Bowery Capital recently led a $4M Seed round of funding into FruitScout, the first software-only product for produce growers to monitor crops throughout the lifecycle, from bud to harvest. We are particularly excited about this investment as this is our first agtech deal, after watching the space and refining our thesis over several years. See below for a bit more on the stellar team, product, and what got us so excited.
Who?
Matt King is the CEO and Founder of FruitScout. Matt comes to the produce industry from a highly technical background, spending the bulk of his near 30 year career in high profile consulting roles, largely around IT systems design and implementations. Matt's vision for FruitScout stems from his deep expertise in manufacturing and maintenance systems. He saw an opportunity to apply best-in-class supplychain processes to a traditionally offline industry, historically lacking in data-driven decision-making. We first met FruitScout through our friends at SaaS Ventures and were immediately struck by the depth of domain knowledge, as well as how closely their product aligned with our thinking around vertical opportunities. Matt's vision for building an industry-transforming product in a laggard vertical fits squarely within our thesis and we're honored to be partnering with him and the team.
What?
FruitScout is the world's first mobile-based, AI-powered precision crop load management (PCLM) platform. The product combines a patented computer vision processing system with the ease and accessibility of phone-based data collection to empower growers to make more data-driven decisions about their crops. The FruitScout solution increases the level of precision in farming by providing accurate fruit counts throughout the season, while giving growers actionable steps to take at each stage in the cycle. The platform allows many growers to, for the first time, take a quantitative approach to their business, ultimately driving additional revenue for their crop, while reducing labor costs and their carbon and chemical footprints.
Why?
At a macro level, the produce industry is experiencing margin compression and the worst labor shortage in its history, leaving growers with no choice but to seek alternatives to run their businesses more efficiently. Incumbents in the space are either hardware/software products requiring a significant upfront investment, or pen and paper. Alternatively, FruitScout can be deployed same-day, with a near immediate ROI. Given these tailwinds, FruitScout is positioned to become the industry-standard for crop load management globally.
Today, FruitScout customers are largely apple growers, however we're seeing interest across all produce lines and believe FruitScout technology can scale to support each individual crop, tailored to their needs and the metrics that ultimately drive revenue for the crop. We're also seeing demand from downstream buyers (think distributors, grocery stores, etc.) looking for additional visibility into delivery times, output quantities, pricing, and more. Needless to say, we're very excited about the near and medium-term opportunities at FruitScout.
Where?
FruitScout is based in Yakima, WA, AKA the apple capital of the world!
