A Chicago startup founded by local agtech entrepreneur Corbett Kull has raised a new round of funding to help it grow.
Tillable announced Thursday that it raised $8.25 million in a Series A round of funding led by The Production Board, an agtech investment holding company in San Francisco. First Round Capital, based in Philadelphia, also participated.
The startup, founded in 2017, has built an online marketplace to help landowners and farmers determine fair rent for farmland, making the process more efficient and convenient for both parties. Tillable says it plans to use the new funding to expand its engineering, sales and marketing teams in time for the 2020 growing season. The company currently employs 16 people.
Now that more than 40 percent of all U.S. farmland is rented, a service like Tillable’s can help landowners ensure they’re receiving the optimal financial return. Although landowners collect about $32 billion annually in rent, it’s estimated that they leave $8 billion on the table, according to Kull, Tillable’s CEO.
“But it’s not the landowners’ fault,” he said in a statement. “The tools and data just haven’t been available to understand fair rental value for farmland or to aggregate demand among farmers, and this is especially true for the increasing number of landowners who do not live on or near their property. With Tillable, landowners and farmers both are in a much better position for long-term success.”
To date, Tillable says it has more than 5,000 users.
Tillable isn’t Kull’s first startup endeavor. In 2014, his first startup 640 Labs, was acquired by The Climate Corporation, a San Francisco-based tech company. 640 Labs uses analytics and cloud computing to collect agricultural data that’s delivered to farmers’ mobile devices. It raised $2.7 million in venture capital funding before being acquired, according to Crunchbase.
