Hi there,

Battling to convert? This Chinese zoo is having all its days convincing visitors its bears are not just people in bear suits.

In this Open Letter:

• Let it grow: 282 Billion reasons to go Agri.
• A classic taxi, Elon’s bat signal & MIT’s AI perturbers.
• Only truth: 5 Steps of startup marketing.
• Poll results: The future of kasi commerce.
• Startup ideas: Refer a friend, get top opportunity picks.

TRENDING NOW

282 Billion Reasons to Go AgriTech

One of the very first SA apps to hit the app store over 10 years ago, was none other than the Landbouweekblad. (We don’t have a link to prove it, but we helped build it, so you can take our word for it).

Back then, savvy 40–50-year-old farmers bought iPads hoping to use them to revolutionise their businesses. Sadly, the tech wasn’t there to build the digital farm just yet…

But fast forward 13 years, and the landscape’s changed significantly. Connected devices and sensors (IoT), connectivity, big data and AI, and drones have all come of age and are starting to play a role in agriculture.

The ageing farmer and his tech-savvy son

In last week’s How Would You Build It, Zamokuhle Thwala dropped a stat that triggered a thought: The average age of a farmer in South Africa is 62, which puts them close to retiring.

And that means there is likely a younger generation poised to take over. This younger generation is likely 30-ish and grew up with tech — it’s second nature for them.

With improved tech, a growing market and a younger farmer that adopts the technology it’s creating a perfect storm of opportunity. So we ask: Is it time for AgriTech to shine?

The Opportunity

To put SA agriculture in perspective, with a forecast amount of R282 billion contributed to the GDP in 2023, it's bigger than the construction industry and only slightly smaller than mining. In terms of SA’s economic activity, it's a big deal.

And what’s more, it's set to grow at 7.6% per year to 2028, so there’s space for even more.

Finally, considering that the majority of agriculture production in SA is exported (a whopping $12.8 billion), it's well positioned should the rand face further deterioration – Europeans have no problems paying R20 a naartjie, it seems.

And where there is a growing industry, it's often the input providers, particularly those in tech, that excite us the most – they just scale so nicely.

Pouncing on the opportunity

There are quite a few local players that are pouncing on this opportunity, focussing on some of the most pressing farm matters:

Worker Management and Payments: Labour is one of the biggest costs on a farm, and with its seasonality and scale, becomes a complex process to manage. Using smart devices, NFC technology and connectivity, workers can be optimised and paid with little hassle. This is something that Agrigistics is tackling.

Regulation and Reporting: Farming is not without regulation, especially when it comes to preventing pests from devouring your produce. Reporting pest sightings and spraying of preventative substances needs to be recorded and reported on – something that KeyPhase offers farmers.

Sizing and Planning: Selling your products before they are ready can provide vital cash flow for farming operations. But how do you ensure you get the best price? Understanding what kind of produce you can expect and negotiating better deals and planning logistics becomes a breeze. This is something Stellenbosch-based startup Revolute Systems is tackling. This is also something that Naspers-backed startup Aerobotics is offering farmers – albeit with a focus on providing insurers with data to reduce the risk and cost of crop insurance.

Modern Farming: Farming aint what it used to be, and one of the popular ways to optimise output is through covered farming. AgriLogiq provides undercover-farm management hardware and systems to control airflow and manage the temperature within covered farming areas.

As these solutions become more mainstream, even more opportunities to connect devices will arise and with more devices, more data and with more data, more intelligence. The future of farming is here and we are watching this space.

Refer one friend to sign up to The Open Letter and view our top opportunity pick for this trend (and all future trends we cover).

Get your sharing link here.

OVER TO YOU

What excites you most about the AgriTech revolution?

Vote to see how others voted.

• 🚁 Spraying drones.
• 🌾 Robot harvesters (Edward Scissorhands style).
• 🤖 AI for decision making.
• 🛰️ Drought-control satellites.
• 🏙️ Bringing the farm into the city

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.

IN SHORT

🚐 Blast from the past. The iconic Toyota Hiace minibus (nicknamed Zola Budd) was one of the OG’s in South African passenger transport. You can get your hands on an immaculate 1988 model with barely 80’000 kms on the clock. This piece of historical local nostalgia comes complete with full service history, spare key and Pioneer head unit (CD player, playa).

✖️ Superhero signal. In the latest episode of “What Elon Did Next”, the X (fka Twitter) big dog has had a massive flashing X installed on the rooftop of the X HQ – much to the annoyance of his neighbours. We always thought Musk was closer to Iron Man but with this bat-signal-esque X, looks like he’s more like Batman.

🚧 Gatekeeper AI. As AI’s capabilities keep on growing, researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have built “PhotoGuard” a technique that adds perturbations (tiny alterations in pixel values) to disrupt the model’s ability to manipulate an image.

⛽ On the rise. Don't forget to chuck in some fuel tonight. Unleaded petrol is to increase by 37c per litre while diesel will set you back 72c per litre. Analysts predict this trend will continue as Saudi Arabia continues to cut its oil production and demand from China and India increased.

🥵 Hot stuff. We might be cold, but scientists have said that July 2023 will go down, not only, as the hottest month on record since 1940 (when we started tracking these sorts of things) but possibly the hottest in 120’000 years. The UN Secretary-General António Guterres has warned that “the era of global warming has ended” and “the era of global boiling has arrived.”

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BUILDER’S CORNER

The Truth About Startup Marketing

OK, you’ve got product, a plan and you’re ready to roll. But how do you get the high-performance marketing you know it takes to build something special?

NO, you can’t hire a marketer and hope they’ll just “sort it out for you”...

And NO, you can’t just focus on adding features and hope customers will just magically appear…

We’re going to give it to you straight: You, the founder, are the only person who can establish your marketing and sales framework. Agencies and marketers can only perfect the basic groundwork you’ve already laid, not the other way around.

Establish your sales and marketing like so (in this exact order)...

5 Steps for the startup marketing win

1. Anchor in a founder/co-founder
2. The only place to start is for a founder to take full control and responsibility for sales and marketing. Proven marketing expertise in your product domain is the second of the two main reasons you partner with a non-technical co-founder. (No. 1 is if they are the investor.) So that’s a good place to start.
   
   Before you can bring anyone else on board with any success, the founder has to nail the positioning, value proposition, target audience, core offer, conversion process/system and start testing and iterating that system.
   
3. Bring in a startup marketing specialist/agency
4. If you can find one, that is. A founder/builder or startup team who offers their services to help others market is super rare but worth gold. They know the ropes and have the startup-building experience that other marketers lack. Coupled with high-performance marketing experience, you can’t ask for a better assist.
5. But, again, extremely rare and hard to come by.
6. Outsource to key experts
7. If you’ve built a working funnel and just need skilled people to help you execute (because your time is needed elsewhere), you can start bringing in specific domain specialists – SEO, SMM, Ads, copywriters, meme lords etc.
8. Purely because they’re more cost-effective to hire and easier to end the working relationship with than a hire (if needs be).
9. Now you can start insourcing
10. Once you know exactly how your “marketing machine” works, you can start investing long-term in team members.
11. Add traditional agencies only if you have scale
12. By this time, you should almost start looking like a corporate, so it’s OK to start looking at traditional agencies to help you go big-league.

Got a marketing question? Hit reply and fire away, it’s what we do…

THE RESULTS

Last week, we asked for your predictions on the future of commerce in townships. And using spaza shops are distribution centres is the clear winner, with corporate malls and solopreneurs sharing the second spot.

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🛵 Deliver goods with e-commerce-like solutions. (8%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 📦 Spaza shops as distribution centres. (46%)
🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🏬 Large corporates to establish malls etc. (19%)
🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ‎‍💼 Service-driven solopreneurs. (19%)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🛸 Drones and robots, baby. (8%)

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