Kragworks
Kragworks is building a unified platform to integrate and aggregate data across farms and packing houses. Aside from custom development, Kragworks is creating their Harvest Engine SaaS platform to streamline data acquisition from the farm to the packer. Kragworks want growers to be able to know what happens when their produce is at the pack house and they want the pack house to know what’s happening in the field. Currently, there aren’t any systems that accomplish this easily and fewer companies that make this data as easily accessible as it will be within the Harvest Engine platform.
From a grower’s perspective, Harvest Engine will allow individual farms to maintain compliance with global standards, such as Global G.A.P., track farm activities, and get better insight into their crops. The packer module is designed to streamline the receiving process, QC, and storage processes, as well as aggregate data from the grower. By combining these different processes and perspectives, Kragworks hope to create incredibly granular traceability and create opportunities for better resource management, leading to healthier and more sustainable food sources.
Traction
The Kragworks team have completed many custom development projects for large and small businesses, such as Yakima Chief Ranches, Allan Brothers Fruit, Precision Industrial Equipment.
They are currently implementing and prototyping Harvest Engine, their flagship Saas Platform, at a large pack house in the Yakima Valley, with the goal of starting a full marketing campaign in the coming Fall or Winter.
The biggest challenge facing Kragworks right now is capacity. While they love doing it, Matt and Justin, Kragwork’s founders, are working almost 80 hours a week in order to keep up with current projects and the growth of the business. They have many custom projects on their plate and, with the deployment of Harvest Engine looming ahead, the days seem to be getting shorter and shorter. To overcome this challenge, they will look to potentially outsource some work to contracting firms for both QA and development.
Team
Justin Pease, Business Operations – Justin has spent the majority of his professional career working in the cellular phone industry. As a store manager and company buyer at Cellular Network of Idaho and district manager at T-Mobile, Justin learned the ins and outs of working in a fast paced corporate environment. Justin returned home to the Yakima Valley to finish his B.S. and contribute to the farming industry where he grew up. While working at a fruit packer in the valley, he fell in love with creating systems to help progress antiquated and unsustainable practices in tree fruit. Combining his hometown pride and extensive corporate experience, Justin hopes to create an industry leading SaaS that will help modernize tree fruit, and maintain the roots of the industry.
Matt Yeager, Technical Operations – Matt has spent nearly all of his career in a technical role of some kind. From newsroom production to packing line controls, his passion for technology has only grown with time. Beginning his agriculture career working on sizing machines for both apples and cherries, he quickly launched into database management
and custom integrations, ranging from labor tracking to warehousing, and inventory with the philosophy that no matter how complicated a system, the user should never feel intimidated. Honing his skills in the .NET framework and building small systems in many other industry standard languages, Node.JS, PHP, JavaScript, etc., Matt was able to use his appreciation of customer service and schooling in business to establish trusted relationships with the users of his software.
Funding
Kragworks are currently intent on raising $500,000. Until now they have been using custom software projects to bootstrap the development of Harvest Engine. However, given the recent user adoption, Kragworks will need to bring on dedicated software developers. They would love to bring on one or two developers to really make Harvest Engine shine. Aside from the development team, they would benefit strongly from someone to help with inside sales and onboarding of new customers.
Revenue Model
Kragwork’s current business model relies on annual subscription fees for their SaaS solution. The SaaS application is broken out into different modules/components with different pricing for each, depending on whether users opt for grower modules and/or packer modules.
They also offer custom software development for agricultural businesses. These projects are typically billed by the hour.
Details
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