of mankind’s greatest challenges, feeding ourselves sustainably,” Agrible co-founder Chris Harbourt said.
Chris earned a PhD in agricultural engineering from University of Illinois in 2002. Before founding Agrible, he was a Principal and VP of Waterborne Environmental, a consulting company in Champaign that performed field, spatial, and modeling studies in support of agricultural products companies. Chris is currently helping a number of startups with their growing pains while teaching entrepreneurship with the Technology Entrepreneur Center.
“We created deep software connecting ag retail on logistics, national models to look at crop growth trends, and simple connected apps to plainly display local field information in an operationally useful way. The company was a bold attempt to harness the power of farm data, crop & soil models, and weather forecasts for the benefit of the farmer first, creating opportunities for that farmer partner to add data value along with their crops through the supply chain."
Agrible has a number of Illinois connections that contributed to its success. Co-founders Bill Northcott, Paul Miller, and Luke Zwilling are all products of the agricultural and biological engineering program. Alumnus Eric Snodgrass, a lecturer in atmospheric sciences, along with Bill Chapman, brought a wealth of valuable atmospheric modeling expertise. Bill Turner (atmospheric science) was one of the company’s first hires. CTO Tim Kuehlhorn (computer science) used his expertise to build a rock solid tech platform that scaled and performed. Tim also helped tap into the alumnus network recruiting a number of other U of I software developers.
Former University of Illinois President Bob Easter is a member of Agrible’s Board of Directors, while retired faculty Mike Hirschi, Bill Simmons, and Jude Holscher and have played strategic roles.
“Agrible was always a team effort pulling great minds together from agronomy, atmospheric sciences, computer science, engineering, and ag business," Chris said. "Early in the company development we knew there was a real venture-scale return for companies that could make this business model work. We were determined to make Agrible one of the winners. We took on venture capital partners, strategic industry partners, and great advisors from the university and Champaign community. The company grew at the unsustainable rate that venture velocity often asks for through a Seed, Series A, Bridge, and Series B round before being acquired by Nutrien Ag Solutions in 2018 for $63MM. This exit created wealth for many involved and Nutrien worked hard to keep the team together adding to their already impressive digital ag team and leadership.”