Sowing Seeds for the Future: Sabanto

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Unshakeables - "Sowing Seeds for the Future: Sabanto"

Introduction

In the episode titled "Sowing Seeds for the Future: Sabanto," The Unshakeables podcast, hosted by Ben Walter of Chase for Business and supported by iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio, delves into the transformative journey of Sabanto Agriculture—a company revolutionizing American farming through autonomous technology. The episode features insightful conversations with Craig Rupp, founder of Sabanto, Satchin Sehgal, founder of Elevate Digital Marketing, and Brian Lamb, head of the northeast segment for the middle market at Chase for Business. Released on November 5, 2024, this episode captures the essence of resilience and innovation in the face of agricultural challenges.

Guest Backgrounds

• Craig Rupp: Grew up on a farm in Cherokee, Iowa, and transitioned from an electrical engineer to an entrepreneur. Craig's experience spans working with giants like Motorola, John Deere, Apple, and BlackBerry before founding Sabanto Agriculture.

• Satchin Sehgal: Founder of Elevate Digital Marketing in Des Moines, Iowa. A lifelong Iowan, Satchin champions Midwest innovation, emphasizing the region's burgeoning tech and entrepreneurial spirit.

• Brian Lamb: Head of the northeast segment for the middle market at Chase for Business. Brian provides expertise on scaling businesses and navigating the complexities of growth.

Sabanto's Journey: From Farm to Autonomous Agriculture

Craig Rupp’s journey with Sabanto began with a deep-rooted connection to farming and a passion for technological innovation. Initially skeptical about returning to farm life, Craig found his calling in addressing the critical shortage of labor in agriculture through autonomy.

• Early Challenges: Craig launched Sabanto in May 2019 amidst skepticism and technical hurdles. [13:03] He described enduring harsh conditions, including blizzards and equipment malfunctions, while attempting to plant 350 acres of cover crops. The initial trials were fraught with difficulties, leading to long nights and moments of doubt. [16:49]

• Breakthrough and Growth: Persistence paid off in 2021 when Sabanto successfully operated continuously for 48 hours on a 480-acre field, demonstrating reliable path planning and tractor control. This breakthrough led to significant growth, with Sabanto now supporting 19 tractor models and serving over 30 customers nationwide. [21:38]

Overcoming Obstacles with Innovation and Teamwork

Craig emphasized the importance of a dedicated team and the integration of AI to bridge the manual-to-tech divide in farming. He shared:

• Team Building: Securing $2 million in funding allowed Craig to expand Sabanto's team, convincing five professionals to join his mission. [15:41]

• Technological Integration: Sabanto’s product, Steward, retrofits existing tractors with autonomous capabilities, allowing farmers to maintain their current equipment while embracing automation. [22:12] Craig highlighted the balance between AI efficiency and the indispensable human touch in operations. [10:17]

AI in Agriculture and Business

The conversation with Satchin Sehgal broadened the discussion to the role of AI in modern businesses:

• AI Utilization: Satchin explained how AI tools like chatbots and automation enhance business processes, reducing manual workload while still requiring human oversight. [09:08]

• Addressing Job Concerns: Satchin reassured that AI complements rather than replaces human jobs, emphasizing the necessity of human intervention for final outputs. [10:17] Ben Walter concurred, drawing parallels with past technological revolutions that ultimately created more jobs. [10:45]

Scaling to the Middle Market with Brian Lamb

Introducing Brian Lamb, the discussion transitioned to strategies for scaling businesses:

• Middle Market Dynamics: Brian defined the middle market as companies reaching significant revenue milestones and increased operational complexity, requiring robust infrastructure and talent management. [26:03]

• Key Growth Challenges: He identified working capital management, talent acquisition, and strategic partnerships as critical areas needing attention during scaling. [26:15]

• Leadership Transition: Brian noted the trend of founders bringing in professional CEOs to better align with the company’s evolving needs, ensuring sustained growth and preserving core culture. [28:32]

• Infrastructure Building: Emphasizing the importance of technology investments, cybersecurity, and reliable financial reporting, Brian advised businesses to prepare for increased operational demands. [29:53]

Regional Advantages and the Midwest Tech Scene

Satchin Sehgal provided insights into the unique advantages of starting and owning a business in Iowa:

• Vibrant Entrepreneurial Community: Des Moines boasts a thriving network of resources, fostering innovation and easy connections within the community. [35:01]

• Balancing Tech and Agriculture: Despite limited local tech talent compared to major cities, entrepreneurs like Craig successfully merge agricultural expertise with technological advancements by leveraging connections from larger tech hubs. [34:17]

Notable Quotes

• Craig Rupp:

  • "I knew agriculture, I knew machines. I wanted to disrupt the industry. I wanted to send a message that autonomy is coming in agriculture." [01:17]
  • "The next generation tractor is the one you already own." [23:50]

• Satchin Sehgal:

  • "Automation and AI are going to be a huge help for small businesses." [09:08]
  • "We see it on our end a lot where the AI will get you really close to the end result that you're looking for, but you still need to do a little bit of manual input." [10:17]

• Brian Lamb:

  • "Managing your working capital and the cash collection cycle could become very complex as you get much bigger." [26:03]
  • "When you grow, slow down and just realize what got you to that point, you may have to do some things differently to continue to scale and grow." [28:32]

Conclusion

"Sowing Seeds for the Future: Sabanto" encapsulates the essence of resilience and innovation in small business entrepreneurship. Craig Rupp’s journey with Sabanto highlights the critical role of technology in addressing agricultural challenges, while insights from Satchin Sehgal and Brian Lamb provide a comprehensive understanding of scaling businesses and leveraging regional strengths. This episode serves as an inspiring testament to The Unshakeables, showcasing how steadfast determination and innovative thinking can transform industries and empower communities.

For those interested in the intersection of agriculture and technology, and the stories of small businesses making a nationwide impact, this episode offers valuable lessons and motivation.

Transcript

[Ben Walter]

Iowa, the land of fields. Whether it's fields full of corn or fields full of baseball dreams, and those fields, they're often full of tractors. The site is so common, most people don't even notice them until they notice that they're driving with no one at the steering wheel. County sheriff's office can help you. I just saw something a little strange. A tractor out in the cornfield that.

[Craig Rupp]

Was driving along by itself.

[Ben Walter]

There was nobody on the tractor, but it was moving.

[Craig Rupp]

Could you actually tell there was nobody in it?

[Ben Walter]

Yeah, because it's an open cab tractor.

[Craig Rupp]

Okay.

[Ben Walter]

It was open cab and there was no one on the seat. I just felt like I should probably let somebody know. I don't know if someone can go out there and just check to see.

[Satchin Sehgal]

Okay, have somebody check it out.

[Ben Walter]

Okay, thank you. All right, thanks. That's just one of many times that Craig Rupp had 911 called on him. And not because he's going around pushing people out of tractors, but because his company, Sibanto, is changing the way America farms forever.

[Craig Rupp]

I knew agriculture, I knew machines. I wanted to disrupt the industry. I wanted to send a message that autonomy is coming in agriculture. That's why I think the next generation tractors are already sitting in your machine shed.

[Ben Walter]

Welcome to the Unshakables from Chase for Business and Ruby Studio from iHeartMedia. I'm Ben Walter, CEO of Chase for Business. On the Unshakeables, we're sharing the daring moments of small business owners facing their crisis points and telling the stories of how they got through it. If you're new to the show, welcome. If you've been listening, welcome back. Over the next few weeks, we'll be highlighting exceptional small businesses from across the country. We'll also be hearing from experts in those markets who can tell us what the business and communities supporting them mean for America. But this week, we're firmly in the Hawkeye State and we have two great guests joining us today, Brian Lamb and Satchin Sehgal. You know, the more we learned about Sibanto and Craig's business, the more it made sense to have those intimately familiar with the local market come on and chat with us. Sachin is the founder of Elevate Digital Marketing, an agency based in Des Moines, Iowa. Sachin, welcome to the Unshakeables.

[Satchin Sehgal]

Thank you very much, Ben. It's great to meet you. So I really love Iowa. I grew up here. I have a small business here and I really love it as a place for innovation. I know most people picture the coasts when they think about AI and tech. But there's so much happening in the Midwest that I'm excited to show off.

[Ben Walter]

All right, let's get into the show. This is Sabanto Agriculture from Ames, Iowa. I was fortunate enough to spend some time in Iowa this summer. What really stood out to me is just how much Iowans love Iowa. I talked to some terrific people, and it's amazing how people all over Iowa seem to have this real emotional and almost physical connection to agriculture. It's just a way of life in Iowa. So as soon as I met Craig, there was one question I had to ask immediately. Craig, I believe you grew up on a farm, is that right?

[Craig Rupp]

I most certainly did. I grew up in a farm in northwest Iowa, a little town called cherokee. It's about 5,000 people now. And it was corn, soybeans, hogs, and cattle.

[Ben Walter]

What was that like growing up in an agricultural community?

[Craig Rupp]

You know, it felt normal while I was there.

[Ben Walter]

I guess that's what you knew, right? That was your life?

[Craig Rupp]

Yeah, yeah. And everyone I knew had something to do with farming. Chores in the morning, chores in the afternoon. When you got home from school, you know, you had to feed the cattle, feed the hogs. You know, I just assumed that this was part of growing up outside working.

[Ben Walter]

So when you were growing up in this rural community on a farm, did you imagine someday you would own a business?

[Craig Rupp]

No, it was never really a plan. I never would have imagined that I would ever start a company. The little town I grew up in had a Radio Shack, and then, by God, they had books and you could learn about electronics. It was like the Internet for me back in the early 80s. 1984, when I graduated high school and went to college to become an electrical engineer, I was convinced that was the last time I would ever set my foot on a farm again.

[Ben Walter]

Craig followed that engineering track, working at Motorola in the 90s, where he did hardware development for mobile phones. Around 1995, Craig and some fellow Motorolans saw an opportunity. Mobile and cellular devices were taking off.

[Craig Rupp]

We had decided that we're going to start a consulting company. We would meet in the mornings at a local restaurant, and then we kind of did the old pinky promise that if we could get $30,000 in contracts, then that would hold us out to the end of. And it turns out about two weeks later, we had $30,000 in contracts. So we gave her two weeks notice and went out and started what was called Alliance Technologies Group.

[Ben Walter]

Craig kept chasing his curiosity, working at John Deere, Apple, BlackBerry, Nokia, Samsung, and a few other household Names. And while he never imagined he'd be an entrepreneur, once he started Alliance Technologies Group, he couldn't stop. You have started how many companies?

[Craig Rupp]

This is my sixth.

[Ben Walter]

So the fifth company he started was called 640 Labs. It combined his work at John Deere on internal cab displays with his work on the Apple iPads cloud data storage system.

[Craig Rupp]

My brother still farms. I was at his farm, I was sitting in one of his tractors that he just bought and I saw this little port. All the engine data is on this port. And then my friend and I, we started this company and the whole idea was we're going to take data off of that port or off of these vehicles, agriculture data into the iPad, iPad up into the cloud. So it was a very inexpensive way of collecting data. 18 months later we got acquired by Monsanto.

[Ben Walter]

At Monsanto he was back in regular conversation with farmers.

[Craig Rupp]

I had a unique skill set. I knew farmers, I knew, you know, what made them tick. I can talk with him about planting corn, soybeans, and you know, I'd always ask the question, what keeps you up at night? And it was always labor. You know, it wasn't the cost of labor, it was the lack of labor.

[Ben Walter]

The availability of farm labor has changed over the years. The average age of the American farmer is 59. And farm families are much smaller than they used to be.

[Craig Rupp]

I have 57 first cousins.

[Ben Walter]

Wow.

[Craig Rupp]

And both my parents had double digit brothers and sisters and all of them had a lot of children. And now just you have four kids now. That's a big family. I thought autonomy is the answer for it.

[Ben Walter]

Okay, so this is where I want to bring Sachin back in. Satchin, you've lived in Iowa your entire adult life and it seems like you have no plans to leave. So what did you think about Craig's departure? He said he never wanted to step foot on a farm again.

[Satchin Sehgal]

You know, it's interesting. I bet many people had the same ideas, Craig, but there's a lot of people moving back to the area post Covid because they kind of realize that Des Moines has quite a bit to offer in terms of innovation and entrepreneurship. So it's kind of nice to see a boom coming back back in.

[Ben Walter]

We've heard from Craig about the path he took and his background leading him to a place like Sabanto. But what's striking to me is that this is a guy who said he never wanted to be back in Iowa, never be back on a farm. And now he's created an agriculture company and is farming full time. I mean, what do you make of that?

[Satchin Sehgal]

You know, we've seen a lot of companies in Iowa and Des Moines specifically come out of the agricultural space and a lot of companies providing new, innovative solutions to older problems. We've seen recycling companies doing things like plastic recycling. We've seen fertilization companies with different types of fertilization techniques and planters with different planting companies. So Craig is really pioneering his way in that field on the agricultural side of things, using AI and automation to bridge that manual to tech divide.

[Ben Walter]

You know, so much evidence of innovation in that sector. So. But I do want to talk about AI for a second because it's everywhere. You can't pick up the paper without reading about it, assuming you actually pick up a paper anymore. But that's a different issue and it's changing. People are talking about it changing the way we all do business. So do you use AI in your work?

[Satchin Sehgal]

We use AI all the time. We use multiple different tools. It's kind of a common theme that we're seeing with a lot of businesses actually using AI in different ways to bridge that gap between maybe manual processes that they've been doing in the past and completely digitally native processes that they're moving in towards. Even if that's just an email follow up Automation when a client checks out or just finding AI chatbots or even call bots that someone can call and interact with. Yeah, automation and AI are going to be a huge help for small businesses. One of my clients in particular, similar to Craig, their business leads with AI as a solution. They're a telecom provider and one of the things they provide is an AI detection of safety equipment for schools, organizations, municipalities. So you know, when you see someone with a fire hazard or some sort of threat to, you know, the safety of a building. This company is using AI to basically dispatch emergency services.

[Ben Walter]

So Craig's goal with Sabanto is to make up for the lack of human labor and farming where he sees a shortage. And that could stoke a lot of people's fear about AI replacing human jobs. What would you say to them?

[Satchin Sehgal]

There may be rules that are just moved around in the company, but at the end of the day, you definitely need a person before you can just push AI content out there, unless it's pretty much just gathering information. So we see it on our end a lot where the AI will get you really close to the end result that you're looking for, but you still need to do a little bit of manual input. It does a great job with graphics design, things like that as well. But it just still needs a human touch at the end of it to get it ready for production.

[Ben Walter]

I tend to agree with you, Satchin. I think we've had other technological revolutions before, and there's always been the threat of job eliminations, and there always have been some, but they've always created more jobs than they've eliminated. They've just been different. And I think this time will be no different. So back to Craig. He, like Satchin, knew the problem, not enough help on the farm. And the solution, it's autonomy. If this was a math test, this would be the part where Craig would have to show his work. I'll let him walk you through the steps.

[Craig Rupp]

So I've written software, done hardware. I have started companies in the past. I knew farmers. I knew what made them tick. And I used to work a lot automating manufacturing plants. If there's anyone that can do this, I can do this. In 2018, I started the company. I went out and leased 4220, a JCB tractor. And I went out and bought an 18 row, 20 inch planter. And I got a CDL.

[Ben Walter]

That's a commercial driver's license, by the way. Craig got it so he could drive the semi truck to haul his tractor to farms across America.

[Craig Rupp]

And I spent the winter writing software.

[Ben Walter]

Wow. I promise I'm tracking. At least I know what a planter is. When you start telling me what kind of planter, I confess I've lost the plot. But to anyone who's worked on a farm, I'm assuming they know.

[Craig Rupp]

Yeah, It's a standard 18 row, 20 inch, and we're planting soybeans. Farmers are kind of an odd group of people. They, you know, they won't trust anyone to plant corn.

[Ben Walter]

The only thing I know about corn is it's supposed to be thigh high by the 4th of July.

[Craig Rupp]

Yeah, that, that was back in the 30s or so, but now, you know, now it's typically shoulder high by the 4th of July.

[Ben Walter]

With corn off the table, Craig went after soybeans. He set his sights on having a minimum viable product to test. In the spring of 2019, he spoke to a few people about testing the tractor out on their fields.

[Craig Rupp]

Agriculture has two degrees of separation. So I swear to God, I can get to any farmer in the US through two people.

[Ben Walter]

If you're keeping score, that's 4 degrees less than Kevin Bacon would need to get to someone.

[Craig Rupp]

Yeah, I've met him, by the way.

[Ben Walter]

Word of Craig's wild autonomous planter spread quickly.

[Craig Rupp]

After about two weeks of word on the street that some crazy guy's going to stop by with an autonomous tractor and planter and autonomously plant their crops. They were lined up.

[Ben Walter]

Craig launched Sabanto on May 3, 2019. He didn't choose that date because it was some momentous occasion. It was once again all up to the farmers.

[Craig Rupp]

It was the farmer that told me, early May, we're going to be planting, so you better have everything together.

[Ben Walter]

Craig didn't, but he launched anyway.

[Craig Rupp]

I slept in the sleeper of that Peterbilt. There were some cold nights because I didn't have a heater in it. But it was a learning experience. The software was nowhere close to being productized. It was more of a proof of concept. Can this thing run?

[Ben Walter]

Craig drove the semi in the tractor, planting beans across the Midwest. It was a very rainy spring, so on days he got rained out of planting, he was flying out to California to meet with VCs. Raising money from VCs isn't always easy, but Craig had a good track record to back him up.

[Craig Rupp]

Everyone saw 640 labs. Kind of an interesting little company that got swallowed up quickly by Monsanto. And I was a co founder of that company. And I think that gave me a lot of credibility when getting in front of VCs. Lo and behold, I got a term sheet and I closed on a funding round.

[Ben Walter]

Craig had squeaked through that first season planting, but if he wanted to make Sabanto succeed, he needed a team.

[Craig Rupp]

So I went back to Chicago and I convinced five people to leave their perfectly paying job and join me in this quest to take autonomy into agriculture.

[Ben Walter]

Did you think after that first season, did you think, you know, I've got something here, like, it might have been hard work and it might have been, it might have been difficult, but I've got something or you weren't sure?

[Craig Rupp]

I knew all the problems I ran into were solvable and, you know, I knew I couldn't do it myself. I mean, it was all off the shelf components. It was, you know, a big box sitting in the tractor, wires going all over. In the software there was, it was literally command line software. There's still a hell of a lot of development that needed to be done on it.

[Ben Walter]

Well, as someone who remembers the late 70s and early 80s, I learned to run software on command line. But I think today that doesn't meet the hurdle, does it?

[Craig Rupp]

No, no.

[Ben Walter]

So then you got some funding. How much did you raise?

[Craig Rupp]

$2 million.

[Ben Walter]

Okay, so you get some funding, I assume then you start working on truly productizing this and Making it sort of fit for purpose and building it out properly. Is that what came next?

[Craig Rupp]

Yeah. It wasn't necessarily productizing and it was more of take it to the next level, get it to work reliably.

[Ben Walter]

In early fall 2019, one of Craig's farmer friends reached out and said that he had 350 acres of land that needed to be seeded with a cover crop for the winter planted after the fall harvest. Cover crops help revitalize the soil and prep it for spring planting again.

[Craig Rupp]

I thought, well, this is perfect.

[Ben Walter]

They were finally able to get started in mid November. Craig experimented with smaller horsepower tractors with his software to see if that helped reliability.

[Craig Rupp]

Horsepower equals work divided by time. What autonomy does is it increases time and time is inversely proportional to horsepower. So you increase time, you decrease horsepower.

[Ben Walter]

They tested it out on smaller fields before they went to the 350 acre plot.

[Craig Rupp]

We had an 80 acre field and 6am in the morning, we're out there, let's get going on this. We should be able to get this done by 2, 3 o'clock, right? We left the field at right around 2am and we had only covered about 10 acres this time. We actually practiced before we got there and everything's working fine and we get to the field and nothing is working. The planter won't plant and the engineers are working feverishly trying to fix exit and between the path, planning, controlling this damn thing, making sure it goes straight, making sure GPS is working. It was really bad. And the six of us went back that night and I know everyone was absolutely frustrated. I remember going to bed at around 2 o'clock and waking up at 4 o'clock and thinking to myself, what the hell did I get myself into?

[Ben Walter]

We hear that phrase a lot. Nature as we know, runs on its own schedule. Mid November rolled around and it was time to plant 350 acres of COVID crop whether Craig and his team were ready to or not. They took their tractors out to rural Illinois to the farm and set up their mobile lab in the tent by the side of the field.

[Craig Rupp]

You know, 300 is a very large number when you're 10 foot wide and you know going five mile an hour. So we're doing five acres an hour and if you think, oh, we'll just run it 24 hours and you know it will be done in three days. The guys were laughing. They still laugh about just sitting in this little tent in the, in the late afternoon. About 4 or 5 o'clock it just started snowing. And then by, oh, I'd say midnight 1:00, the wind kicked up and it started blizzarding. If you can imagine just the blowing wind. And then the six of us sitting in this little tent, tractor out there still working, mind you, and there's someone sitting on the tractor and we would take shifts on who had to sit out on the tractor. We had snowmobile suits and insulated coveralls and whatnot. But someone had to be the poor bastard who had to go out and sit on the tractor for the next hour or two. Because we didn't have absolute control of the tractor. There were some functionality missing. If it goes over little hill, we would lose communications with it and then the person would have to do it manually. Park the tractor over here and then let's see if we can get a path plan made. And for one reason or another, we were off by two feet to the left. It was, it was pure hell. And this wasn't just one day, this was over multiple days. I was concerned that some of the guys would not come back the next, next time because this is perhaps the craziest thing they've ever done.

[Ben Walter]

Oh, and by the way, all six of them were staying in the farmer's basement during all of this.

[Craig Rupp]

Two of us got a bed and then the other four of us were sleeping on the floor. The other thing, to add insult to injury, the shower, the hot water didn't work on the shower. You know, we didn't want to let the farm because he's out doing field work and I don't want to bother him. So we didn't say anything about it. But we were taking cold showers and living in a basement and then trying to get this damn thing to work.

[Ben Walter]

In the end, the 350 acre field they thought would take three days, it took three weeks.

[Craig Rupp]

We felt defeated. There was a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt. I'm sure everyone in the company had reservations about is this going to work, is this going to get better? Like, why am I doing this?

[Ben Walter]

Did you think about giving up at the time?

[Craig Rupp]

No, no, I don't quit.

[Ben Walter]

When did it come along? Far enough that you thought, okay, I've.

[Craig Rupp]

Cracked this nut in 2021. We were doing tillage just west of Chicago. We ran at 48 hours non stop. We let this thing loosen up. Oh God, I think it was 480 acre field. And this thing ran day in, day out, never stopped. And at the time I looked at this and I'm like, I started to see light at the end of the tunnel. We had path planning, working. We were monitoring all aspects of the tractor. We were holding the line within a good 1 inch, 2 inches, and it was just a matter of keeping fuel in it.

[Ben Walter]

Craig had finally figured it out. And since 2021, Subanto has continued to grow. Their autonomous product is called Steward, and it supports 19 different tractor models.

[Craig Rupp]

As of today, we have 40 employees right now, split between Iowa and Chicago, and we have a good 30 to 40 customers right now farming operations all scattered throughout the U.S. we have quite a lot in Florida and Georgia, starting to do a lot in Texas right now, from California to New York, Texas to Wisconsin.

[Ben Walter]

Oh, wow. So really, truly nationwide, do you retrofit someone's tractor? Did you send someone out to install this on the tractor they already have? Or do you just send them a kit and they do it themselves? How does this actually work?

[Craig Rupp]

So we have dealers throughout the US and normally they do the installation and we obviously help with the installation. So we get to a farming operation and we do a demo. At this point in time, we actually haul a tractor onto their premises and let them use it for two weeks. And once they get hooked, whatever tractor that they have, what we do is we install the autonomy system on that tractor, and then they can remotely control and monitor that tractor, perform field operations.

[Ben Walter]

I did a little bit of research before this interview, and I learned all about the technology investments that the big guys are making, the deers of the world are making in terms of autonomous tractors. You know, these big combines that can do all this stuff, that can laser the weeds and whatever. But I also learned all about the right to repair battles that are going on between farmers and manufacturers. So I'm curious, does your solution play into that at all? You know, the ability to sort of keep your tractor and repair it and do what you want and then have some of these autonomous features just layered on at a. At a lower cost?

[Craig Rupp]

I'm all for the right to repair. I'll be honest with you. If someone could fix something remotely without me getting involved, I'm all for that. And we give them the tools in order to do that.

[Ben Walter]

Okay. But it is an interesting alternative. You know, you can go to one of the big manufacturers and buy this giant, very expensive smart tractor or smart seeder or smart whatever. Or you can take the equipment that you already have and give you a call and make it smart.

[Craig Rupp]

Your next generation tractors are already sitting in your machine shed.

[Ben Walter]

I just love that idea so much. The next generation tractor is the one you already own. I think a lot of people stumble onto great ideas that seem so totally out of the blue, but make perfect sense once you look at combining some tools that no one's considered. As a result, Craig's business has grown considerably. And as part of that growth, he's moving into a new segment of our bank for our listeners. I lead small business here at Chase, and Brian Lamb, my friend and partner, is the northeast segment, head for the middle market. We work closely together to take care of those businesses who are growing to the next level. And so I wanted to bring Brian in to give people a sense for what that means. So, Brian, it's great to have you on the show. Thanks for being here, Ben.

[Brian Lamb]

It's good to see you. Good to be here, and thanks for having me. It's exciting to see companies progress in their growth trajectory, and there are some common themes and patterns I maybe can touch on. First you hear the term middle market. What does that mean? Generally, it means first that you have reached a certain size and complexity. Size could be driven by revenue. Maybe you've got, you know, go from 10 million to 20 million. That's one example. Also, complexity. Complexity could be defined as, you know, the geographies that you cover. Maybe it used to be a city and a county, and now it's states or maybe even countries. The other part of the complexity is your capital structure. Maybe historically you had a small line of credit or a credit card, or you were able to actually build that business with friends and family capital, but now you're moving to different types of capital and different types of financial needs. If I think about the transition and maybe one or two of the things, I see, companies that do it well. And by the way, I gotta pause and applaud what Craig and Sibanto have done. They've done a fantastic job of scaling and growing. What I see as a challenge, though, I would tell you, is when companies don't anticipate some of those needs that may happen when they get much bigger, I'll give you a couple of examples. One, their working capital needs change dramatically. Right. When. When you own a small business, there's the phrase, hey, making payroll, where it's not always a figure of speech.

[Craig Rupp]

Sure.

[Brian Lamb]

You know, but managing your working capital and the cash collection cycle could become very complex as you get much bigger, and we see a lot of companies struggle there. The second thing, believe it or not, is talent.

[Ben Walter]

Right.

[Brian Lamb]

You know, Ben, you and I always talk about the talent that you may have started with when you were a small company may need to look different. The folks that are really helping you run and Scale the business talent becomes a really big consideration. And then partners. Who are the partners? Who are the advisors? Your accountant, your lawyer, your bank. The institutions that ultimately help you make sound decisions for growth. You have to think about those as well as you scale and grow.

[Ben Walter]

Yeah. The other thing I, I often talk about is a combination of complexity and scale, particularly with respect to your. Your staff. I always say there are two big inflection points. When you are growing a staff. When you have up to 50 people or so, you can really know all of them. And you know which ones are good and which ones are less good and which ones have which quirks. And there's an inflection. Once you go beyond 50, you can't know all of them.

[Brian Lamb]

Gets tough. Yeah.

[Ben Walter]

Real talk to about 200. You can still know who all of them are. You don't know them. Right. You probably only know that about 50. But you know who the 200 are.

[Brian Lamb]

That's right.

[Ben Walter]

And then once you hit 200, you see people and you don't know if they work for you or not. And that's a really different mindset around your business because you really are relying on your leaders to know those employees and to cascade your message. And so I always tell people that you need to think about those two inflection points, 50 and 200. Like, when do I stop knowing everyone personally and when do I stop knowing who everyone is?

[Brian Lamb]

I love it, Ben, because I think those are really interesting goalposts to think about. And it goes back to something you and I always talk about, which is culture. When you built the company, when you started it and you began to grow, there was a culture, there were values, there were principles that you, as the leader, as the founder, believed in. Well, you don't want to lose those as you grow. And so you can make all of these other really smart business decisions. But to your point, as you start having hundreds of employees, one of the things that you most importantly want to focus on and protect is the very culture that helped you be successful from the beginning. When you grow, slow down and just realize what got you to that point, you may have to do some things differently to continue to scale and grow.

[Ben Walter]

Have you ever seen in these growing companies, a founder and CEO actually bring in and hire a CEO and say, I'm going to do the things that I like doing and I'm good at, but I'm going to have a professional run the actual. Do you see that?

[Brian Lamb]

I. Ben, I would tell you I see it more often than not, actually. Really, When a Company has reached a certain inflection point. They've grown. Maybe they have international services and products now, maybe they've expanded into different product lines, which requires different expertise. To your point, they are a much bigger people business now. They've got a thousand employees instead of 100. I have seen investors and founders bring in a new CEO that is a better fit, I guess I would say is the word. It doesn't mean that that founder, CEO, investor doesn't add tremendous value.

[Ben Walter]

And they still own the business.

[Brian Lamb]

And in almost every scenario they still own the business, but they have found someone that's a good fit for where that company is in the life cycle of their growth. And I gotta tell you, when I've seen that happen and I've seen that company thrive and grow.

[Ben Walter]

One of the things that I often hear clients talk about as they transition up to the middle market is I need to build infrastructure. I'm running this thing on a shoestring. I'm running this thing informally. I've got to build infrastructure to scale this thing. What does that actually mean?

[Brian Lamb]

Yeah, no, it's important. Infrastructure could mean things like investing in technology to improve automation, right? Maybe before manual processes, because of the size and scale of your business, really made sense financially strategy wise. But as you get much bigger and you become more complex, having digital capabilities for your teams and your clients will matter. Automating processes to streamline how you do business and remain, if you will, efficient become important. Another example of infrastructure might be cybersecurity. Just protecting the value and the assets that you've created. I see this all the time at JPMorgan Chase. And one of the things I try to get folks to think about is even though cyber and fraud, those may be things that you're aware of, are you doing enough in your infrastructure to harden the assets? And maybe one other infrastructure point I would raise as you think about your scale and your growth, is the quality of your financial statements and your ability to produce timely, reliable reporting, both operational reporting and financial reporting. It will help you make better decisions. It will better inform your partners and advisors that you work with on a regular basis. And principally, I call it helping you look around the corner, right? You may see things in those operational and financial reports that help inform what your next best decision might be. I tell you what, it's exciting to see those leaders that can make that sustainable transition, right? And there are a couple of key, I guess, elements I see or dimensions I see in those types of leaders. One, they just always are resisting complacency the idea that you have reached a certain plateau and that you can cruise or that you think you've done enough, that your competitive advantage will stand the test of time. Second is diversification. So the products and services or the geography or the client base that you built over the years, I would encourage folks to be restless about continuing to diversify their business, right? Maybe there's new products and services. Maybe you've historically grown through acquisition and you're going to do a better job through organic. Look at your share of wallet, right? Even though you've got a great client base, could you deepen that share of wallet? Could you take a bigger percentage of their spin and they do business with you, your margins, there's always an opportunity to look at margin improvement. Even as you grow, can you grow profitably in a very efficient way? And maybe the last thing I see leaders do is kind of a deep focus on productivity, right? They've gotten to a really big size and scale. They've continued to grow, and now what could they do for every incremental dollar they invest? How productive is that individual, is that investment, and is it driving the returns that a business owner would expect? And so when I think about those leaders that kind of bend the curve, those are some of the key elements I see them demonstrate.

[Ben Walter]

It seems like what weaves through all that, though, is continued hunger.

[Satchin Sehgal]

That's right.

[Brian Lamb]

It's really special to see the small businesses thrive and grow and move into the middle market and beyond. And so that is, at the end of the day, one of the most important elements of this country is a chance for us to do business and see companies grow.

[Ben Walter]

And finally, Satchin, I want to bring you back in here. Is Craig's story unusual in that he's been successful in an area that the big companies have been going after, or do you see that frequently?

[Satchin Sehgal]

Craig's story definitely isn't unique, I'd say, in terms of entrepreneurs creating more efficient ways to do things. In an older industry, such as agriculture, there's definitely a lot of entrepreneurship and young companies that are making waves in the industry, where generally you see big players for the most part.

[Ben Walter]

Craig touched on something that I think is important, which is in a world that is increasingly tech driven, where you're in a part of the country that doesn't necessarily have the depth of tech talent that a Chicago or a Silicon Valley or New York City has, how does the region and how do the entrepreneurs in the region face into that? What does that feel like on the ground?

[Satchin Sehgal]

He's definitely right about that, the talent locally, especially with universities and things like that. Even though Iowa State and Iowa are great, they have great tech programs, great computer science programs, I think family history and the culture of the state really breeds a lot of people that are still lean in the agricultural side of things. But when it comes to the tech side of things, we realize that there may not be such a big talent pool here in the Midwest or in Des Moines or in Iowa specifically. So people will pull from Chicago or bigger markets where there are more intense tech pools and kind of marry those two different industries on how to communicate the tech side of things with what your project on the ground is going to be.

[Ben Walter]

What do you think are, are the advantages to owning and starting a business in a place like Iowa?

[Satchin Sehgal]

I can speak to Des Moines specifically. The entrepreneurial community here is really vibrant and it's really thriving. And there's so many cool local resources that you can, can tie into to get either, well, networked or find funding. And being from a smaller town and a smaller demographic in a geographical area, you definitely get to know each other a little bit better. So the ability to connect with people that you're trying to get in contact with, it's a shorter connection generally. It's also even a personal connection where you can find someone that knows someone personally that you can get in contact with. So it's becoming a little bit more of a cultural hub for smaller agricultural companies and smaller startups. I hope that continues, that that trend would be really cool to see flourish over here.

[Ben Walter]

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Unshakables. And thank you to Craig Rupp, Sachin Sehgal and Brian Lamb for speaking with us today. If you like this episode, please rate and review it. And if you know someone who may like the series, please tell them about it. Next episode, we'll hear from an entrepreneur who started a company with the full backing of her previous employer. Not just emotional support either. They guaranteed her clients and contracts if she started her own company. We'll be Speaking with Quinetta McNeil, CEO of House of Logistics out of Birmingham, Alabama. I'm Ben Walter and this is the Unshakables from Chase for Business and ruby studio from iHeartMedia.