In this chapter, the authors present a special case study of a company that has managed to evolve from R&D activity to a complete company. The case will describe the special story of the company and the specific characteristics and changes the company has undergone. The case study deals with the move from an R&D-oriented company, developing its basic technology, service, and business model, towards an income generating firm. As much as possible, the technology and related technical terms are omitted from the discussion both to keep it clear and focus on the narrative, as well as to avoid undue disclosure of IP.
TopSee Tree Ltd. Is an Israel start-up company founded in August 2017 by three partners Israel Talpaz, Guy Morgenstern, and Barak Hachamov. They represent a combination of talent and experience of military intelligence, engineering, and high-tech entrepreneurship. They raised 3.2 million US$ with pre-investment company value of 5 million US$ in August 2017 and launched the company. Since than they raised a round A of investment of 11.5 million US$ with post investment value of 35 million US$ in 2019 and are now planning round B.
The company is located in the Tel-Aviv area and currently employees 60 workers.
The company goal as defined to its potential investors1 is: To optimize fruit production, tree health, and transform permanent-crop farming. We do this by providing intelligence- per every single tree, for many millions of trees, at a cost of about 10 cents per tree per year.
All three co-founders are involved with the daily operations of the company and its development.
The Business
The SeeTree Ltd. (“ST”) (2020) identified the following need2: “Farmers today, simply put; do not have the quality of data they need to enable the optimization of their fruit production. They still rely on their legs to collect the data, on their eyes to assess the data, and on their intuition and past experiences to make decisions based on the data. Their decision-making process relies on data that lacks accuracy, consistency, comprehensiveness and scalability.”
It takes technologies that are used for other purposes in other sectors and translate them to the agricultural sector, with specific focus on trees and plantations, offering a service under Precise Agriculture.
The company identified that while in other crops, field crops, cereals, and live-stock management there was some advancement in precise agriculture, and the services offered to farmers were improving, the same could not be said for trees and plantations.
They offer a service in which they run a data collection and analysis campaign that is multi layered and is based on multiple sources. They collect data and create a data set in which each tree has a dossier including different data about it, allowing them to offer analysis per tree. They use their collection and analysis capabilities to offer not just data about specific trees, but their ever-growing data set allows them to make horizontal analysis and present insights, that could not be presented before. We shall present such examples in the sections below.