Editor's note: In our 2024 Startups to Watch feature, the Silicon Valley Business Journal and San Francisco Business Times present startups and founders building groundbreaking products and companies in the Bay Area. Grape.ag is one of 17 we profiled this year — to read more about our mission and the other startups we're featuring, click here.
Kristi Bowers and Martin García Wilhelm founded Grape.ag to bring about smarter and more ethical ways to cultivate crops.
For now, the company's system is focused on gathering data like climate and soil moisture to make grape cultivation better for farmers. With over 70 systems deployed across the U.S and Mexico, the company aims to expand to all types of fruits in the near future.
About Grape Ag
- Founded: 2020
- Founders: CEO Kristi Bowers and Martin García Wilhelm
- Headquarters: Cupertino and Querétaro, Mexico
- Employees: 6
- Total funding: $530,000
What got the company started with grapes? And into targeting the vineyard market as a whole?
Kristi Bowers: I think in part, it was by chance. I was in the wine industry, and it uses a high-net- worth crop. Once Martin and I teamed up, we were like, “Okay, here are the real problems, here are the ways we can solve that problem for a customer.”
Martin García Wilhelm: Agriculture is one of these industries, or arts in a way, that is ancient. And they have been going through all these new breakthroughs through different types of technologies. But so far, it is still going through the most important element for improving its capabilities and potential, which is using the power of information. And that is something we are focusing on. On bringing agriculture into this era of information.
What are the challenges running a company both in the U.S. and Mexico?
Bowers: Like anything else there are pluses and minuses. So challenges are around the operation side. When we build equipment in Mexico, what's the transfer cost of getting it to the US? We have to look at duty and all of those kinds of things when we have a physical product. But it can be done.
García Wilhelm: One of the advantages of working with clients is that they speak the same language regardless of where they are based. We only need to understand what they need and what they're saying. Everything else has to do more with the culture. We are leveraging the advantage of working in two countries and learning both the Latin American and the American way and therefore adding value to our company because we understand those differences.
Kristi Bowers the CEO at Grape.ag.
What sets the company’s system apart from others in the same space?
García Wilhelm: Most of the companies that are focusing on similar areas gather information in terms of weather, which is one of the areas that we're doing. They basically assume by providing one weather station in the center of a field you get a good idea, but if your field has complex topology or is large enough that the weather actually changes at some point, then your weather station ends up being inadequate. We have been able to reduce costs to a point where we can actually place as many sensors where we want, and therefore have microclimate capabilities, monitoring capabilities.
