CSIRO Greenhouse: starting off with startups

June 6th, 2018

On Tuesday and Wednesday I joined 14 agtech startups and 30 CSIRO colleagues at Greenhouse. It was an experiment devised by CSIRO Agriculture & Food and brokered by Main Sequence Ventures: put CSIRO scientists and startups into a room, mix thoroughly and see what ideas for collaboration emerge.

Personal highlights included:

  • the diversity of topics, home towns and people who are starting up agtech firms here in Australia
  • finding 2-3 people who may be able use things we are building in Digiscape right away
  • CSIRO folk pitching nearly as well (on average) about their capacities as the startup teams did about their offerings

Thanks to MSV and my colleague Dave Henry for organizing the event, and to Sarah Nolet and Cass Mao of Agthentic for their excellent facilitation.