Joe Dales is co-founder of Farms.com and AgCareers.com and President of Ag and Food Innovation at the Roundhouse Accelerator in London, Ontario. He left a crop protection career in 1998 to build internet businesses for an agricultural audience that largely did not yet own computers, and has spent the two decades since building and then backing ag-tech companies. In this conversation he walks through that decision and its early years, explains how an accelerator model borrowed from the technology sector is being adapted for agriculture, and makes a case to farmers that has nothing to do with any specific product: adopt one new practice or technology every year and let the gains compound.
In 1998 Joe Dales moved to London, Ontario with no customers, no product, and a plan to sell the internet to farmers who did not yet own computers.
In the years since he has co-founded Farms.com, AgCareers.com and CareersInFood.com, and now runs ag and food innovation at the Roundhouse Accelerator, backing early-stage ag-tech founders with capital, mentorship and business development.
What's Inside
- What growing up on the farm taught him about finishing the job, keeping your word and community generosity, and how those show up in the way he builds companies
- Why he paired a science degree with an MBA, and his blunt assessment of the odds any given startup is facing
- The 1998 decision itself: leaving a crop protection career at the exact moment the commercial internet appeared, and what the first years actually looked like with no customers and no product
- How the Y Combinator playbook translates to agriculture, and what an accelerator can and cannot do for a founder
- The advice he gives farmers, which is not about any single technology: adopt one new practice or tool every year and let two decades of small gains compound into something a competitor cannot catch
- Where he is watching hardest right now, including soil health, carbon measurement and automation
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