Farmshelf

It's an honor to take the reins as Farmshelf CEO and I am confident this next chapter in our 7-year mission to make it easy for anyone to grow their own food wherever they are will be inspiring, exciting and successful. I look forward to continuing to work with our visionary founder Andrew Shearer who as CMO will play a big part in our future success. We are eager to get growing with you soon!

When Condé Nast and their café operator Restaurant Associates called and told me they wanted to create an experience using Farmshelf at the famed magazine publisher’s headquarters in One World Trade Center, I legit almost fainted. We already had a couple of Farmshelfs there that were situated near the windows on the 85th floor and could be seen from the street. That in itself was super cool. But now our very own station where Anna Wintour and the editors from Bon Appetit dine several times a week!? This was the dream come to life: a restaurant that shows their customers the food being grown and incorporates it into every menu item. That’s where Farmshelf lives—the intersection of form and function. #FarmshelfDiaries part nine Gaetano Gatti

Getting into the Food & Wine Test Kitchen was an early break for Farmshelf. Here we were, this unknown brand, featured in the test and video kitchen of one of America’s most beloved epicurean media outlets. The best chefs in the world would be there and see us. We would be featured in video shoots online and in the magazine. We customized the Farmshelf to match the kitchen, and it looked absolutely GORG! Biggest lesson: It was too loud. It was too bright. They had to turn it off every time they shot a video. While it wasn’t a total bust (because we still got tons of promo out of it), it wasn’t nearly as big as we expected. In hindsight, we should have done a lot more testing of Farmshelf as a video studio prop before we installed it. We likely could have made some modifications and made it better for everyone. Start-ups are always in a rush but some things need time and careful planning. #FarmshelfDiaries part eight Nilou Motamed Justin Chapple

URBAN-X is a startup platform and accelerator that brought Farmshelf from its infancy in San Francisco to Brooklyn and added tremendous value in our early years. Sponsored by MINI, they provided us with a company car in 2019. I always regretted us not being able to figure out a way to keep it beyond that generous gratis period. Having a Farmshelf branded car to run around the city sent some very powerful messages: We have arrived. We are real. We mean business. Don’t underestimate the value of putting your brand out there to remind people who you are and what you are doing. #FarmshelfDiaries part seven Johan Schwind

Rockefeller Center is as iconic as it gets. When they told me they wanted to put a Farmshelf installation in right after the Christmas Tree came down to “keep the momentum going for the season,” I nearly fell out of my chair. The Shelfs went up in January of 2020, and I think you know the rest from there. While Covid made it, uh, more short lived than expected, it was one of my prouder times at Farmshelf. We were the attraction in a place and city full of attractions. And, that high became so low when we had to move them out in late March in what felt like an apocalyptic Rock Center Rotunda. That deal was two years in the making. And while I have so many examples of this that I could share with you, just know that IT ALWAYS TAKES LONGER THAN YOU THINK IT WILL. #FarmshelfDiaries Part Six

“Hardware is hard.” I had an investor tell me that once, and he was dead right. If you’re in the hardware start-up business, you know that VCs are basically allergic to you. Here’s why: at Farmshelf for instance, to make an indoor farm a consumer doesn’t have to think twice about before growing delicious produce, we assemble more than 2000 individual parts sourced from nearly 50 different vendors. It needs to be put together in just a few hours and then run through an intensive QA process before being packaged and shipped. Worth it once you taste it but so much work before it reaches our customer. #FarmshelfDiaries part five

Eric Adams, now mayor of NYC and then the Brooklyn Borough President, loves Farmshelf He takes pride and some credit for our existence since he helped fund Newlab the climate tech platform and start-up space in the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation where we have been a member since 2017. The Mayor introduced us to the Brooklyn Democracy Academy, a transfer high school that has a Farmshelf lab with 12 of our systems. Students learn how to grow with Farmshelf, and how the tech works. The greens they grow go to the surrounding community, which is very much in need of fresh produce. This program was Mayor Adams’s idea for sure and has been a great success. While it is thriving, it has been difficult to replicate. We do have Farmshelfs in many K-12 schools, but navigating the bureaucracy of the NYC Dept of Education is challenging and very time consuming. We all want to do what we can to help kids learn, but that has to be balanced with your company’s resources. #FarmshelfDiaries part four

Farmshelf literally is Flavortown. Guy Fieri was taken with what we were doing, as we was Ted Allen from the original Queer Eye and Chopped. This photo was from late 2019–right before the world changed. I always regretted not getting back in touch with those guys to see if they wanted to do something with us. The lesson here is that I should have reached out the next day to establish a relationship. You just never know what’s going to happen. Yeah, a global pandemic is pretty extreme, but we should never get complacent because the unexpected is always around the corner. Guy gave me his cell phone number that night. Is it too late to give him a call?! #FarmshelfDiaries Part 3

You're not in Brooklyn anymore. You think you know how to roll up your sleeves and get the job done. But that “hard work” from the corner office at Food & Wine and on business trips staying at the best resorts in the world and sipping champagne in Aspen with celebrity chefs did not quite prepare me for start-up life. Early on, our founder Andrew Shearer and I were gearing up for our first big event at the ICR conference in Orlando. It was January 6th, 2018 and a frigid 4 degrees in Brooklyn. We had to finish building a crate and then get the Farmshelf jammed in there and loaded onto the back of his pickup truck. It was freezing and the clock was ticking. It was a near-impossible feat. We got it done and then drove 30 hours with the Farmshelf crate upright in the truckbed swaying in the wind as we raced down the highways—not a fun sight in your side view mirror (I am thinking “how did I get here?”). The plants were nestled with us in the cab, and we carried them into the Motel 6 to cozy up with us for a few hours. But we made it somehow and went from crate to fully set up in the lobby of the JW Marriott Orlando in just a couple hours. It was a sight to behold and everyone wanted to know what the heck we had created. Two years later we returned with a next-gen Farmshelf that we properly shipped down. DIY is great in the early stages, but it’s not scalable. Make sure that you evolve and set yourself up for real growth. Smart work most often beats hard work. #FarmshelfDiaries part two Anton Nicholas Liz Brady DiTrapano Jessica Liddell Alecia Pulman Barry McGowan Patrik Hellstrand Nick Donald Suma Reddy

When I started at Farmshelf I was a latecomer to the start-up world. I had already had a successful career in magazine publishing—Travel + Leisure (yeah, you read that right ??). Thrust into a sea of VC acronyms like PMF, MVP and DFM, I wanted to call bullshit and just get these people to speak English. But they hold the pursestrings, so you have to play their game. As I look back at our successes, trials and tribulations, I thought I would share some stories, and perhaps wisdom, of how we got to where we are today. Let’s go back to close to the beginning. This is our first beta with Noma cofounder Claus Meyer at The Great Northern Food Hall in Grand Central Station. I guess that was our MVP-minimum viable product-you see what I did there?! To this day, Grand Central was our most visible Farmshelf showcase. Do not underestimate the power of in-person experiences. Stay tuned for more #FarmshelfDiaries