Getting a Gripp on Modern Agriculture with Tracey Wiedmeyer

Jordan Tyler: Welcome back to Founders in Focus, where we're taking you behind the scenes with entrepreneurs redefining the future of animal health, agriculture, and food innovation. Today we're plowing ahead with a founder who's on a mission to take pen and paper documentation and agriculture out to pasture in favor of more streamlined, digitized tools for farm owners and workers.

Tracey Wiedmeyer, serial entrepreneur and founder of Gripp—that's with two Ps—is planting the seed for better farm management tools to help farm owners and their staff keep track of everything from equipment maintenance to assets like buildings, crops, and trees. This tool is poised to play a critical role in professionalizing agriculture by enabling the transfer of tribal knowledge from generation to generation and improving farmers' connectivity to their operations.

Let's dig in. We're your hosts, Jordan Tyler—

Mark McAllister: —and Mark McAllister—

Jordan Tyler: —and this is Founders in Focus.

So Tracey, really great to have you with us today. I'm personally looking forward to learning more about you and about Gripp. I know you and Mark have had many conversations as you've been kind of navigating the Plug and Play Ag Tech Accelerator program. But let's start off today with a quick introduction. If you wouldn't mind just sharing a little bit more about yourself, your background, and how that's led you to where you are today with Gripp?

Tracey Wiedmeyer: Absolutely. So, my career has been a software engineer, technologist. You know, I grew up into my first startup, couple years out of school, kind of got the bug, you know. At that point, I was really just a software architect, you know, just sort of slinging code and loving every minute of it. We took that company basically to get the cash flow positive. We're throwing off about $2 million of EBITDA and the owner's like, “Hey, I'm good with, with that.” Kind of turned it into a lifestyle business, and we're like, “No, let's, give us the $2 million, we'll get you $50 [million].” And he just wasn't about it. And for me, I was like, “God, I wish I could really call the shots there,” because I saw a big opportunity.

So, I left and did a little consulting, but knew the next company I worked for, I wanted to be able to call the shots. And so, I started a company at 28 or 29 with a couple other folks and raised a ton of venture, $70 million, $67 million. We burned through it all in 10 or 12 years. One of the sort of fantastic learning experiences that becomes pretty painful when you walk away with a, you know—I always tell people I walked away with a six pack and a bag of peanuts and a bunch of heartache. You know, we recouped the company.

I wasn't going to stick around to, you know, to work for it anymore and went into some private equity work, and it was the first time as a CTO that I could put a crescent wrench and a laptop in a tool bag, put my boots on, and walk to a customer. You're basically helping them with IoT [Internet of Things] sensors to understand when a 40-yard compactor at a Home Depot or Marshall’s or whatever was full. So, we'd measure the pressure on that hydraulic ram and then call out through a cellular signal to have it emptied.

That company got acquired, but I was like, “Man, that's pretty darn cool.” I grew up on a farm. I own a ton of equipment yet, and so it resonated with me just to get my hands in the grease, but then come back, you know, use the GOJO, clean 'em up, and then do some programming. And so, you know, I was doing that for a few years, doing another private equity roll up, and it just wasn't the same as sort of building something.

So I said, “Hey, I want to do what I was doing again,” with, you know, my previous example and got in touch with Purdue University. Purdue spins out ideas and ag that are underserved. You know, they incubate ideas across, you know, six to eight weeks and then they find entrepreneurs to run it, and it was just a perfect match for me being equipment maintenance related. And so that's sort of the founding story of Gripp. You know, once they, they turned the reins over and how I landed at this position.

Mark McAllister: So, you mentioned Purdue—big fan of the program they've spun up. Tell us a little bit more on the discovery process for the problem you guys are solving. I love how simple you guys are, but maybe walk us through what you were presented with, how you validated that before you took on the project, and then what you've learned about the market and why you think you guys are pretty well-suited to solve a pretty big issue for growers.

Tracey Wiedmeyer: So normally what Purdue does, they recruit 10 or 12 fellows. They call 'em, and then they run the incubation process. So, let's start with 10 or 12 ideas and then whittle it down to two or three that may get funding after that, you know, three-month process. I wasn't part of that, but when they said, “Hey, we're looking for somebody to run this, here's what we've done,” and so they work with, you know, a ton of, agri-food businesses, co-ops, ag retailers, to try to understand what they're doing. And it didn't necessarily start out with a maintenance bent, but through the discovery that they had realized that was a big issue.

And so when I got involved, when this idea escaped their funding process, you know, I took a look at all the, the data that they had, and, you know, two things struck out to me: one, their idea to how to solve this was more of like an Uber for mechanics on farms. And I was like, “Uh, I don't, you know. I know a ton of farmers and I don't think they're going to let some rando on their property to fix a million dollar combine.”

But I own a skid loader and a telehandler, an excavator, and I write the Sharpie hours and miles on the filters, and I could go out and look in my shed and realize that I'm 12 months passed my expiration on the last oil change, so I could resonate with the problem itself. And so, you know, when we started the company myself, my co-founder immediately went on the road, started to talk to a bunch of folks, some of the same people that gave Purdue for information, but some people that I knew or others, and quickly, you know, the idea for underserved equipment maintenance turned into, “Hey, we have trouble tracking everything that we own. It's not just the combines and the tractors, not just the stuff on tires. I got center pivots, I got facilities, you know, I have fixed equipment, motors, all sorts of things.”

And so that became sort of the genesis of, “Hey, there's a real problem here, not tracking just the big expensive stuff, but everything you'd want notes on.” And so, that's sort of where we started with these QR codes. You know, we put QR codes in everything that you want to track. Doesn't matter what it is. Some people are tracking trees, some people are tracking, you know, people to equipment, to facilities, to crops, to acreage, to whatever it ends up being.

And then the second genesis was around the communication part of it. So that's really what's novel to Gripp and why I feel like we've got such a long road in front of us, of opportunities. Because farmers would say, “Hey, when we talk about what we own, where it is, who can operate it, what we did, do what we have to do, how much it costs, it's all text or WhatsApp, maybe email if we're lucky, but it's personal email.”

And so they were saying, “Look, if Mark works for me and Mark leaves the operation, that information goes with theem. I lose that tribal knowledge,” and the light bulb for us was, “Hey, corporate America solved this for decades. You don't bring your personal email to your new job.” Right? There's systems in place, it just hasn't been adopted in ag for quite a few reasons, but that’s largely why, you know, farmers would stay on pen and paper and text is because of what they know and not necessarily what's available. And so we combine asset tracking with communication. We've brought in like electronic forms and really what you get is like what would take three or four different platforms, we've put that into one.

And agriculture is really—it's not really B2B, it's not completely B2C, it's kind of in the middle. And it took somebody to optimize that into one place to make it easy for farmers to use. So that's what we're most excited about is combining all that stuff together.

Mark McAllister: I think a big piece that a lot of investors specific to agtech still don't understand, and maybe even put myself in this category… a lot of growers still use non-digital record keeping, and I think this comes as a surprise to a lot of folks. Obviously, that leaves a lot of opportunity for folks like yourself. But you mentioned, or you alluded to a couple reasons that's still the case for most growers. Get into that a little bit on why digitalization is still such an opportunity, specifically for agtech.

Tracey Wiedmeyer: So just purely on sort of the use-case side, if you were to buy what's out and available in the market today, it would have a couple of characteristics. One, it would probably be built by somebody who doesn't know farming. Two, it would be a point solution for a sliver of what you own. And what I mean by that is you could use John Deere Ops Center for the green stuff, Case for the red stuff, and because farms are getting bigger and more consolidated, they're undoubtedly mixed fleet. Then you could get, you know, Valley Pivot for the irrigation. You get a grain hauling app for the grain facilities—all of a sudden you've got five or six different apps and most farmers are like, “Hey, it's the same operators operating all that stuff. So I have to pay different pricing models. I've got to train the same person on five different apps—not going to do it.”And so, you know, that's sort of a thematic kind of issue there.

The generational part is, what I joke about a lot is the CTO of the farm right now is basically the youngest person, right? It's the grandson who’s, you know, grandpa's 65 and his dad's, you know, 45 or whatever it is, and what they know are things like Snapchat and WhatsApp and text and taking pictures. And so you get those things, what they know, not the necessarily the best things out there. And you get those things combined and that's why people are like, “I'm not paying for expensive stuff. We don't use complexity and we're just going to use what we know.” And we've seen that for, you know, virtually all the farms you've been on.

Mark McAllister: Yeah. And that continues to prevail.

Tracey Wiedmeyer: Yeah.

Mark McAllister: We're 15 years into a lot of these tools starting to enter agtech, and this is still the case for a lot of the growers that I talk to. It sounds like that's certainly true for you.

Tracey Wiedmeyer: Yeah, we've got a big guy, you know, I don’t know, like 30- or 40,000 acres, 25,000 head of cattle, 30 employees—pen, paper, and WhatsApp. I mean, literally like you're running multi tens of millions of dollars of business on those tools.

Jordan Tyler: From someone who doesn't have personal experience in agriculture other than eating food, that is absolutely insane to me, and I think part of why this conversation is so important, right? We all rely on the agricultural system and helping everyday people understand how it works and how it can be improved is a great way, I think, to get buy-in for the next step forward. And then the next step after that and, and so on.

I'm curious, we've talked to other founders that are going through the Plug and Play program right now, and there have been some people that have sort of happened upon other applications or use cases for their technology or their solution in markets that kind of surprise them. I know you're super focused on agtech and helping growers and farmers, but have you had any other conversations that maybe surprised you about how something like Gripp could be implemented in another market or for another sector?

Tracey Wiedmeyer: Yeah, I mean, in sort of adjacent blue-collar spaces, we see an opportunity anywhere you've got one person doing 10 jobs. So, that’s a lot of construction, there's a lot of fabrication, industrial, and they're probably all the small- and medium-sized businesses there because the larger ones have people in an office sitting in a cube. They can get real deep into software and, you know, force usage of it.

But everyone else, they're on the go all the time trying to manage projects and people. It's a great fit for them because you don't have to be trained every time you pick the app up and it just becomes part of how you do business.

Now, there's a couple other things for us that are, are resonating. One is anytime you see that paper sheet on the back of a bathroom that's like, “Jimmy scrubbed the toilets and changed the toilet paper,” and his initials are on there with a date, right? Those are things where, you know, we see opportunities. So, some of our largest, like apple growers have facilities, hundreds of people, they're using us to do that, but, you know, you walk through any airport, you see that still today. You walk through any, you know, corporate office, you see some of that stuff.

And so, you know, and that was one of the things on one of the tours we did through Plug and Play in Topeka, there was a lab setting that we went through. I was like, “Oh, it's a lab. Like what are… how do we…” and not only the bathrooms, but every cooler that was chilling solutions or agar plates or whatever it was had a little paper on there of somebody that checked the temperature, that they had to use for audit purposes. And so, there's opportunities like that that, you know, are virtually any place you visit, you can see something like that.

Jordan Tyler: Yeah, those are really interesting and I think something, you know, we can all relate to. And I do love your focus on helping out people and teams that do what some might call “invisible labor” or you know, work that's typically happening behind the scenes and therefore undervalued like the everyday maintenance of establishments and operations that we traverse or benefit from every single day. You know, everything from the people that clean our bathrooms to the people that grow and harvest our food.

Tracey Wiedmeyer: Yeah, and Mark mentioned investing before and what we've seen in some of these other—I guess we could call 'em competitors, but non-ag software—they've all raised, you know, a hundred million plus dollars and they're all going after the high six- and seven-figure deals because they have to live into some of the valuations and the sales projections and things like that.

And so for us, that small, medium-sized business in ag and adjacent is right for us, and we've architected the entire business around that, right? We keep our costs low so that we can keep our product cost efficient for the smallest guy as well as the biggest guy in these spaces, which is never going to be the biggest guy in the space. We're happy to cede that to everybody else, but there's such a middle ground there and it takes that thoughtful deliberateness from the beginning through product and go to market to make that happen.

Mark McAllister: Yeah, there's a piece from, probably 15 years old, but Paul Graham wrote a blog and he explained what he called the “schlep blindness.” I dunno if you've seen this. I'll send you the link after this. But he is like, “The great companies find the things that everyone considers the schlep jobs.” It's the backend jobs that nobody wants to do. Nobody wants to manage it. It's not sexy. Maybe it's super simple. Like, you know, where's the data on the last time we changed the vehicle oil—like nobody wants to manage that and no one's targeting that as a market. And it's the guys who show up and say, “Yeah, we can solve that tomorrow,” who will actually succeed beyond maybe a more complex product offering, because they're just willing to do the schlep work that nobody else wants to manage.

Tracey Wiedmeyer: Yeah, definitely. We see that. We see that all the time. I mean, a lot of times the youngest users on Gripp are the happiest because a, they've been saying, “Dad,” or, “Boss,” or “Grandpa, like, you really want me to write this on paper? Like if that's what you're asking me to do…” And so when they have tools like this that are as approachable for them as they are for their grandpa, it just becomes a force multiplier. Now you get this culture of care because they just love, they love using it.

Jordan Tyler: Yeah. That's awesome to hear. And if y'all are curious to read that blog by Paul Graham on Schlep Blindness, we've linked that in the show notes for you to check out.

Mark McAllister: I think the biggest compliment for Gripp is there's such an advantage for your product, specifically in just the go to market strategy for ag. Anybody can understand what you guys are doing. I can understand it in 30 seconds, just as easily as a grower can understand that. I think that advantage for growers who've been pitched so much from the innovation side—a lot of biotech, a lot of complex solutions, a lot of, you know, sensing, a lot of full data management—you know, these very largesse systems, where I always love the fact that anytime Tracey walks in the room, everyone can understand what you do in the first minute, and it's crystal clear. I just love the simplicity of that and I think that will continue to advantage you guys in agtech and in other markets as well.

Tracey Wiedmeyer: And that, again, like that mindset has permeated the entire business model for us. Even something as simple as like, you know, our setup process is two to three steps. Put a QR code on it, take a picture, give the asset a name, and it's ready to go instead of like this, “Hey Mark, we're gonna take six months. Give all your data,” and that immediately gives it farmers anxiety, because they just don't have that, it's like in their head or a spreadsheet or whatever. So, we've rinsed that, we have month to month pricing, you know, where you don't have to pay me next month if it doesn't work, there's no risk, you know, prices are low.

And to your point on the go-to-market, we've got some software partnerships in the works. We've started to announce a few of those. And if it wasn't dead simple to sell, they wouldn't be taking it on. But I've had so many people just echo what you've said is like, “God, I get this. I have chickens in my backyard that I could use this on.” We can sell this to our customers because it's so simple, and so that helps me take approaches in ag that few people have had success at.

Mark McAllister: Super cool. I know in some of our previous conversations, we've chatted about your past experiences at various companies, different industries. I'd love to know how you stack up the hurdles you faced at Gripp relative to the hurdles you faced at other companies, whether you expected that to be higher, whether you expected that to be lower, and then obviously how you've dealt with those, overcome them, specifically with Gripp.

Tracey Wiedmeyer: I think, you know, I've worked in other industries that are cyclical, so like consumer packaged goods, you know, they reset once a year. So, they plan Q2, they decide what to do in Q3, they implement Q4, they measure Q1, and then they redo that. So, there's a cyclicality there, but nothing I've been in is as cyclical as ag.

Like right now, folks are out planting. I could say, “Look, I’ve got a gold bar for everybody who signs up for Gripp today,” and I would still not get a callback. And it's the same in the fall time with harvest. You know, it's very, very similar. But then, you know, November to March, all the traveling is done—it's conferences, it's visiting people, it's, you know, there were times this past spring where I was on the road for, you know, 15 to 20 days at a time. Exhausting. But you have to do it, you know, to meet your customers where they hang out. So, I think, you know, that's one.

And then, when we first started the company, we were like, why hasn't somebody solved this? We had a lot of people saying like, it just can't possibly be this way. And I think part of it is ag is sort of in this middle ground of B2B and B2C. Like these are sometimes $5-, $10-, $15-, $20-million businesses, but they approach technology and digitization much like a consumer would. So that means the tech's got to be very simple. The pricing's got to be, you know, easy to understand, low risk, and I just, it doesn't feel like folks have taken that approach before.

So you, you've got the non-ag software as a fleet management, you know, people have tried to use those—they just don't work because nobody's been in that buddy seat with a farmer understanding their day to day. You know, we had a story when we first started that somebody from Silicon Valley was visiting a farmer to try to show them what they had, and he couldn't get his Honda Accord into the field and he just gave up and left. And if he would've gotten into the field, I'm sure he wouldn't have been able to resonate with the farmer anyways.

And so you have that type of approach, this mindset of like, “I'm goint to tell the farmer how to operate,” instead of, you know, be a multiplier for them. And so though, I think it's a combination of those types of things that, you know, somebody had to be from the inside, but enough information from the outside and experiences to bring those things together.

Jordan Tyler: Yeah, absolutely. It's typically not a best practice to contact a brain surgeon when you need plumbing work done, right? Well, same thing here—you know, you wouldn't ask a brain surgeon, or a plumber for that matter, to streamline your farm operations. You need people who live and breathe agriculture to come up with solutions that truly address farmers' pain points while still integrating their established ways of working.

So going back to some of the hurdles you faced growing past businesses and now growing Gripp, I'm curious to hear how the Plug and Play program has really served you as a founder, Gripp as a startup, and get some color just around your experiences being in the program.

Tracey Wiedmeyer: Yeah, I mean, there's a couple things that that stick out. One is the breadth of the verticals that Plug and Play operates in and that we're exposed to, gives us the opportunity to meet founders in different situations. And you know, one of the things that’s served Gripp so well is getting viewpoints for people not in ag. Like, why shouldn't this work? Why couldn't it work? Tell me, you know, what your viewpoint is.

And I always thank the raving fans we have, as well as the skeptics. And the skeptics oftentimes keep us sharp as a tack in terms of the approaches we have. But that's one of the benefits, you know, of the events that I've been at has allowed me to be exposed to just a wider range of people going through similar challenges, different industries, different growth, you know, stages, and that's been enormously helpful throughout my entire career, you know, not just atGripp.

And then I think within the ag space itself, like we've just been introduced to so many folks, like the mentorship network has been great. You know, I've got access to some of the top tier folks who are, you know, excellent marketers or, you know, know livestock well, or equipment and dealership mechanics. And so, those things, for us to have those sort of on speed dial, you know, are incredibly valuable for us, you know, to be able to tap into.

And then visiting, you know, extension offices, you know, K-State, the learnings we've had there and being exposed to some of the things they're working on has opened up some commercial opportunities that we, you know, we just never would've had an opportunity to look at.

Mark McAllister: It's great to hear. We appreciate anytime we get to, to support startups like yourself. So, I'd be interested, and I guess maybe this could be personal, this could be work. Either one thing that you changed your mind on since having worked on Gripp or maybe just the biggest lesson that you learned as part of specifically just this project over the last couple years?

Tracey Wiedmeyer: The biggest thing that we focus on is, you know, and we've been caught a few times, is the simplicity of what we're trying to build. You know, we've been in market for a year. It's been, you know, there's increasing numbers of things that different variations of growers, large co-ops and retailers are asking us to provide. And so, you know, I call it taking the second best answer, not the first easy one. And we apply that to our design process and our very rigorous in terms of debating what goes where.

You know, there's been a few times where we've released a couple of things, early adopter features for some of our growers, and, you know, we had some big like “aha!” moments, kind of pound, you know, your face into the hand type of thing, because it was like, “Yeah, this is just way too complex.” Like, and if we are known for one thing, it's the simplicity and ease of use. And if we start to degrade that process, it has to go through and be part of our entire identity and culture. And in the hustle and bustle of trying to hit sales numbers and pitch and, you know, present and all these types of things, sometimes, you know, that gets lost and we've tried to keep that as our North Star.

Jordan Tyler: That's really interesting. I think, you know, so many lean teams could benefit from more of like an iterative approach and like you said, not only taking the good feedback, but really, really focusing on that skeptical feedback and working that into your business plan. And, and I like the way that you put that—it keeps you sharp.

Tracey Wiedmeyer: Yeah, and we're on like interface redesign, so not just feature redesign, but the entire look and feel, like we're on version three in 12 months. And it's because like what we don't want to do is hang one more feature off of here and now it's seven clicks deep. Instead, look at all the things that we have to provide and re-architect and design those into one space. And it's not easy to do. And the complexity that we hide to the user is something that we've become really good at, but we have to continue to be very, very good at that.

Jordan Tyler: Yeah, that's a cool insight for sure. Shifting more into the personal side. I've had the pleasure of chatting with way more entrepreneurs through this podcast than usual, and I've got to say, it sounds like it can be so grueling. So, how do you stay sane? Like how do you balance your personal life with the demands of running a startup?

Tracey Wiedmeyer: Yeah, I mean, it's definitely not easy. I've been doing this for 15, 20 years going on, you know, with startups in some form or fashion. I think that, you know, the way I approach these, it's a very quick mental scorecard in terms of if I'm going to do this, can I make it or turn it into something that doesn't feel like work? Because if I can't—like the one time in my career where it didn't last long, it wasn't even a startup, I was working for a bank and it took me six months to realize. I wanted to stab my eyes out. Like I remember going up in the elevator and one of the SVPs, you know, grabbing my shirt collar and saying, “Son, there's not enough starch in that shirt.” And I was like, this isn't the place for me. You know?

And so I think I've been fortunate enough and, I guess like, astute enough to make decisions quickly. If it doesn't feel like a good fit, I'm going to exit and find something that is, because like many entrepreneurs, you know, I go 150% in. Like, it's not just all in, it's everything—my entire life, my relationships—and it's a huge trade off. I mean, I've got two college-age daughters, you know, that are moving out of the nest and on their own, and that gives me a little bit more time to focus on not necessarily raising kids, but, you know, I'm divorced and, you know, my relationships when I look back are things that, you know, maybe I could have cultivated better, but thankfully I can always rest on what I'm doing, the passion that I have, the people I work with.

You know, we've got a great set of folks at Gripp that we've worked with a bunch of times in the past, you know, and we all like to follow each other into the burning fire and, you know, have fun doing it. And so I think, you know, in some respects it's perhaps a sad story, but I approach it differently and look at the positives and try to, you know, continue to get sharper from here on out in how I approach business, relationships, all that sort of stuff.

Jordan Tyler: I appreciate your honesty there because really, it looks different for everybody. If it looked the same for everybody, everybody would fail, right? And so, you do have to make it work for your own lifestyle. And it sounds like, you know, you're really driven by a passion for this. You're not just doing this to make a buck, you're doing it because it really matters to you and because you enjoy it.

Tracey Wiedmeyer: I'm such a builder at heart, whether it's, you know, that's why I've been building this house, building a company, tinkering in, you know, whatever it is. It's just such a core part of me that if I wasn't to curate that process, like, I probably wouldn't be happy at the end of the day.

Mark McAllister: I love that. I love that a lot. Let's maybe close the conversation here, painting the future of ag. So, we discussed maybe the latency in digitalization across ag. Where do you see the next five years of increased data management, increased operational efficiencies, and maybe paint the broader picture and then we can narrow in on how Gripp solves some of that—but give me the next five, 10 years of ag technology.

Tracey Wiedmeyer: Yeah, so I think there's a trend, you know, and it started a while ago, but it's right at that moment where I think it's going to have to require some steam, is basically this concept of like professionalizing the farm, right? Because there's a couple of things that happen. Generational change—how do you hand the farm off to the next person? There was somebody that I had talked to a few weeks ago and they talked about this concept of like “hand-me-down farms,” which, not in a derogatory way, but you've got third, fourth generation doing it the same way their dad did it, who did it the same way that the grandpa did it. Right? And with international pressures, commodity pricing, even things like, GLP-1s changing the carbohydrates, you know, availability across all of food forces, this idea that you have to diversify row crops perhaps with a protein operation, and what that means is different numbers of expert people, different types of equipment, bigger operations.

And so, if you don't put all that into a melting pot and figure out how to streamline just the building blocks of managing people effectively so they stay on your operation, managing equipment, accounting, your inputs and costs related to it, regenerative, like if you can't figure out an approach, you're just not going to be a farm in five or 10 years. And that's always been the case for the last 20 years. I mean, my grandpa, my dad, they no longer farm the farms I grew up on because of consolidation. But the pressures are so acute right now that if you don't take that seriously, you know, you're just not going to be in business, and it's been more pressing now than it's ever been in the past.

Jordan Tyler: So how do you think Gripp plays into this kind of futurescape that you just described? You know, what does the long-term vision for Gripp look like?

Tracey Wiedmeyer: Yeah, so there's a couple of approaches. Like, on the go-to-market side, it's really finding the folks that are leading those initiatives. We've got a couple of partners, you know, in accounting and crop consultants, agronomy, the ones that are not just saying, “Hey, I'm going to send you a prescription for the next input that you're going to buy,” but, “Let's step back and talk about how you manage people, or what your approach is to maintaining equipment for five years more, or your credit risk.”

And if you can, like we've had a couple of large ag banks say, “Look, it's a credit risk for us when the farmer doesn't maintain his equipment because it sets off red flags for the rest of the operation.” And so when you think about partners that are shuffling that in, we're just a small part of that piece. But we want to partner with those folks so we have awareness.

I think the second part is, you know, I had a guy this morning actually tell me, he said, “I was talking to somebody who said AI is going to destroy software as a service in ag.” Probably other industries, it already has, right? There's this autophagy process going on. But the point was, any farmer in the future, and it may take longer than we think, but any farmer in the future could vibe code or vibe prompt his way to a farm management system or asset tracking or X, Y, Z, whatever it is, you know? And I'm like, that's true.

Where that starts to break down though, is when your software platforms requires a network of people to interact on it. And so, when you talk about long-term strategy for Gripp, it's taking that into account to give us a moat, a distribution advantage through these partnerships and a network advantage by allowing the farm to communicate with other trusted advisors, third-party mechanics, their OEMs, their dealers, so they're all, in a way, not necessarily monetarily transacting business, but working together on the assets that are most important to the farm. And so, we’re executing a bunch of different things here that'll roll off the street this summer to start to build that moat.

Jordan Tyler: Super exciting stuff to stay tuned for. I just think this is such a fascinating technology because, as you said earlier Tracey, everybody eats food. That in and of itself brings you close to the agriculture industry, but I do still think there are so many people out there who just don't have visibility into the complexity of what it takes to grow and raise our food. And so hopefully highlighting some of these challenges and how they've really held farmers back in the past and how this technology is kind of swooping in to solve them is really cool.

Tracey Wiedmeyer: I mean, only good things happen when those who consume the food understand those who grew it, and I would encourage everybody to do more and more of that. There's a trend there too, but, you know, I think the future's bright if we can do more of that.

Jordan Tyler: And before we let you go today, do you wanna tell our listeners where they can learn more about Gripp and how to get in touch with you?

Tracey Wiedmeyer: Sure. So, you can go to our website, it's gripp.ag. We've got a phone number there, email, all that sort of stuff. You can also reach out to me personally on LinkedIn. You know, I see a lot of stuff coming across there as well.

Jordan Tyler: Excellent. We have put links to Gripp's website and Tracey's LinkedIn profile in the show notes for everyone, and we've also put more on C2 Ventures’ “dull, dirty, and dangerous” fund, which Tracey mentioned earlier, in the show notes as well if you're curious.

A huge thanks to Tracey Wiedmeyer for sharing his time and passion with us today. From QR codes in the field to closing the loop on generational wisdom on the farm Gripp is modernizing more than just operations—it's helping cultivate the future of agriculture from the ground up.

If you'll be at the Plug and Play Animal Health and Agtech June Expo, find us there! We'd love to chat. We're planning some super fun, interactive stuff to do at Expo around this podcast and the Plug and Play program and you won't want to miss it.

To all our listeners, thanks for tuning in today. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe, leave us a review, and share this episode with a friend. We've got more incredible founders and industry disruptors coming your way soon, so be sure to stay tuned. Until then, remember—every breakthrough has a unique beginning, and behind every founder is a story worth hearing. We'll see you next time!