The following interview is a conversation we had with Gabe Sibley, Founder of Verdant Robotics, on our podcast Category Visionaries. You can view the full episode here: $48M Raised to Build the Future of Autonomous Agriculture
Gabe Sibley
Yeah, hey, Brett, great to be here. Looking forward to speaking with you.
Brett
Yeah, I am as well. So to pick things off, we just maybe start with a quick summary of who you are and a bit more about your background.
Gabe Sibley
Yeah, sure. So let’s see how far back to go. I had been in mobile autonomous robotics for two and a half decades. So I started as a math computer science grad out of Emory University, moved to Southern California to be adjacent to JPL because it was sort of a dream to work at a place that was responsible for robotic exploration. Solar system kind of blown away that could be a job you could get. I ended up doing a PhD at USC, fell in with a bunch of really clever folks and, long story, ended up as a professor in computer science at University of Colorado Boulder. And all this technology we’ve been working on for many years turned out to be really valuable, especially for things like self driving cars.
Gabe Sibley
And I watched all my students and postdocs pulling out and building companies, and I got roped into a company called Zoox. I was offered to co found that company. I said no, and then I joined anyway three months later for a lot less equity. Really enjoyed the ride and met a lot of wonderful people. Ended up leading Zoox to start another company called Zippy, which was moving packages instead of people. The self driving car problem is obviously very difficult, as it should be when you’re definitely unleashing lethal machines into society at scale. The bar is very high, and I wanted to see by life’s work around building autonomous systems bring value, maybe a little quicker. That’s why I started zippy, because we could focus on moving packages instead of moving people.
Gabe Sibley
What I learned about that after having set up a business that was revenue generating, you know, doing deliveries for postmates and Doordash, is that the solution to sidewalk robotics is to use the roads. So it became a self driving car company yet again. So I sold that company then to cruise to General Motors, which was great. I had a great time working at Cruz. I was there for. For six months, and I was able to meet some really fantastic people. But ultimately, there were some folks from a previous life. I had been the PI on a DARPA grant and done some great work with Moog. They’re the folks that build the actuators for bottle dynamics platforms, really world class hydraulics, servo actuators. They were like, hey, Sibley, you know what?
Gabe Sibley
We think AG is going to be a great place, a great vertical, where all this technology and robotics is actually going to have a real impact. And we want you to meet this guy, Curtis. And so they introduced me to Curtis Garner, who’s my Co-Founder. He’s the farmer. DNA in the business, easily the better half of the business. And so just some ex research partners from DARPA introduced me to Curtis and bar in San Jose. We looked at each other and realized we should get married and they should put the bill. And they did. They were very generous, given us our seed funding, got us started, and they’ve been great partners. And I learned a lot about agriculture and a lot about how that technology could be applicable and helpful. And it’s been a wild ride.
Brett
Take us back to those conversations two and a half decades ago, I’m sure had come up at some point in those conversations about self driving cars and if they would be on the road, like, back then. Did you think that by 2023, it would be all self driving vehicles on the roads? Like, did you guys talk about those types of things back then?
Gabe Sibley
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I mean, I still remember when Sebastian was, you know, pitching DARPA on the DARPA grand challenge and trying to get them motivated. And he was, you know, pitching the robotics community as well, like RSS 2005. And he was laying out the case why it would be a really valuable thing to do. And initially, it seemed like maybe okay, but then ultimately got a lot of people’s attention, and there was clear that there could be a large impact. And sometime around 2004, 2005, I think it really started to take off. And, of course, long before that, you know, you had the Nav lab work out of CMU and smart highway initiative in the early nineties in California. So there’s been really a long history of people recognizing the value. I think the value is tremendous.
Gabe Sibley
I think it’s hard to get there. It will take time. I think in a lot of ways, robotics is that way. It’s not like a lot of SaaS technologies and investments that just happen very quickly. It’s like sort of augmented reality and virtual reality, or maybe ten times harder than your normal software companies. I think robotics companies are sort of ten times harder than that. So, yeah, I mean, people understood that the value was there, and I think the people understood it was hard and that it would take time. I think we’re even seeing that now where things like chat GBT are taking off largely because it’s non physical and perhaps ironically, all those physical things that require, you know, dexterous mobile manipulation and mobile autonomy, any sort of physically instantiated thing, is turning out to be very difficult to do.
Gabe Sibley
Sort of the dull, dangerous and dirty stuff that we thought would be automated first is harder than the tech based stuff.
Brett
Just being in the Bay Area. Obviously a big story in the. In the media. Was it a month ago, was the cruise accident? And then I know Cruise had, I think, their permit pulled from the DMV. And then there’s been a bunch of other drama that’s follow. Do you have an opinion of what regulation should look like when it comes to self driving cars?
Gabe Sibley
You know, I was very active while Zoox in helping, getting the nits of policy for autonomous driving that was pushed nationally through. And honestly, I thought it was very thoughtful. It was a very thoughtful framework for how we could still encourage innovation while having responsible actors and people behave responsibly. I think it’s real tragedy what happened with Cruz especially. They were not the cause of the accident, but the way that it unfolded. There’s a clear, long tail of it that is a very sad thing to have happened. And so, yeah, it’s not. Obviously not good. It’s not good for the industry as a whole. It’s not good for the people, humans involved. And, yeah, I think that it’s important that we do have legislation around these things that protect people.
Gabe Sibley
And I do think that the policy that came out of DC about a decade ago, a little. Little less than that, was very thoughtful. I think the NHTSA self driving car policy is good.
Brett
I admit I’ve not explored that policy too much, but I’ll have to dive into that a bit more because I do want to understand this space a lot. And from my perspective, and I know nothing about this, seeing cruise kind of get pulled off the streets immediately, I felt like that was an overreaction. Do you think that was not an overreaction?
Gabe Sibley
I’m not super intimate in terms of the details. I’m not so sure it was overreaction or if they misstepped in terms of their relationship with the regulators, I really don’t know what happened. I can tell you that bad things will happen in the deployment of new technologies. And a lot of the reaction you’re going to get from regulators, groups of humans that are trying to keep it safe is how you handle it when it does happen. So who knows what really happened. But everybody knows that there’s going to be bad things happening or there’s going to be risk that we have to accept.
Gabe Sibley
And I think if you look at the number of miles driven by these systems overall, if you were to look at the integral of miles driven by Google and Aurora and Zoox and Cruz and the number of incidents, you’re still looking at something thats pretty safe.
Brett
Preston, I don’t remember how long ago it was now, but I do remember when Richard Branson’s company Virgin Galactic had that crash and I think two of the pilots died. And he came out with a heartfelt statement, of course, for the tragedy that happened. But he also had a really strong message around this is the cost of innovation, and when you’re innovating on the edge like this, like, it is bound to happen, unfortunately. But the risk of, like, not pushing the limits here and trying to innovate is you more than these types of accidents that can happen. And I thought that was a very good way to try to cover everything. And you still make the case for like, we don’t need to shut this whole thing down, all this doesn’t need to stop.
Brett
Like, we do need to continue and we do need to continue innovation and for some reason, that’s always stuck with me.
Gabe Sibley
Yeah, I tend to agree. Right. As long as the risks are understood by everybody involved and everyone is willing to let it happen. You bet.
Brett
Switching gears here a little bit, and the goal here is really just to better understand a bit more about what makes you tick behind the scenes. First question for you is about founders that inspire you. So obviously we have some easy answers, like Elon Musk, perhaps, or Jeff Bezos. But let’s dig a little bit deeper. Who’s a Founder that’s really inspired you along the way?
Gabe Sibley
Yeah, it’s an interesting question and I was thinking about it. I don’t have, like, a blanket answer. I can certainly say that there are things that I’ve seen that have been inspiring. Of course, you know, the same person may have done things that were cuckoo otherwise. So in many ways, I think Tim Kentley Clay at Zoox was inspiring. I also learned a bunch from Jesse Levinson. Those two, you know, obviously convinced me to leave my life as a professor and move to Silicon Valley, and I absolutely enjoyed that ride. My current Co-Founder, Curtis Garner, is somebody who I deeply respect. You know, he has an ability to just be a rock. He’s just a high integrity, super solid individual. And I really appreciate that, especially, you know, when we’re in the trenches together.
Gabe Sibley
He just has a tendency to, you know, help shine light in the right direction at the right time in a way that’s just super helpful. So I really appreciate, Curtis, what about.
Brett
Books and the way we like to frame this? It comes from an author named Brian Holiday. Calls them quickbooks. So a quick book is a book that, like, rocks you to your core and really influences how you think about the world and how you approach life. Do any quick books come to mind?
Gabe Sibley
Yeah, I mean, there’s two books that I think of, and they’re one I read a long time ago and one that I read more recently. You know, I like having the art of motorcycle maintenance, and I know it doesn’t speak to everybody, but I certainly appreciate it. The notion of quality and that virtue, sort of hard work and mastery of craft and sort of pride in doing a job and doing it well and just for the fact that you do it well, that reward from being good at something, whether it’s like a physical thing, like a fern done well as a ski racer or a pitch that you executed flawlessly and you just walk out feeling great whether you win or not. Just the fact that you left it all on the floor and you’re proud of yourself.
Gabe Sibley
So that book, I think, speaks to that. And I really appreciate that. I try to get my employees to read it, not always successfully, but I think it’s a great book. And so long ago, I was impressed with that book, and it’s been something that touched sermon again. And more recently, I read Cadillac Desert, which is fantastic.
Gabe Sibley
And that really talks about water in the west of the United States and North America generally, and how precious it is and how little of it there is and how much phenomenal engineering we’ve done, specifically here in California, the two largest hydrology engineering projects in the world, so that we can grow so much food and have such big cities, and how it just important it is for us to safeguard the health of the water, ultimately the health of the soil and all of our health, and just how crazy and political and complicated and just really convoluted and interesting. The history of water is here in the west. It continues to be you know, if you’ve ever seen Chinatown, you know, Mahalan Drive. The history of water in California is like, stupendously interesting and stupendously important.
Gabe Sibley
And it relates to the world that I’m in now around farming very efficiently, using inputs super efficiently, and ultimately, you know, cherishing the soil that we grow food on and the water that we do it with. I find really interesting how those things are all tied together. And then the people that make the choices around these things, how I get to interact with them and work with them has been super interesting.
Brett
You just set it up for a perfect transition into talking about what you’re doing. So let’s dive in. When it comes to the problem that you’re solving, how do you define that problem and describe that problem?
Gabe Sibley
I’d say if you were to try to boil it down to something super simple, it’s, we do more with less. So how do you grow greater, yielding crops larger, produce using less inputs, more cost effective labor? You know, AG is big. Ag is 5% of world GDP in the US. About a quarter of the spend happens in California. So California is phenomenally productive. And the biggest costs in agriculture are chemical inputs and human labor. And in the next 50 years, we’ve got to grow more food than we’ve grown, by some accounts, in the last 10,000 years. At the same time, where there’s this incredible increase in demand for productivity, the folks that have done the fieldwork, they’re exiting stage left to work at Starbucks and call centers and click farmers and data centers, and good for them. And there are zero five year olds.
Gabe Sibley
That said, when I grow up, I want to crawl on my ends and knees at 120 degree weather in the dirt and pick weeds. It’s just not a job that people aspire to and that does not denigrate people’s hard work. Hard work is very real and valuable, but it’s a task that’s frankly, a robotic task. And so when you can use technology that makes things not just twice as cost effective or ten times as cost effective, but maybe 100 times, two orders of magnitude more cost effective, literally, taking something that costs $3,000 an acre and doing it for $30 an acre through technology, that’s a major gain in efficiency. And that’s how you do more with less. So ultimately, that’s. That’s it. We’re about helping growers save on inputs and save on labor so they can do more with less through technology.
Brett
And what are the growers getting then? Is it a robot tractor or what is the actual product and what does that solution look like?
Gabe Sibley
Yeah, we have a smart sprayer with what we call bullseye technology. So basically it’s, you know, atoms on target delivering with like, an aimable squirt gun, the inputs that plants need to grow the way agronomists would like them to grow. So imagine, like a smart sharpshooter that rides along the back of a tractor and puts a bb of the right input at the right place, you know, pollen or fertilizer organic herbicide to help a plant or field do what the growers want, though, it’s the intelligent machine that rides along the back of a tractor. So it’s an implement that clicks on the back of a tractor, and it’s that intelligent structure riding along on the back, putting the atoms where they need to be.
Brett
I’m probably revealing myself here, but I haven’t spent a lot of time on farms. But can it hook up to any type of tractor, or is it only.
Gabe Sibley
A specific type of tractor? What does that look like? Yeah, we can hook up to any type of tractor. So it’s just a generic three point hitch. So it’ll click to a red line, a green one, a blue one, an autonomous mobile one, you name it. And so actually, really, it can go on anything. It’s ultimately about the size of a 40 amps can, and so can go on center pivots. It can go on 120 foot booms behind tractors in the midwest driving 20 miles an hour. So it’s the pure vision and machine learning sees and understands the field and then makes those decisions real time about what to spray when and where.
Gabe Sibley
And again, that sort of millimeter accuracy, leaving, you know, if we want a dollop of liquid about the size of your pinky nail on target, or, you know, we can cover something inside of the dare plate all programmatically, in real time.
Brett
This show is brought to you by Front Lines Media podcast production studio that helps B2B founders launch, manage, and grow their own podcast. Now, if you’re a Founder, you may be thinking, I don’t have time to host a podcast. I’ve got a company to build. Well, that’s exactly what we built our service to do. You show up and host, and we handle literally everything else. To set up a call to discuss launching your own podcast, visit frontlines.io slash podcast. Now back today’s episode. What does this world of farming look like 20 years from now? Are all of the humans that were doing this type of physical labor? Do you think they are just, they’re gone?
Gabe Sibley
Oh, no way. I mean, this is just a tool. You know, it gives humans a superpower to do more. So this is just a tool to give agronomists and growers the ability to have a bigger impact. I think it looks a lot more systematic and that people can call up a digital model of, therefore, at any time during the course of a season or the past ten seasons, and start to mine that digital twin that’s spatial and temporal and semantic, and that holds all of the classification data from all machine learning for trends being a correlate and compare and search for better policies on how to grow more effectively.
Gabe Sibley
And I think that systematic digitization and proactive search for better growing policies is something that’s really been possible at these super precise scales and also over large scales, because really the sensors haven’t made it out into the field at this resolution being coupled with the actuators at this revolution. And so, like many industries, really, all industries that have gone through a transformation with respect to computation, that when you bring computation to bear, it is this genuine superpower. You know, computers can count billions of things breaker, they just don’t care. That’s in their wheelhouse, and this is fundamentally not in our wheelhouse community. And so just like all these industries have been transformed by computation, Ag is going to be transformed by it as well, under great efficiencies there.
Gabe Sibley
So I think there’s going to be a lot of more wealthy farmers with much healthier food than much healthier consumers of the food, much healthier soil.
Brett
When it comes to these farms, how is it distributed? Is it mostly like big corporate owners or like private equity firms called ABC holdings that own it all, or is a lot of it still independent growers and independent farmers?
Gabe Sibley
There’s lots of little farms, and then there’s a small number of very large conglomerates, big farms that control sort of majority of the acres. And it really depends on what crop you’re talking about. But every crop will have a few big players that are the 800 pound gorillas in the room that’ll have the majority of the acres. But there’s still lots of little farms in the US, right?
Brett
Which of those groups are you selling, Tony?
Gabe Sibley
All of them. Initially, were running our offering as a service, and we still have that ability, but the bigger growers really would like to buy, and so were very happy to sell to them. But theres no restriction on who we will work with. Were very happy to work with anybody. The customer said, we want to pay for it. Like x, you say okay, pay for it like y you said. Okay.
Brett
What are the top questions that customers have that maybe get in the way of them buying and investing in something.
Gabe Sibley
So innovative like this? The customers, I’ve found, in my experience, are chomping at the bit. So they’re actually demanding the technology well ahead of where I expected they would be. We’re really being pulled by the nose, and we’re more supply limited than we are demand limited. So they’ve seen the technology, they’ve seen it work, and the answer is usually, okay, when can I buy them and when can I have more? And so it’s really just up to us to basically deliver a reliable product that performs at the level we’re able to show Dan and Dale.
Brett
It’s a good problem to have, but how did you get in this place to start with? How do you have such high demand? Is it your track record and your credibility and the fact that the product’s working, or what have you gotten right to have demand not be an issue?
Gabe Sibley
So that’s a really good question. You know, we spent the first six months of this business on the road listening to growers, really me, you know, Curtis, trying to educate me around what the needs are and what the farmer’s needs are. It was a two way dialogue.
Brett
Right.
Gabe Sibley
I was trying to peek people’s imagination around what was technically possible, but at the same time, really listening to try and understand one of the problems that you actually face. Yeah, it’s kind of funny. A farmer would say, you know, God, if you could just do x, that would be amazing. It’d be great. I’d be like, you know, that’s science fiction. We cannot do that. Or they would say, well, you probably can’t do y, but it’d be kind of cool. Well, hang on a second. We might be able to do that. And so the conversation back and forth with growers was, it was stupendously important. There was a number of aha. Moments where we recognized, hey, we’re sort of uniquely well suited to do that.
Gabe Sibley
Technically, it’s a very defensible play for us to do that, and a lot of value for the grower if we can pull it off. And so that match of something that, you know you’re good at, that you’re out in front of the rest of the world on, you know, is going to be really valuable for the customer, getting to know your customer. Like, when I say, Curtis is the better half of the company. He’s a farmer, and he knows the people I need to talk to. And so the two of us spend a lot of time listening and talking to our customer. I mean, that’s kind of business school, one on one. But it’s very true. Go into business with somebody that knows the market deeply and is respected in the market that you want to be in.
Gabe Sibley
I don’t know how you would do it otherwise. To be honest.
Brett
I think there’s a stereotype that farmers are maybe not super tech savvy, but from my conversation with another Founder who’s in a similar space that you’re in here, he told me that stereotype is completely untrue. And that from what he’s seen, farmers tend to be like almost the ultimate early adopters. Is that something that you’ve seen as well?
Gabe Sibley
Yeah, I mean, I don’t know if you can swear on your program, but that’s bullshit. Growers are totally switched on businessmen, right? Like they run very complicated businesses. I’ve never seen a business that’s more econ 101 in terms of supply and demand and the quickness that these guys have to act. And so, yeah, they’re totally aware of anything and everything that can help them do their job better. And they’re typically the ones chopping at the bit and asking for it before people have done it. So my experience is like, water flows downhill. You know, if you can prove that there’s value they’re in and theres no convincing needed because they are clever and they understand whats happening.
Brett
Robert, did you get your messaging and positioning right immediately, then it sounds like.
Gabe Sibley
No, certainly not. I think we wanted to run it as a service and as a service that looks really good, and the growers want it as something they can buy. Thats the model they are used to. They understand total cost of ownership, and they’re very used to financing large capital equipment purchases anyway. So it makes a lot of sense for the way they operate. My Co-Founder had operated the largest tomato operation in the world, so he knew what running a service was like. We thought, okay, well try and run it as a service. And I think that ultimately that was, I wouldn’t say a mistake, but its not the fastest path to market because theres still value running as a service for smaller growers that might not want to buy their kit outright.
Brett
Was it hard making that decision to shut down that revenue stream?
Gabe Sibley
Not really. I mean, I just remember a very large customer saying, basically we’re not going to rent it, but we’ll buy it. Okay. You know, like I said, if the customer wants it like x, you say okay. They want to like why you say okay. You know, it’s the, ultimately the value is there and how you get that in the hands of the growers almost doesn’t matter.
Brett
How do you think about your marketing philosophy?
Gabe Sibley
You know, like I said, it’s really been us being pulled by the nose. So it’s not like I’ve done a lot of marketing. I mean, Curtis has been my one man BD team. He knows the industry were in and knows a lot of the right people. And we’ve just been trying to catch up with people asking for us to help them. That’ll probably change. And it’s going to be, I think, pretty organic trade shows and industry rags going, meetings where you’re going to spend time with the growers you want to work with and then distribution partners. That’s going to matter for scale. And so a lot of marketing will take place that way.
Brett
How do you think about the competitive landscape? Is your competitor going to be another robotics company or is the competitor really just the status quo?
Gabe Sibley
No, the competitor is not the status quo. I mean, the status quo is just incredibly inefficient. I mean, really incredibly inhumane. So things will change, you know, whether it’s not us, whether saucer does it or not, it will change. So do you think it’s going to be either a robotics or, you know, a company that’s purchased a robotics company or actually like chemical retail company or a big ag company? So somebody that’s in AG or in, you know, chemistry business? So, yeah, thats basically roboticists. Its a very technical problem.
Brett
Makes sense. As I mentioned in the intro, you’ve raised 48 million to date. What have you learned about fundraising throughout this journey?
Gabe Sibley
So I think ive been very fortunate in that theres so many things that are aligned with my business. Its technically a very interesting thing to do. Its also a very impactful thing to do and that its beneficial for the planet if we do it. Its good for the farmers pocketbook. And so this has this ability to attract really interesting people and really interesting investors and advisors and so everybody is deeply aligned that it makes it a lot of fun. I like my board, I like my investors, or people I’d spend time with that I count as friends. And if I ever built another company, I would go about it thefrontlines.ioF same. I’d be very careful who I choose to work with because I’d want to make that work in a relationship. Be farmer people you want to work with. Very, very fortunate.
Gabe Sibley
And that’s where we’re at now because I don’t know. I see a lot of advice for founders that’s adversarial to investors and to your board. I think that’s kind of crazy, actually. If you really think about it, your interests are totally aligned. You just want to succeed. And if you do your job as a Founder and you find investors that are really aligned with you that really can help you have connections and relationships that can help you like your office really working together, might as well do it with people that you like working with because its all very good stuff that you are attempting to do. Yeah. Work with people that are good people you want to work with.
Brett
Lets imagine you’re sitting down for coffee with a young Founder who wants to build technology, not technology that competes with you, but sells to farmers and sells to growers. Based on everything you learned so far, what would be the number one piece of advice you’d have to give them?
Gabe Sibley
Get out early and sell it as early as you can so you can get some scar tissue. Just start getting scar tissue from your customer fast as you possibly can.
Brett
Love it. All right, final question for you before we wrap up, let’s zoom out three to five years into the future. What’s the big picture vision look like?
Gabe Sibley
I would love to be helping growers farm efficiently or as many of them as we possibly can. You know, the nutrition seeds are pretty awesome. And so that’s a, it’s a pretty neat thing to stay on the cusp of, right. You know, the more sustainable, healthy, you know, healthy pocketbook, healthy soil, healthy food that we can impact, the better. So ideally, we’ve built an iconic robotics technology company that’s farming sustainably for as much of humanity as we can pull off.
Brett
Amazing. I love the vision, and I really love this conversation. It’s been a lot of fun, and I’ve definitely learned a lot. I know the audience is going to learn a lot as well. Well, before we wrap up, if there’s any founders that are listening in that want to follow along with your journey, where should they go?
Gabe Sibley
Yeah, go to verdantrobotics.com dot. You know, you can reach out and connect with us there. Or on LinkedIn, you know, we are headed down. They can work. Right now, if you’re in California, you may see us on the side of the road. Just look out the window, and if you see a white verdant vehicle clipped to the back of a tractor, that’s us. Awesome.
Brett
Gabe, I’ll be on the lookout. Really appreciate it.
Gabe Sibley
Yeah, thanks a lot. Take care.
Brett
All right, keep it dense. This episode of Category Visionaries is brought to you by Front Lines Media, Silicon Valley’s leading podcast production studio.
Gabe Sibley
If you’re a B2B Founder.
Brett
Looking for help launching and growing your own podcast, visit Frontlines.io podcast. And for the latest episode, search for Category Visionaries on your podcast platform of choice. Thanks for listening, and we’ll catch you on the next episode.
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