REGINA – The Canadian Western Agribition wrapped up this weekend on an innovative note.
Five teams of aspiring entrepreneurs were busy coming up with business ideas as part of Cultivator’s 24 Hour Startup — AGTECH competition.
Michael Chmielewski, Media Relations Specialist Cultivator Powered by Conexus and Conexus Credit Union, said they were “very excited to bring 24 Hour Startup — AGTECH to Agribition for the first time.”
“I think it just makes natural sense,” said Chmielewski, saying Agribition was a good fit.
“Cultivator is a department of Conexus. Cultivator is powered by Conexus. Conexus is a major sponsor of Agribition as well. So I think it just lined up in that way too.”
While this was their 24 Hour Startup — AGTECH at Agribition, it was only the location that was new. Cultivator has previously been at Canada's Farm Show in recent years and they also do 24-hour startups throughout the year.
“We do a 24-hour startup as well as a 24-hour startup AgTech. So we do them all the time at different places, but very happy to bring it to Agribition this year for the first time ever.”
Cultivator is a business incubator. Chmielewski said it is the first credit union-led business incubator in Canada and it has helped incubate over 190 companies, and created over 600 jobs.
In terms of the 24 Hour Startup — AGTECH, Chmielewski described the way it works. There are about 30 participants, and the teams were formed on Friday afternoon. The participants were divided into five teams each, with designers, entrepreneurs and presenters on each team.
Their goal was to come up with a product that can solve problems that producers have brought to them, with the competitors given just 24 hours to build what is described as an “MVP,” or a minimum viable product.
There is a specific theme for what the teams must produce as an MVP, and that is that it must be AgTech.
“And so anything related to solving problems in agriculture. So any problems that producers are facing, want addressed, anything that can help their operations.”
It is a hectic pace for the 24 hours that the teams have to come up with a project, with lots of work and a heavy dose of adrenaline.
“They also want to win, but they're also very proud of their idea and they're probably running on caffeine and very little sleep,” Chmielewski said.
“I think a few of them might take some catnaps, but besides that, I think it's a pedal-to-the-metal for all of them.”
Chmielewski said that in past events, what the teams would do was take advantage of having producers in the audience at the event.
“I've seen one team a few years ago where they went and surveyed ag producers on whatever problem they're working on,” he said.
“So let's say they're working on a cattle problem.
They go and talk to 100 different cattle producers, say 80 per cent of them like this feature, 15 per cent said fix this. So that's basically like an overview of how that works.”
On Saturday, the event at Agribition culminated with the five teams going on stage and presenting their ideas to a panel of judges, as well as audience members at Agribition.
At this year’s competition, three teams came away as prize winners. A $1,000 prize went to Agribition AI as winners of the People’s Choice Award for their idea of addressing yield losses due to crop illness by using a curated, data-driven Chatbox-based platform.
A $2,000 prize went to AgriMap as the Best Tech winner for their idea of a personalized platform and mobile app powered by AI to give crop reports to producers.
Finally, the grand prize for Best Business went to PenRider, whose idea involved the use of drones to spot potential sickness in cattle. Included in the prize was $2,000 cash, plus $5,000 in in-kind legal services from McKercher LLP.
At the end of the day, all the participants were winners just by competing. Chmielewski spoke of how they are able to go on to bigger and better things.
“The one thing I'm like really like to emphasize is that Saskatchewan is home to some amazing tech founders, very ambitious builders and entrepreneurs,” Chmielewski said.
“And this program helps these budding entrepreneurs. Many of them are still in university, very young, are really excited to learn from all the people that they have here, whether it's producers or investors in the audience or, you know, subject matter experts that they can talk to. So I think a few of them will sign up continuously and build a few different products to really get that entrepreneurial experience.”
