Farmer to founder: this Aussie entrepreneur is tackling climate change with billionaire backers

Investment in climate tech startups in Australia is booming at the moment — there’s something about companies trying to save the world that really appeals to VCs.

In this edition of Tech Wrap-Up Australia, to coincide with the launch of LinkedIn News Australia’s list of Big Ideas in sustainability , we chat to Tegan Nock , the founder of climate and agtech startup Loam Bio , about how she is helping to reduce the impacts of climate change, and winning over Silicon Valley tech billionaires in the process.

If you want to learn more about the emerging trends shaping sustainability and Australia’s green economy, check out Big Ideas in Sustainability by my colleague Cathy Anderson . It went live this week, and tells you everything you need to know about Australia's climate tech landscape heading into 2024.

Also in this edition, the latest jobs data from LinkedIn reveals Australian companies are on an AI hiring spree. Read on to learn what to expect in an interview for one.

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Tegan Nock didn’t want to be an entrepreneur. But in order to address climate change and problems impacting farmers all around the world, she knew she had to become one.

Loam Bio , which she co-founded, makes fungal seed applications to help agricultural crops sequester carbon into the soil, while also helping to boost crop yields.?

Loam Bio began as a non-for-profit a decade ago, but in order to scale it up, Nock and her Co-Founders transitioned it to a for-profit model in 2019. The company has since gone on to secure millions of investment dollars from Silicon Valley tech and climate-conscious billionaires.

In February the company, based in Orange NSW, made global headlines for its $105 million Series B raise, which included participation from Mike Cannon-Brookes’ Grok Ventures.

In this interview with Tech Wrap-Up Australia, Nock explains her transition from farmer to founder, the role farmers play in reducing the impacts of climate change and the need for a more sustainable planet.?

Tegan, what is your elevator pitch for Loam Bio?

There's too much carbon in the atmosphere and not enough carbon in our soils. We are bridging the gap by creating innovative microbial technology that farmers can simply deploy across landscapes to help their soil capture more carbon.

The seed coating you have developed helps fungi to grow on crop roots, which in turn helps the soil store more carbon. Have I got that right?

The fungi colonise a root system and basically act as a root extension. This means they can drive higher levels of soil aggregation and higher levels of carbon sorption to clay surfaces. That means that as the soil takes a breath in every year, it takes less of a breath out each year.?

Why are you passionate about getting more carbon back into farm soil?

Since the introduction of industrialised farming we have lost between 20% and 60% of the carbon within our soils globally.

It is an enormous amount of carbon that we have actually released into the atmosphere, simply because of farming.?

We have long fallows, we have periods where we're using some pretty intensive fertiliser and chemicals that speed up the carbon cycle and allow it to be released faster. We're moving away from perennial systems where you've got a growing plant in the ground all the time.

We've effectively been mining carbon from our soil for our food system.

But carbon is the foundational driver of soil health. It's what glues everything together that enables soil health to build up.

That is a thing that we need to get back in, because it increases our productivity and our profitability of farming systems. It also means we can have carbon coming back from the atmosphere into our soil to mitigate climate change.

Beyond addressing climate change, what are the other benefits of boosting carbon in the soil?

Good soil health enables farmers to store more moisture and water in their soil, so they can withstand droughts more readily. It enables you to have better nutrient retention within your soil, so you have much higher fertiliser efficiency. There’s flow-on effects for plant productivity and growth, which is important for food security.

Globally the land used for agriculture is about five billion hectares of the world’s surface, or 38%, and one-third of that is used as cropland. The best thing from a climate change perspective is to return the land to its natural vegetation, but we also need to feed people, so that’s not possible. Why is it important that we use the land we have in a healthier way?

With a global population that's rapidly increasing, farmers are trying to work out how to make their land work harder to feed more people.

We also have to be conscious that we have to increase the productivity of our food system while leveraging that largest terrestrial carbon sink, which is soil, to be able to actually have the impact that we need.

So this is an elegant solution in the way that we're not diverting farmland away from what its current use is.

For all this talk of finding new ways to create food, whether that be lab-made meat through synthetic biology or even plant-based meats, why is it important to achieve sustainability in traditional farming methods?

In the future it could be great to just grow meat in a lab that doesn't have many emissions or any environmental impact at all. But there is still a traditional farming industry there and will be for a very long time to come and people will probably still prefer it.

Farmers are trying to do the best for their land. But the economic forces aren’t always conducive to doing what’s best for the land.

They need to make money. So being able to provide them with new tools towards being more green, more sustainable, more regenerative, is critical.

You have a star studded list of investors. Are they mostly investing in you because they want to fix climate change, or because they are passionate about food production?

We have a good mix of both. We have a good pool of climate-focussed investors that are really interested in leveraging the food system to address climate change.

Horizons Ventures came on board and led our seed round initially. We also have the Australian government-owned Clean Energy Finance Corporation in the mix, and the CSIRO’s investment fund Main Sequence . Mike Cannon-Brookes ’s Grok Ventures is also an investor, as well as Wollemi Capital , another Australian fund.?

In our last fundraise we had Lowercarbon Capital , which is an American fund. We also have international investment from Marc Benioff , the Co-Founder of Salesforce , who led our Series B. Tobias Lütke , the Founder of Shopify , is another investor.?

Loam Bio switched to a for-profit model in 2019, so it’s pretty amazing to be pulling investors like that in such a short time, right?

We realised that to quickly get a product to market that could help change the world, we were going to need a bigger boat!

We went from desperately searching for every dollar and leveraging every dollar for every ounce, to having enough capital to be able to hire 30 plus PhD researchers.

We now have multiple research and development centers around the world and hundreds of trial sites just across Australia, the US, Canada and Brazil.

It would have taken us decades to achieve that as a non-for-profit. Being able to have this kind of backing and support helps us get it done quickly.?

How did you go from farmer to founder?

I studied agricultural sciences. I then worked in industry for a while, but the majority of my career was just on farm farming.

I am a farmer by trade and an entrepreneur by necessity.

I did not want to do the founder thing. If anyone explained to me what it actually involved at the outset I would not have done it. I had optimism bias at the start. I thought it would take us a couple of years.

But seeing the droughts, the flooding rains, the need for soil resilience and how important carbon was in soils it soon became a no brainer.

We need to develop better tools to address these problems. You can open your agronomic toolbox and you've got pesticides and chemistries and new genetics. But there were no tools to help with carbon that are easy to deploy or that easily fit into any farming system.

I realised through my own on-farm experiences this is something we actually need. Farmers want it. They want it now. But if nobody else is going to do it, someone has to, and I guess that's me.

It’s the classic question of ‘do you need to solve a problem in order to have a successful startup?’. What advice would you give to emerging founders who have a spark of an idea but don’t know what to do with it yet?

I'd say back yourself. You have got more knowledge and capability than you think. I'd also say, know the difficulty of stepping into the founder landscape and the entrepreneurship game.

It's not for everyone. But if you have the confidence and know you have got the time and energy and grip to get into it, just get into it.

?? Looking to learn more about sustainability and farming? Follow the co-founders of Loam Bio on LinkedIn, including Tegan Nock , Guy Webb , Mick Wettenhall and Guy Hudson .

AI jobs in Australia are rising. Here's what to look out for in an interview.

Fresh LinkedIn data has revealed AI is permeating the Australian workforce at a rapid rate.

Applications for AI-related jobs are up 16% this year, and 13% more companies have created 'Head of AI' roles since December 2022.

In Australia, the top industries demanding AI-related roles for the past 12 months are?Professional Services, Administrative and Support Services, and Government Administration.

The most in demand AI-related skills that members can list on their profile — and that employers are looking for — are?artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, pattern recognition and data structures.

Meanwhile, 55% of LinkedIn members globally stand to see their jobs change to some degree by the rise of generative AI, according to the report.

You can read the full report here .

Casey Flint , an investor at Square Peg who specialises in AI startups, said on LinkedIn that there is an AI brain drain across Australia and New Zealand, but that local research groups and AI communities being developed will change that over time.

"To significantly move the needle on research or technical innovation on AI [in Australia] it helps to have a deeply knowledgeable team," Flint writes.

"When we speak to the best AI talent in the region they really feel the pull of the United States, particularly with the breadth of roles available there and with companies like OpenAI offering attractive salaries and incentives."

Aruna Pattam , 凯捷咨询 's Head?of Generative AI, Analytics & Data Science, Insights for the Asia Pacific region agrees, arguing on LinkedIn that Australia needs to harness its diverse talent pool to stay competive.

"With the US currently leading the charge in attracting AI talent, it's crucial for us to offer compelling reasons for our best minds to either stay or come back home. This goes beyond just trying to match international offerings," she writes.

Sonya Walker , an Non Executive Director for the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre , likens the AI boom to the dotcom era, writing on LinkedIn that Australia should be using the opportunity to lure top talent to the region.

"The dotcom boom attracted super charged talent and jobs growth, which was positive for Australia and Asia Pacific economies from a knowledge worker perspective and to build generational IT expertise," she writes .

Kendra Vant , an advisor to the National AI Centre and a member of the Australian government's National Data Advisory Council, says Australia needs to source and secure AI leaders.

"While growing our young and mid-level talent is important, we also need to focus on retaining our existing skilled leaders and recalling expats and others from overseas. It is still rare to see leaders who are experienced in AI at executive and board level in Australian companies," she writes on LinkedIn .

If you're looking for an AI-related job — or hiring for one — follow this advice from 谷歌 Chief Technologist Natalie Piucco . She writes on LinkedIn there is no rulebook for hiring AI professionals, as many companies are still figuring out their AI goals.

"A monumental mindset shift needs to happen in hiring for aptitude. It's a myth that you will find talent with five to ten years of experience putting generative AI systems in production, we need to MAKE these leaders," she says.

Piucco says the questions she asks when hiring AI talent for Google are:

1. How is this person showing initiative and playing with AI technology? Perhaps they are building small projects, even if only for a hobby or personal use. It could be a small app.
2. Do they have examples of picking up a new skill very quickly, even if it not related to AI?
3. Do they have examples of where they have worked on a complex project with multiple areas of unknowns?
4. What is this person reading and listening to?

Craig Scroggie , the CEO and Managing Director of data centre operator NEXTDC , writes in a post on LinkedIn that professionals with a desire to seek out AI roles should be investing in developing their skills, through either formal education or online courses.

"Whether you choose to study a Bachelor of Business Analytics or Computer Science, pursue a Masters in Artificial Intelligence, or just utilise the amazing short courses and other free online content in platforms like Coursera and LinkedIn Learning, the key is staying adaptable," he writes .

"Lifelong learning is crucial in this era of technological evolution. It's about embracing change and harnessing the power of education to thrive in the ever-evolving job market."

If you are still trying to wrap your head around the role of generative AI in business, Belinda Loke — Managing Director and Principal Lawyer of digital law firm legalexa.com.au — breaks it down in this article . She explains Australia's current AI landscape using insights and analysis from local AI leaders, how boards should approach AI, responsible uses of AI and how to capitalise on the knowledge of tech-savvy young people growing up in the AI era.

How can Australia grow its AI workforce? Click the link below and join the conversation.

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