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Thursday, October 31, 2019
Rise Gardens Helps You Grow the Perfect Tomato in Your Living Room
Rise Gardens Helps You Grow the Perfect
Tomato in Your Living Room
By
-
October 31, 2019
Maintaining
a garden in Chicago is difficult. Not only is the region plagued with a short
growing season and unpredictable weather, but figuring out how to provide
fruits and vegetables with the perfect amount of water, sunlight and nutrients
can be confusing.
After
becoming frustrated with growing fruits and veggies outdoors, Hank Adams tried
his hand at building his own in-home hydroponic system, a device that grows
plants in a reservoir of moving water and organic materials.
“It was
a really frustrating experience,” Adams said. “It actually took a fair amount
of research to figure it out. And what I ended up with was a system that really
belonged in my basement.”
The
system was “ugly,” he said. “It was nothing I wanted to show off.”
A Rise Gardens system (Photo via Katherine Davis)
But the
experience led to Adams launching Rise Gardens, a
Chicago startup creating an indoor, IoT-connected hydroponic system that is
attractive enough to put in your living room and simple enough for anyone to
grow a perfect head of lettuce.
Adams
began making prototypes for Rise Gardens in 2017, working out of Chicago
startup incubators 1871 and mHub, and began selling the final product in
August. Adams is a board member of 1871 and also the former CEO of
Sportsvision, a Chicago-based graphics company best known for
inventing the yellow first down marker in football broadcasts.
Rise
Garden systems can be bought online or in the startup’s pop-up shop at 20 W.
Kinzie St., which opened in early October.
The
modular system is made out of hardwood and heavy-gage, powder-coated steel. It
has a built-in water pump, seed sockets and a programmed LED light system that
automatically shifts on and off to give plants the perfect amount of light.
Once
consumers purchase their hydroponic system, they are encouraged to subscribe to
Rise Gardens’ subscription service, which sends them seed pods every month and
gives them access to the company’s mobile app that reminds users when to add
water or nutrients. The startup sells seeds for a range of vegetables and
herbs, including kale, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, basil and rosemary.
“We’ve
made it simple,” Adams said. “If you follow the instructions, it grows really
robustly.”
Adams
said plants grow 20 percent faster in his system than they could in soil or
outdoors, adding that users can expect to grow arugula in 14 days and a head of
lettuce in 25 days.
A Rise Garden system
(Photo via Katherine Davis)
Though
small, counter-top hydroponic systems are common, Adams says Rise Gardens’
large size allows for users to actually grow a significant amount of fresh
food.
Since
launching, Adams said he has sold 70 systems and is now working with retailers to
sell the device in more locations. The system starts at $549 for one level and
goes up to nearly $950 for three.
In his
own Rise Gardens system at home, Adams grows lettuce, carrots, beets, tomatoes,
peppers and strawberries. Often times, he says he uses his produce in homemade
salads, pastas and pizzas.
“It’s
really nutritious and it tastes great,” Adams said. “Compared to a lot stuff
that we’re used to getting in grocery stores, you’re surprised by the taste.”
Hank Adams, founder of Rise Gardens, with his hydropnoic system
(Photo via Rise Gardens)
Tuesday, October 29, 2019
Kaplan Institute Hosts the Obama Foundation Annual Meeting - Part One
AVA DUVERNAY AND THEASTER GATES
New INC Magazine Blog Post by Kaplan Institute Exec Director Howard Tullman
Why Mr. Wonderful Banks on Female Founders
He's
heard a zillion pitches on Shark Tank. The startups that are most successful do
three things well, are more likely to be led by women--and more likely to get
his investment money.
Executive director, Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation
and Tech Entrepreneurship, Illinois Institute of Technology
We
hosted Kevin O'Leary from Shark Tank, aka "Mr.
Wonderful", at the Kaplan Institute for a talk and a fireside chat last
week in front of about 400 of our student entrepreneurs. He shared some
important and serious thoughts about the entrepreneurial journey in general and
about his own education as a successful investor in so many different startups
(more than 50 in his portfolio as of now). He covered both things he learned
through the TV show and, more importantly, some lessons for anyone looking to
start or invest in a new business.
Here
are a few of the most interesting notes and comments.
1. It's all about sales and the costs of customer
acquisition.
Kevin
likes to meet the CEO of a potential investment and ultimately the main players
on the management team, but the person he wants to meet first is the head of
sales. Because if you don't have sales, you've got nothing. And, if you
don't understand what the cost is for your business to attract (CAC) and retain
new customers, you're doomed. So, he likes to meet the person who's putting the
meat on the table right off the bat.
With
the World Series under way, I'm reminded of an old baseball truism:
"pitchers in baseball can never win a game, they can only lose it."
It's the hitters who get it done. Raising money is easy for a lot of people --
they're great storytellers -- selling customers is much harder because when you
make them part with their rubles, that's where the rubber really hits the road.
2. We're much more brand loyal to consumer products
than to tech products.
We may
use a favorite laundry detergent or shampoo our whole lives, especially if it's
what our parents used, but that kind of loyalty doesn't play in the tech
world today, where everyone only wants the latest and greatest. If you show me
something that's better, cheaper, faster, easier and available today, I'm
yours. And no one worries a bit about changing horses in midstream
as long as switching costs like equipment replacement, re-training, etc. are
modest.
In the
software business, it's certainly important to take care of your existing
customers. But as I always tell our portfolio companies, the real measurement
of your long-term success isn't simply the size of your installed base,
it's your ongoing share of installations of your products on new machines and
new technology implementations because those are the customers who'll
matter the most in the future.
3. Winners on Shark Tank do three things well.
After Kevin
had watched zillions of presentations and studied exactly who won and
which deals got funded on Shark Tank, three specific attributes of
winning pitches emerged.
1. They could convincingly
tell their story in 90 seconds or less.
2. They demonstrated that
they had the right team to execute their plan.
3. They knew their numbers
(backwards and forwards) and they had a full understanding of the economics of
their business model.
Everything
else was fixable especially with the vast benefits of the exposure these
companies received on TV which often drove their customer acquisition costs
close to zero.
4. Women make the best startup CEOs.
He said
he was a little worried about being accused on being a reverse sexist because
such a huge percentage of his investments are made in companies with female
CEOs. But here again, he has consistently observed a set of skills and
attitudes among these leaders that he even goes so far as to suggest to the
other male-led companies in his group. The four skill sets that were most
important were:
1. They have great time
management skills. They didn't run around trying to do everything at the same
time or taking on too many projects or challenges all at once. They are focused
and centered and consistently triaged and re-proritized what they needed to get
done in the moment.
2. They set goals that are
achievable and hit those goals far more often than their male counterparts. He
said that he encourages this strategy of manageable and somewhat modest
targets even at the cost of some rapid growth, because it
makes for successful employees, which leads to the third differentiator.
3. They build company
cultures that have lower overall employee turnover, which in turn dramatically
reduces their operating costs. Happy workers are healthier, more productive and
stick around.
4. Women executives are
simply better listeners.
There
was a lot more in the conversation, but these seemed to me to be the key items.
Sunday, October 27, 2019
Saturday, October 26, 2019
Points and Figures by Jeffrey Carter
One Way to Help Chicago (and Illinois) to Crawl Out of the Depths of Destruction
A group of people just gave IIT $150MM. IIT is a small tech-focused school in Bronzeville on the near South Side of Chicago. You can get there on the Green Line or on the bus. It’s not too far from where the White Sox play. The campus has some very elegantly designed buildings. I was down there the other day picking something up from Howard Tullman. Howard is running the Ed Kaplan Institute there and I expect like everything Howard does, it will be highly successful at churning out talent and startups.
A couple of years ago, Larry Gies and his wife Beth gave Illinois $150MM. The Grainger company gave Illinois Engineering $300MM, and Thomas Siebel has consistently donated money to the engineering school over the years. He credits much of his success to Illinois.
You don’t have to be an alum to donate. Ken Griffin isn’t an alum of Chicago but he donated to the University of Chicago.
The University of Chicago has been on a binge to increase endowment and donations. So has Northwestern.
Why is this important and more importantly, why is this important for Chicago and Illinois?
First, donations ensure the long term health of the school. They aren’t cheap to operate and while we know there is a bubble in college education these days, the money will help these schools attract top talent. The bubble is an opportunity, not a bug. Some colleges will collapse on themselves. I think that the college ranking system has been too stagnant for too long and there is an opportunity to shake it up. Money gives colleges the opportunity to do that.
When colleges have financial breathing room, they can innovate. Look at what Illinois did with it’s MBA program. Chicago’s Polsky Center came from one donation thanks to Michael Polsky. Ed Kaplan who also donated to IIT, donated money to Chicago to start the New Venture Challenge. Look at the opportunities that spun out of that and the way it has raised standards of living for all of society.
How about the city and state?
Chicago and the state of Illinois have a reputation. Some of it is well earned. Some of it is just window dressing. I am in LA right now and when I mention that I live in Chicago the first thing people do is mention the weather. Giving colleges in Illinois money gives them the chance to recruit students from all over and exposes them to what it is really like. Sure, we have winter in Chicago but so do a lot of other places on the planet. It’s not as if Boston has a mild winter. Neither does NYC. Chicago doesn’t have wildfires and sitting on my daughter’s porch last night we not only smelled one but had some ash raining on us. We don’t get that in Chicago.
I asked one person if she ever had an Italian beef with giardiniera and she looked at me like I was from Mars.
In an information economy, the biggest asset is talent. Money and opportunity attract talent. Right now, the “alpha” in Chicago is not compelling enough to massively attract talent. Not like LA, NYC, SF or Boston. We have to continue to invest and build the startup ecosystem to get there. Important note; this is not about moving slices of pie but it’s about making the entire pie larger. Chicago getting bigger isn’t going to detract from other places. Chicago getting bigger is going to be additive to every place.
Over a number of years, I have donated to my alma maters. I am sure I will again. I hope you do too. If you aren’t an alum of Illinois, IIT, Chicago, or Northwestern but you are concerned about the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois, you should write a check to one of them. Your check will help attract talent, and the professors that can help them make a difference. Even if it’s a small check, $25 to $100 it makes a difference. If you have a lot of wealth and can write a larger check, do it.
There is only one way out of this mess. It’s for the city and state to declare bankruptcy, then fill the pipeline with energized people building startup companies that will create opportunities for all of us
