Grown out of New South Wales, Farmbot is an IoT agritech startup that’s spread across the pastures of Australia, into the US, and even to water projects in Africa.
In agriculture, the addressable market is huge, and global, but reaching customers is notoriously tricky. They’re time-poor, they’re largely offline, and the recommendations they trust the most are from each other.
So for Farmbot, growth has been about word-of-mouth, and an innate understanding of the customers’ needs. Having recently announced $4.6 million in fresh funding in June '24, it seems to be a strategy that’s paying off.
Headed up by co-founders Andrew Coppin and Craig Hendricks, Farmbot uses Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and satellite technology to monitor water sources on farmland. Customers can use an app to remotely check for any issues with water supply for their animals, and receive automated alerts if any problems arise.
“We started out trying to solve the problem of people driving around to check water, that 95% of the time doesn’t need checking,” Andrew explains.
“They’re doing it for the 5% of time that it does.”
Essentially, the tech saves them those trips, and the time and money associated with them. But it’s also about conserving mental energy — it gives farmers one less thing to worry about.
“We didn’t really realise the impact we would have on the mental health and wellbeing of farmers,” Andrew notes.
Farmbot’s growth story
As Andrew recalls it, for the first three years of Farmbot, the founders were mainly figuring out the tech and feeling out demand.
“We were just trying to get an MVP,” he says.
Once they had nailed the product, however, the strategy was to first tackle the significant local market.
According to Andrew, of 35,000 farms in Australia, Farmbot is now live in 4,000 of them. Many of those customers are not yet using the tech for all of their water sources, and are planning to scale up their usage.
“So, even though we’re at scaleup now, we’re still at the very beginning of the journey,” Andrew says.
The vision was always to head to the US next.
Andrew started testing the waters in 2021, the Texas office officially opened in February 2023, and in early 2024 Andrew relocated to run American operations.
Farmbot (or Ranchbot, as it’s known Stateside) is solving a universal problem.
Currently, the tech may not be affordable for small-scale farmers in developing regions, but potential applications are endless.
Farmbot tech is being used to monitor water in a remote village in Nigeria, as part of the UN Water Management Program, for example. It’s also monitoring water supplies for elephants in Botswana.
“We’ve done a few sideline projects for love,” Andrew says.

Different fuel for different phases
Each stage of Farmbot’s growth has required funding in one way or another.
The early years of R&D were largely covered by “friends, family and fools”, plus investment from the founders themselves, Andrew says. The team was small, and focused on the most efficient use of capital.
A $1 million equity raise in 2021 fuelled another year of development, and another $5 million followed in 2022.
Funding support has come from the likes of Follow[The]Seed and Telstra, as well as from customers-turned-investors.
“In total, we’ve got about 15 customers on our cap table,” Andrew notes.
As far as customer endorsements go, that’s about as good as it gets.
“We’ve had major, significant people in the livestock sector investing in us … we think it’s a pretty compelling story to be able to tell.”
Tractors and Farmbots
Farmbot’s business model includes both hardware sales and software-as-a-service — customers purchase the hardware outright, then pay a subscription for the platform.
Hardware is incredibly capital intensive, Andrew explains.
“You have to build it, package it, stock it and then sell it. You burn a lot of capital, but you don’t see a return for three to six months.”
Here, venture debt provided an opportunity to fund growth and scale, without necessitating any more dilution.
At the same time, Farmbot is seeing 100% revenue growth, year-on-year.
“You get more confident around your ability to service debt,” Andrew says.
For Farmbot, debt funding was the right choice at the right time. It’s well suited to funding inventory, but it was also aligned with the level of maturity — and the more predictable growth that comes with it.
Cracking the farmers market
Andrew himself comes from farming roots. While he modestly denies that this has helped him capture the attention of his customers, it’s clear he does have an innate understanding of their needs and priorities.
Scale is notoriously a challenge in agtech, Andrew says. Many farmers live in very remote areas; many are not online; and they don’t have much time for reading newspapers and watching TV.
“That’s why a lot of traditional VC money stays away from agtech. If you don’t have a total addressable market of everyone on the planet, they’re not really interested.”
But Farmbot is growing with zero churn. The market may not be infinite, but it’s loyal. Once farmers find a tech that works for them, they will stick with it.
“The single best marketing strategy in farming is to get a farmer to tell a farmer,” Andrew explains.
“We’ve just got to deliver super high-quality products, and a great service.”
Customer service, in particular, is a significant focus for Farmbot. If a customer calls, for example, there is no automated menu requesting them to ‘press one’, and no impersonal call-centre scripts.
Most likely, Andrew says, the customer will be connected with someone living on a farm; someone who understands farmers.
“We’ve gone out of our way to make sure all of our service and support team, and most of our salespeople, are all people from the land,” he explains.
It’s about meeting client needs and solving problems as they arise — something that’s critical in a farming context. But it’s also about respecting customers, and their time.
“We’re in the business of selling time and peace of mind,” Andrew adds.
“So we must never steal it back.”

Flying the flag for Aussie agtech
For Farmbot, a combination of debt and equity funding has led to strong growth and international success. But Andrew doesn’t believe the agtech sector as a whole is getting the attention it deserves — especially from Australian venture capital firms.
“Regrettably, funding in agritech is really, really challenged,” he says.
“A lot of mainstream and institutional investors worry more about the scalability than the traction.”
This is something of a bugbear for Andrew. It’s what spurred him to launch the Australian Agtech Association, and what has driven him to lobby governments, industry, and anyone else who will listen.
“It confounds me. We’re living in an age of a lot of social investment; people are worrying about climate change and climate investment, and there is a lot of money seemingly wanting to do good,” he says.
“But agtech is all about feeding the world. We need to produce twice as much food on this planet by 2050, with only the land and water we’ve got. The only way we’re going to be able to do it is with technology. There is no other way,” he adds.
“We have a competitive advantage. Everywhere I go, I see Australian agritech at the forefront. But it needs money.”
The Atlassian of ag
With that said, Andrew is excited for the future — for Farmbot and for Australian agtech.
“We want to become a billion-dollar Australian agritech export company,” he says.
“For want of a better term — an Atlassian of Ag.”
Atlassian has not only created jobs, it’s created founders, and other businesses working with its technology. The flywheel has almost created its own little ecosystem.
Already, Farmbot is working with other local agritech startups; companies Andrew believes we will also see exporting their tech all over the world.
“We will create a reputation of being amazing at agritech globally,” Andrew says,
“I just wish we could be doing it with more Australian capital, not capital from offshore.”