The following interview is a conversation we had with Craig Rupp, Founder & CEO of Sabanto, on our podcast Category Visionaries. You can view the full episode here: Over $22 Million Raised to Build the Future of Autonomous Tractors
Craig Rupp
Hey, thank you, Brett, for having me.
Brett
Yeah, no problem. So before we can talk about what you’re building there, can we just start with a quick summary of who you are and a bit more about your background?
Craig Rupp
Sure. So, Craig Rupp here, and I am kind of an enigma. I’m one part farm boy, one part engineer, and one part entrepreneur. I grew up on a farm in northwest Iowa, corn, soybeans, hugs and cattle. And when I graduated high school, I decided to become an electrical engineer. I did that and spent the majority of my career in the wireless industry. Then I started starting companies and I started a data company in the Panhandle of Texas. I started another company writing signal processing algorithms for RF manufacturing test, and I sold that company. Then I started another company, which was think of data acquisition for agriculture. I took my farm background and engineering background and combined them and created a company called 640 Labs, and that was acquired by Monsanto in 2014. Then from 2014 to 2018, I spent my time at the Climate Corporation, where I decided that I’m going to start subanto and I’m going to take autonomy into agriculture.
Brett
Wow. And when you were growing up, did you know at some point you would become an entrepreneur? And was that a goal of yours or a thought that you had when you were younger or where did that come from?
Craig Rupp
That’s a really good question. I had no desire to be an entrepreneur. I never thought I would be an entrepreneur. I wish I could say that I actually have a career plan. I just started at Motorola and then myself and two other guys decided to leave and start a company. And it was always just short term opportunities. And not once did I ever think that I would ever start a company in my career. When I went to work at Motorola, I mean, this was back in 1989, I thought I was going to work there the rest of my life.
Brett
Wow. That’s amazing, man. That’s amazing how it turned out. And then you started that first company, and it was, I think, 1995, I saw on LinkedIn.
Craig Rupp
Yeah, that was the first company I started was Alliance Technologies Group. And were no more than Guns for Hire. We were doing contracting and consulting, all engineering, software development, hardware development, and mostly around RF, radio frequency.
Brett
Got it. Super interesting.
Craig Rupp
Very cool.
Brett
Now, two questions we like to ask just to better understand what makes you pick as a founder. First one is, what CEO do you admire and what do you admire about them?
Craig Rupp
The best CEO that I know, that I personally know and have worked for, is James Trishard, dr. T, as he’s referred to. He was the CEO of National Instruments. He started that company and ran it for, gosh, 30, 40 years. National Instruments is a very entrepreneurial company. I’ve never seen a company like it. The entire organization, they really did a lot of innovation. And he had a culture in the company that was very entrepreneurial. And fact is, it’s the longest company I have ever worked for. I worked there nine years, and I just admired his style. He was very technical. He was very involved. You would go to lunch and sit down at a table by yourself, and he would sit down across from you and eat lunch with you. And what are you working on, Craig? How’s that going? And he was very involved with everyone in the company, and everyone loved him.
Brett
Wow, that’s an entrepreneur SEO I’ve not heard of. So I appreciate you bringing someone unique. Boost will come on and, say, Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. So it’s always refreshing to hear someone new that I can go and research and try to learn more what they’re all about.
Craig Rupp
Yeah, he’s a wonderful man. Wonderful individual as well.
Brett
Now, this will go back to what were talking about in the pre interview, but let’s talk books. So is there a specific book that’s had a major impact on you as a founder and really just as a person? And this can be a business book or it can be a personal book that influenced how you view the world.
Craig Rupp
From a business point of view. Andrew Carnegie The How to Win Friends and Influence Other People that is, although it’s dated, it was written I don’t know when, in the it’s a very interesting book in that there’s a lot of interesting ideas. And if you’re working around farmers, it’s a great book to read because a lot of the principles taught in that book still hold today. And I encourage everyone to read it. I mean, again, it is dated, terribly dated, but it is a very good book to read.
Brett
Yeah, I think I stole this from someone else, but they call it like a Quake book. And that’s a book that kind of just rattles your view of the world and how you think about the world. And that was definitely one of those books for me. How to influence people. When I was 19 years old, I read that and instantly, just a lot of the world made sense. And to this day that still has influenced how I interact with and engage with people and build relationships with people. So, such a good book and such a classic. Yeah.
Craig Rupp
Matter of fact, when we hire, I guess, people directly out of college, I buy them a book. I buy them that book and tell them, read this.
Brett
That’s awesome. It’s a good book to read.
Craig Rupp
It is.
Brett
Now let’s talk about Cebanto. So can you tell us the origin story behind the company?
Craig Rupp
Okay, so I had left Climate in 2018. I really didn’t know what I was going to do. So believe it or not, I went back to college and I chipped away at my PhD. So I’m about halfway through my PhD, and I’ll be honest with you, I don’t think I’ll ever finish it. But nonetheless, the ambition was there at the time. And I just thought long and hard about autonomy and agriculture. And I started looking at the talents that are required to implement autonomy and agriculture. Obviously, you need communications, you need control, you need hardware development, you need front end, back end development, which I’m not a front end, back end developer, but I decided most of the constituents that are required, plus the egg background I had, and I decided that someone’s going to do this and it might as well be me. So in October of 2018, I decided that I’m going to do this.
Craig Rupp
And the first thing I did was I went and leased the JCB 42 20, which is 220 HP tractor, and I went and bought an 18 row 20 inch planter, spent the winter writing software, putting hardware together. Then I went and got a CDL, a license to operate a semi, and threw it on the back. In the spring of 2019, I threw it on the back of a drop deck trailer with a Peterbilt 389 and I went from state to state, lined up a bunch of farmers and went state to state. And I wanted to get some experience as to what it would take to plant autonomously. And I learned a lot in terms of path planning and logistics and control and monitoring of tractors and whatnot. And then I closed a series seed round in 2019 and I went back to Chicago and hired five of the best engineers I knew that could help me pull this off.
Craig Rupp
Ruby and Durry, who’s now my CTO, and Corey Spaty, who’s my VP of product, and then three other horses engineers who I could throw out any problem. And throughout 2019 and 2020, what we did was we’re trying to become a full stack provider, meaning that we are capable of doing practically every field operation that is required in row crop agriculture. And so were disking, were doing tillage, were rototilling, were planting, were cultivating, were rotary hoeing, were tine weeding, were doing applications, were trying to do as many field operations as we possibly can. And were also working with the military Mowing as well. We had gotten a contract with Air Force down in Scott Air Force Base. And then throughout 2022, we thought, okay, so we have all this. We know what to do. We’ve done a lot of development on our front end, the back end, our embedded system and hardware and communications.
Craig Rupp
We have all this down. Now let’s productize this. So the majority of 2022, were spent productizing it, giving it the ability to hand it off or let other people deploy Autonomy into their operations. And I closed on a Series A, $17 million Series A in June of 2022. And now what we’re doing is we’re going to market. So we built up a dealer distributor network, and we’re doing training, we’re going through certifications and activities like that. And now you can actually buy an Autonomy system built by us.
Brett
Wow. And what’s the rough cost on the system?
Craig Rupp
You know what? It’ll be affordable. I mean, let me tell you our stance right now. Obviously, we’re trying to fix the labor problem in agriculture, there’s just a lack of labor. Every farmer I talk to, it’s not the cost of labor, it’s the lack of labor. And the other thing we’re trying to do is we believe that Autonomy is going to take horsepower in the other direction. You look at some of these large 500 plus horsepower tractors, they’re well over a half a million dollars, and they only get used maybe 300 hours per year. And what we’re trying to do is we believe Autonomy is going to take horsepower in the other direction. And we’re focused more on smaller sub 200 HP tractors and having them work twenty four, seven. And when you get down to that, obviously cheaper tractors, we’re developing an Autonomy system that will be, I guess, correlated with the cost of the equipment as well.
Craig Rupp
So it’ll be lower cost.
Brett
Got it. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. And now can you just talk us through the product? Because I think, unlike a lot of the other companies that I’ve seen, you guys aren’t selling the full tractors that are these robot tractors. It’s an add on to existing tractors. Right. So can you just talk us through what that looks like for the buyer’s perspective and the farmer who has the existing tractor?
Craig Rupp
Certainly. And let me talk about the Kaboda M Five, because that’s the first model that we’re coming out with. So there’s certain components that are required on that. First and foremost is a hydraulic valve, because that track does not come with auto steer. And there’s no way to, I guess, autonomously move the wheels left or right. So we add our own hydraulic valve that we pick up off the shelf. We do put wheel angle sensor on it as well, because we need feedback as to where the wheels are at any given time. We put actuators on for three point hitch and brakes, and then the throttle is electrically controlled, as is the shuttle. And then we put a GPS receiver on it, cellular antennas, and then a controller that we manufacture and I forgot cameras and a LiDAR system.
Brett
And how long does that take to set up on the tractor?
Craig Rupp
It takes about 4 hours.
Brett
Okay. Wow. Not bad at all.
Craig Rupp
No, not bad at all. And our tractors can still be operated manually as well. If you look at some of the tenants or the principles when I started the company, obviously the first one was we peaked in horsepower and we think it’s going to go lower. The second thing is, I don’t think autonomy, even though I love autonomy and we’re pushing for it, I don’t think it’s an all or nothing proposition, meaning that there are some times when the tractor can be used most efficiently, manual. And I go to the example of you have cruise control on your car. Nobody uses cruise control to back it out of the garage. And there are times when I don’t want to pull my phone out, I just want to jump on this thing and move it from point A to point B. And meanwhile, tractors are kind of the Swiss Army knives of agriculture, and they do a lot more than just field operations.
Craig Rupp
So we feel that the future is still going to have tractors are still going to have seats of steering wheels. There’ll be lower costs because there’ll be lower horsepower, but they still will be capable of being operated manually.
Brett
Fascinating. And I know you’ve mentioned it there, and I have to at least ask about it. So whenever you talk about autonomy or robots, even if it’s industries where there’s a labor shortage, there’s always that question of is this going to displace workers? And I think that’s the narrative that you see in the media a lot. So how do you navigate that conversation? And what are your views there when it comes to is this potentially going to take away jobs from people even though there is a labor shortage today, in the future, is this going to take away jobs?
Craig Rupp
Yes, there’s a labor shortage. Is it going to take away jobs? I am not the cause, I am the effect. Right? A lot of times I talk to farmers and they say, yeah, you’re taking away our jobs. And then I ask them, well, how many kids do you have? Well, I have two. Well, why don’t you have ten? Why don’t you have twelve? I grew up in a rather large family. I had 56 1st cousins, and I’m kind of an oddity anyone under 20 doesn’t have that many first cousins. Families aren’t as large as they were. Opportunities are elsewhere. And I am not, because of this lack of labor, this labor shortage, I.
Brett
Am the effect makes a lot of sense. 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 podcast. Now, back today’s episode. And what type of adoption are you seeing now with farmers?
Craig Rupp
I’m seeing really good adoption. I mean, there’s a lot of opportunities for us, especially in the organic market, because a lot of farmers, one of the reasons why they do not switch to organic is just the labor requirements. If they’re a conventional farmer, they may do some tillage, but then they plant. And then they do some sort of application for pesticides and then they harvest, whereas the organic grower, they have to do tillage. Then they plant. Then they get a tineweed and they rotary hole, rotary hole. Then they cultivate, cultivate. So they’re covering the ground so much more. And a lot of conventional farmers, there’s a lot more margins in organic. It’s harder. But all our fathers or grandfathers organic farmers, if you want to get right down to it. But the problem is they just don’t have the manpower or the time to switch over to organic.
Craig Rupp
So we see a lot of opportunities. There organic farmers coming to us and say, I can’t stand cultivating. If you could cultivate for me just day in and day out, this would be life changing for me.
Brett
And do you see farmers just generally speaking, being open and receptive to new technology? Or do they tend to steer away from new technology and be rather late adopters to it?
Craig Rupp
There’s this misnomer out there that farmers and people have this picture of farmers in their mind, like they’re not very technically adept or they’re technically inept, but that is so far from the truth. They’re some of the more progressive technology adopting people you will ever meet. And if you look at GPS being used for idle guidance, farmers have been doing that since 2000, early it was quite popular on farms. And the adoption rate of GPS guidance was I mean, I can’t quote you a number, but it seems like five years when it just hit the market and five years later, all of a sudden, like 80% of the tractors out there had GPS guidance systems on them. So I think farmers are very adaptive to technology.
Brett
And what are some of those other misconceptions that you think are out there about farmers? So being not familiar with technology or not comfortable with technology sounds like a big one. What are some of those others, just from your experience?
Craig Rupp
They’re some of the nicest people you will ever meet.
Brett
They are.
Craig Rupp
They’re truly salt of the earth people. And what’s kind of funny about farming is it’s really not an occupation, it’s a lifestyle for them. And it doesn’t matter if they make money or not, they’re still going to be a farmer. And I can’t explain it other than it’s just a lifestyle for them. The other thing, too, is what always surprised me about farmers, too, is if they have land and they have equipment, and a lot of their money goes back into their operations. And believe it or not, they’re fairly high net worth individuals because they’re all business owners when you get right down to it. And you sit with a farmer and he’s got a half a million dollar tractor, and I know a lot more farmers with half million dollar tractors than in the Midwest with half million dollar houses. Right. It’s a very interesting culture that I think people should witness at least once.
Brett
And when we look at that culture or just farming in general, what do you think it’s going to look like ten years from now? And how is the industry going to change?
Craig Rupp
Well, I think the most ignored problem in agriculture is the age of the farmer. And I give this statistic all the time 3.4 million farmers in the United States, one third of them are over the age of 65. And if you want to have an uncomfortable conversation, the CDC hasn’t pegged at age 77 for their lifetime. Right. So twelve years from now, one third of the farmers we know today are going to be gone. And what’s even more frightening is another million farmers, almost a third are between the ages of 55 and 65. So 22 years from now, two thirds of the farmers we know today are going to be gone. Now, the average age of the farmer is like 59, and it’s gradually increasing. And it’s not one year. It’s not going to be 60 this year. It was 59 last year. It’s gradually increasing.
Craig Rupp
That’s what the USDA tells. But I think it’s kind of a flawed statistic in that there’s a lot less years between ages 77 and 59. Farmers die with their boots on. Right. There’s a lot less years between 77 and 59 versus 22 and 59. And if you look at the statistic, for every farmer kid that becomes a farmer or claims that as their occupation to leave the industry. So right now it’s two to one, every kid that comes in to leave the industry. Now, to answer your question, though, if you look down, look into the crystal ball, I think agriculture is going to change drastically just because of the lack of farmers. And if you want to look at land prices or if you own a farm, let’s say your parents passed on and left you a farm, I think it might be hard to rent it because there’s just a lack of farmers out there.
Craig Rupp
Now you start to see some companies that are buying up farming operations. But I think it’s going to be hard to scale because land is so expensive and you’re going to need a h*** of a lot of capital to go out and buy, become a corporate farmer if you have to buy all the land. So I think it’s going to be interesting to see just where this all ends up. But one thing I do know that they don’t make farmers anymore as much as they should and I’m not sure how we’re going to make up for that.
Brett
And is the industry as a whole making a big push to try to encourage people to be farmers and encourage more people to go down that path, even if it’s not a path that they knew earlier in their lives?
Craig Rupp
Well, Brett, I’ve never met a first generation farmer. I’ve heard they’re out there, but I’ve yet to meet them. And I always say that. I think our guidance counselors lied to us when they said you can be anything you want. You can’t be a farmer because the capital required to start farming is extreme. And if you want a tractor that’s worthy of, let’s say, well, first of all, you have to get your hands on, you probably need a minimum 1000, 1500 acres if you want to be a full time farmer when the average in the US right now is 423 acres, something like that. Well, you need 1500, let’s say 1000 acres, right. Conventionally you’ll need a 250 HP tractor. So that’s quarter million dollars, probably another 100,000 for a tillage rig, you probably pick up a planter for 120,000. Combine that’s probably 200 grand as well.
Craig Rupp
You’re going to need bins. It just starts to add up and it’s really difficult. The only way you can start farming is if your parents farmed.
Brett
What does that mean then, for the industry? Like 1020 years from now, is all farming just going to be owned by these big private equity firms that no one knows who they are and they just own these massive operations? Or where do you think this really ends up? Is it all just going to get consolidated?
Craig Rupp
I don’t know if it can even get consolidated because if you look at lands going for I’ve seen some land right now at $23,000 per acre. And if you go into just, let’s say just take a typical county that has 300,000 acres, do you know how much money that is just to own all the farmland in a county? So then they’re going to have to turn around, they’re going to have to rent it, right? So someone else is going to own it then you’re going to have to well, good luck buying all that 300,000 acres. So they’re going to have to rent it from people and I think it might turn out to be a buyer’s market. If you own farmland and the problem is it’s just a logistic nightmare because if you got fields all over the spanning three or four counties, I don’t know.
Craig Rupp
I’ve looked into the crystal ball and I don’t know how it’s going to end.
Brett
Yeah, no worries. I appreciate you being candid with that and not giving us something that you were just making up. Now let’s ask a couple of questions here to wrap things up. So what excites you most about the work you get to do every day? Obviously, I can tell from your voice and how you speak that you love what you’re doing. So what is this specifically that you love so much?
Craig Rupp
You know what? Every so up, I sit in the meeting or I see something and I just think to myself, I know this may sound silly, but the other day I saw an installation manual that one of my engineers made, and it is essentially the manual for installing an Autonomy kit on a Kaboda M Five. And I just thought to myself, my God, we’re at a point now in the company’s life where we have an actual installation manual. And you know, a while back I was watching one of my engineers, they were were doing FCC compliance testing and Canadian testing as well. And I’m just thinking to myself, you know, we had the wherewithal and we had the ability to actually pass FCC testing. And so it’s just to see the progress in the company. And I know it’s these little things, but they have to be done.
Craig Rupp
And when I see progress like that, I get kind of excited. I really enjoy it.
Brett
Nice. I love that. Now, last question here for you. Let’s zoom out. Three years into the future, what does the company look like?
Craig Rupp
We’re going to be supporting farmers and our dealers across the US. And we’re going to have hundreds of systems out there. They’re going to be on multiple tractor models, makes and models, and we’re going to be a platform there by which others can develop upon. I think one of the problems in agriculture today is it’s very proprietary, it’s very closed. And what we want to do is we want to give others the ability to add or I guess contribute to agriculture. There’s a lot of implement companies out there that are really innovative, and what’s stopping them from instrumenting or creating technology on their implements is just the proprietary nature of agriculture today. And I want to do something about that as well. Wow.
Brett
Super cool. All right, unfortunately, we are up on time. I’d love to keep you on and keep asking you hundreds of questions here, but we’re going to before we do, if people want to follow along with your journey, where’s the best place for them to go?
Craig Rupp
You can go to our website, sabantoag.com or follow us on Twitter at sabantoag.
Brett
Awesome. Craig, thank you so much for coming on Sharing your story and talking about everything that you’re building. This has been super fun and super interesting. And I wish you the best of luck in executing on this vision.
Craig Rupp
Thanks a lot, Brett. I appreciate it. And thank you for having me on this.
Brett
No problem. Let’s keep in touch.
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