For many Ag-&-Food entrepreneurs, telling a compelling story about the magnitude of their innovation, the size of the value chain segments they can transform, and the potential value of their startup enterprise, is essential to their ability to recruit investment, talent, and partners or collaborators in pursuing their innovation.  In a data-driven world, there is no substitute for doing the homework to help paint a comprehensive picture.

One of the most-important conversations that entrepreneurs have with potential investors is the conversation about company valuation – what their business may be worth today, and what it may be worth in the future.  Since nearly every early-stage startup business relies on private financing where there is no public-market valuation, the most important measure of company worth is based on ‘comparable company’ transactions – data from transactions involving ‘comparable’ businesses in comparable or more-advanced stages of development.  While this data may be sparse, fortunately there are free data sources available that entrepreneurs can use to help quantify the valuation of ‘comparable companies’ at various stages of development. This article is the third in a series, and summarizes the data sources that entrepreneurs can utilize to build a comprehensive picture of their business’ valuation.

What Investors Want to See

Equity investors in early-stage businesses are invariably betting that the company they’re investing in today will be worth more in the future.  No investor wants to sink money into a company or technology sector for which there are unlikely to be future buyers. The critical questions of course are, what might the business be worth in the future, and what is it worth today?  To be more precise, the point where ‘future worth’ is most relevant is at a financial liquidity event or ‘exit’ – an initial public offering (IPO), or more-frequently, a company merger or acquisition transaction.  

It’s encouraging for potential investors to see that a particular technology sector has active interest from buyers, whether those buyers are public-market investors or large corporate buyers.  Investors frequently ask entrepreneurs whether there have been any successful exits by comparable companies in the entrepreneur’s chosen sector. While potential investors could do this research for themselves, it is often easier for entrepreneurs to assemble this list of ‘comparable company’ transactions, since the entrepreneur typically understands more about their particular sector and their fellow innovators than an outside investor.

Entrepreneurs can become knowledgeable about their chosen industry sectors and discuss company valuation and future outcomes with investors more confidently once they’ve done this exercise themselves.  Most importantly, entrepreneurs can help their potential investors more-quickly come to these conclusions on potential future valuation by cataloging ‘comparable company’ transactions among companies involved in or closely related to the industry sectors in which the entrepreneur operates.  

Web-based Data Sources

There are a wealth of web-based resources available to help in this process.   Four of the best, for companies in the Ag-&-Food technology sector, are cataloged below.

AgFunder – As the most-focused financial information provider focused on the startup Ag-&-Food and technology sector, AgFunder offers a wealth of news articles and periodic reviews of investment in the Ag-&-Food technology domain (https://agfundernews.com/).  AgFunder can be useful for finding the names of startup companies active in a particular sector.  However, AgFunder is not as useful for identifying details about specific investment transactions. 

Crunchbase – Crunchbase (https://www.crunchbase.com/) is an excellent web-based service for understanding key aspects about startup companies and investors, across any industry sector.  Crunchbase operates on a ‘freemium’ model, with some private company information available to entrepreneurs at no charge, and a subscription-based Crunchbase Pro service focused on providing more-detailed private company and investor information.   Armed with a company’s name, entrepreneurs can use the free level of service to access very detailed information on funding rounds for individual startup companies, including the dates and sizes of most-recent funding rounds, as well as lists of principal investors/venture firms active in that round.  Crunchbase also has an online News publication (https://news.crunchbase.com/) with frequent articles on Venture capital and private company funding information.

Pitchbook – Pitchbook is a subscription-based service targeted for venture capital investors and other institutional investors.  However, the firm’s Pitchbook News service (https://pitchbook.com/news) offers free news articles, such as periodic reviews of significant venture financing events  (https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/best-funded-startups-in-q1-are-boosted-and-battered-by-the-coronavirus).  As a targeted research tool, however, the information available on the site for non-subscribers is not as useful as Crunchbase.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) – The SEC’s EDGAR database (https://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch.html) is the universal authority for obtaining company filings from both publicly-traded companies and privately-held companies, including angel- and venture-backed startup companies.  The use of EDGAR for publicly-traded companies is discussed in Part II of this article series.  

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sources:  company press releases, company filings.
** CNH reported in their annual 2019 20-F filing (pg. F-11) that the combined value of their K-Line, ATI Track Systems, and AgDNA (software) acquisitions was "approximately $100 million in aggregate".  More-detailed breakouts were not available. 


Digging Deeper – Sector Financings as well as Exits

Recording acquisitions and exits paints a picture of what success might look like for mature startup companies in a sector, but doesn’t help as much for establishing current company valuations when an entrepreneur is raising capital right now.  To understand comparable startup company valuations, the entrepreneur can assemble a table of recent financing transactions among comparable privately-held startups in their sector.

Every privately-held company that raises funds from (in other words, sells securities to) investors, must notify the US SEC of their securities sale through the filing of a simple Form D for each financing round.   These ‘Form D’ filings are available for public inspection, through the SEC’s EDGAR search function, and form the foundation of what companies like Crunchbase use to populate their startup databases.

For each privately-held or venture-backed startup in the entrepreneur’s chosen sector, the entrepreneur can browse Crunchbase or the SEC EDGAR site to understand whether the company has had a recent financing, the date and amount of these financing, and the history of the company across several rounds of financings.  (If a startup company has changed its name, it’s best to search EDGAR and Crunchbase for each of the names, as regulatory filings may or may not reflect the company’s most-current name). Through Crunchbase, the specific investors in each company’s financing round can often be found, giving a very clear view of who is investing in this sector.  

Although private company valuations are not generally disclosed, an entrepreneur can get a reasonable estimate of relative valuations among companies by the size of the funding rounds these companies have raised.   Generally, the size of a venture-backed company’s financing round won’t exceed perhaps 33% of the ‘post-money’ valuation of the company (if it did, the dilution of the company’s existing ownership shares could be considered excessive).  And similarly, company management want to make their fund-raising efforts meaningful (they don’t want to raise less than what their firms can reasonably support), so a successful fund-raising round generally wouldn’t be less than 20-25% of the company’s ‘post-money’ valuation.  This means, for example, that if a startup raised a $10M financing round, the company’s current ‘post-money’ valuation could be assumed to be at least $30M (if the new financing represented 33% of equity), and could be as much as $40M (if the new financing represented 25% of equity).  There are many exceptions, of course. An entrepreneur assembling a table of ‘comparable company financings’ could begin to tell a narrative about ‘Company X achieved this milestone, and was worth roughly Y’, and ‘this is why we think we’re at a comparable stage and worth roughly Z’.     
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Sector Financings – Examples

One of the more-popular Ag-&-Food technology sectors, plant-based proteins, has seen some spectacular exits, with two Initial Public Offerings of stock in the past year, with another (Impossible Foods) potentially on deck in the coming year.   There have also been a number of recent financings within the sector, which helps potential investors understand the level of enthusiasm other investors are showing for the segment. The table below catalogs both recent exits as well as recent financings within the sector.
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For many Ag-&-Food entrepreneurs, telling a compelling story about the magnitude of their innovation, the size of the value chain segments they can transform, and the key strategic companies who care deeply about what they are doing, is essential to their ability to recruit investment, talent, and partners or collaborators.  In a data-driven world, there is no substitute for doing the homework to help paint a comprehensive picture.

Fortunately, there is a wealth of free data sources available on our global Ag-&-Food ecosystem and the key strategic companies that populate that ecosystem. This data can help entrepreneurs quantify the magnitude of their innovation and its potential impact on the strategic companies in their segment.  This article is the second in a series, and summarizes the data sources that entrepreneurs can utilize to build a comprehensive picture of the key strategic players in their value chain – the companies whom their innovation may threaten, or represent potential partners, channels, investors, or future acquirers of their unique business propositions.​

Private Company Information

Privately-held companies and industry cooperatives represent some of the largest players across many segments of the Ag-&-Food industry, from Mars, Cargill, and Land O’Lakes to ChemChina AG (Syngenta), Wonderful and MorningStar.  Most of the Ag supply retailers, and most equipment and services dealers who provide equipment to growers and producers on a local or regional level, are privately-held companies or cooperatives.  

Many of these privately-held companies and cooperatives publish general company information on the web, as they all serve audiences of customers, partners, and employees.  Detailed financial information on private companies and cooperatives is harder for entrepreneurs to obtain, however, as there is no requirement for these privately-held companies to disclose any financial information publicly.  Fortunately, large privately-held companies and cooperatives can leave a large footprint, so relatively-detailed market share and estimated revenue information about these companies can be gleaned from market-share reports from their competitors, or from industry trade press (see examples later in this article). 

Publicly-traded companies that have merged, or been taken private in private-equity transactions, which is a common occurrence in the Ag-&-Food industry, may no longer post annual reports on an ‘Investor’ web page.  However, their past regulatory filings remain permanently accessible on the SEC EDGAR website (https://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch.html) for any periods where these filings were required to have been filed.  

For privately-held companies that are in the early stages of registering for an initial public offering (IPO), these companies must file an S-1 filing with the U.S. S.E.C.   These S-1 filings are very revealing in terms of previous company history and revenue growth rates, gross margins, staffing and marketing spending, which may previously never have been made public.   Even if the IPO is called off or never executed, these regulatory filings are part of the public record and can be found on the SEC EDGAR website.  

Industry Trade Press

Nearly every segment of the Ag-&-Food industry has a trade press publication, an industry association, or a regional commodity board, or in some cases, multiple organizations that track and report on that segment.  One of the most-popular activities these organizations do periodically is publish data on the size and share of their industry segment – ‘Top-10’ or ‘Top-100’ lists of major producers, employers, etc. in their category.  These listings are highly useful to entrepreneurs to understand who’s on top, and who’s ‘hungry’ – potentially willing to partner with an innovative startup company to try to displace the industry leader.

Examples of market insight ‘gems’ from these trade press sources are shown in the following three examples.

Three Sector-Specific Analyses:

1) Seeds and Crop Protection – Key Players

​Across the many sectors in the Ag supply chain, there has been significant consolidation down to a handful of major global suppliers.  For example, in the seeds and crop protection spaces, what was once the ‘Big Six’ global suppliers consolidated down to four within the past five years.
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Coupled with the overall market size estimates from Bayer’s earlier slide, this market breakdown by target crop enables entrepreneurs to assemble very-detailed insights about crop protection markets and players that they can customize to address their specific market or target crop of interest, without spending thousands of dollars on analyst reports or custom market research.  (Note that ChemChina AG is not a publicly-traded company and as a result, very little published information is otherwise available).


2) Ag Retail – Key Players and Economics 

A significant volume of seed and crop protection products are distributed to growers around the country and around the world through Seed and AgChemical retail dealers. ​

​(source:  Nutrien 2019 Annual Report, pg. 26. (https://www.nutrien.com/investors)

3) Protein Production Segment – Key Players and Market Shares

The U.S. protein production segment (chicken, beef, and pork) is another very large market segment that is sharply consolidated.  Information on key market share relationships among competing suppliers, by protein category, can be found in this Tyson Foods slide from Feb. 2016:​

 

(source:  Tyson Foods, Inc. Investor Presentation, February 2016, pg. 14)

Tyson’s chart is revealing in that it shares information about JBS and Cargill (the #2 and #3 players in the market, respectively), both of whom are privately-held companies and don’t disclose their own financial information (Note that Pilgrim’s Pride is a JBS brand).   Further, Tyson has listed the sources for their market share breakdowns, such as Cattle Buyer’s Weekly. While Tyson hasn’t updated this image in their most-recent Investor Presentation (more-recent Tyson presentations remove the names of their competitors), sources such as Cattle Buyer’s Weekly still report updated breakdowns of slaughter capacity by provider, which can be found by searching the web (see, for example,  http://www.dailylivestockreport.com/documents/dlr%2008-12-19.pdf for an August 2019 version):​

​With such a wealth of no-cost data available online, innovators and entrepreneurs can easily take advantage of these resources.  It should only take a few hours to capture and represent the most up-to-date information on their specific industry or value-chain segment, and who their key potential suppliers, collaborators, customers, and ‘exit’ partners might be. This time would be well-spent to enable entrepreneurs to present their businesses as knowledgeably and professionally as possible to prospective customers, partners, employees, and investors. 

About the Author: John Selep is the Co-Founder and President of the AgTech Innovation Alliance, the 501(c)3 non-profit behind AgStart.  


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​For many Ag-&-Food entrepreneurs, telling a compelling story about the magnitude of their innovation, and the size of the value chain segments they can transform, is essential to their ability to recruit investment, talent, and partners or collaborators in pursuing their innovation.  In a data-driven world, there is no substitute for doing the homework to help paint a comprehensive picture.

Fortunately, there is a wealth of free data sources available on our global Ag-&-Food ecosystem that entrepreneurs and innovators can use to help quantify the magnitude of their innovation.   This article summarizes a few of these sources that entrepreneurs can utilize to build a comprehensive picture of the value chain segments relevant to their unique business ambitions.
 
The Global Food Value Chain
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Our world’s food system represents one of the most extensive global value chains, feeding nearly 8 billion people on a daily basis.  Within this value chain, many existing suppliers, retailers, growers, producers, processors and service providers participate and contribute value at multiple points, representing multiple trillions of dollars of annual production, processing, and consumption.

​Innovation in agriculture and food technologies offers the promise of transforming the productivity, efficiency, nutritional value and sustainability of individual segments of this value chain.  Countless opportunities exist throughout this complex value chain where innovators and entrepreneurs can offer unique solutions.  For an entrepreneur to tell a compelling story about their specific innovation, it’s important to be able to relate how their innovation fits in a larger value chain - who are their customers, who are their suppliers, and what existing providers would they be assisting or displacing as a result of their innovation?  Putting magnitudes on the size of these value chain segments is a first step, but also important considerations are developing trends, over what timeframes, geographies and other segmentation.
 
Global Ag-&-Food Data
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The comprehensive source for globally-comparable data across countries or regions is the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UN FAO).   The UN FAO offers an ‘FAO STAT’ interface on their FAOSTAT website (http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data) that offers comprehensive searchable data and statistics on animal and crop production (quantity), value of agricultural production, volume of inputs (fertilizer and pesticide use), land area, commodity pricing, imports and exports by country, etc.  over a range of timelines.  The data sets are updated annually with the most-recent comprehensive data available through 2016.  Anyone can access the information and select from a range of factors to customize the domain and range of data, geographies, and timeline to align with the specific question of interest, and the information can easily be downloaded from the site in spreadsheet form for further analysis and presentation.   Examples of the types of UN FAO information that can be extracted are shown below:

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EU Ag-&-Food Data 

At a more-regional level, crop production information can be extracted from regional governmental organizations such as EuroStat (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/data/database), with data on production and trade by crop, geography, with values in production quantity, value, area, and yield), and with data from as recent as the 2019 crop year.  The extensive EuroStat database can be navigated through a unique click-through navigation tree to identify the specific domain of interest (e.g., ‘Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries’), and then the user can open a Data Explorer to select the specific data values, geographies, and timescales of interest.   Extensive data on organic production and other themes is also available.
 
US Ag-&-Food Data 
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For United States data, a comprehensive picture can be extracted from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Quickstats database (https://quickstats.nass.usda.gov/), with data available on animal and crop production quantity, value, acreage, chemical and fertilizer use, and a variety of other data values, by geography, state, and even county levels, for crop years as current as 2017 and 2018.  The QuickStats data-selection interface is relatively intuitive, allowing the user to select the specific data fields, and showing additional data fields as relevant to what the user has already selected.   (For example, some data is only available on a periodic ‘sampled’ basis.  For comprehensive data, select ‘Census’ rather than ‘Survey’).  For example, sometimes county-level data is available for specific data values, and for other selected data fields, it is not.  Data values can be as recent as the 2019 crop year for some selected data values, while for others, data is available only through 2018 or 2017.  When selecting data by state or county, the user can select the specific state, states, or counties of interest, or simply let QuickStats return all of the available data for that specific selection to identify which states/geographies are relevant.  QuickStats data can easily be downloaded from the web interface in spreadsheet form for further refinement or analysis.  
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Examples of the kinds of data that are available through QuickStats include the following:

​Often, more-specific information on individual states or commodities, including export and trade values, can be found on individual state agriculture department websites, such as the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) website (https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/statistics/).   The CDFA site includes comprehensive reports by crop year with extensive information by crop and county-level data going back many decades, but the information is published in a static form that often requires manual effort to tabulate and correlate into time series.  Fortunately, much of this state and county-level data is available from the USDA QuickStats site in a more searchable form.
 
Trade Association Data 

Information on specific food-industry topics can also often be found by looking at websites of specific commodity or industry-associations, that provide public information and advocate for their particular agricultural commodity or industry segment.   For example, the Plant-Based Foods Association (https://plantbasedfoods.org/) has a wealth of information on consumers (https://plantbasedfoods.org/marketplace/consumer-insights/), and industry sales trends (https://plantbasedfoods.org/marketplace/retail-sales-data/) that can be leveraged to educate audiences and investors about trends relevant to entrepreneurs in those industry segments.  
 
Commodity Board Data
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Many individual crop commodities in the country and in California have a state-chartered commodity board advocating on behalf of that commodity, and making public information available on their crop as part of their advocacy.   For example, an excellent example of this is the California Almond Board, which publishes a wealth of statistical information on their website  (https://www.almonds.com/growers/resources/almond-almanac-industry-stats), covering production, farms, acreage, inventories, exports and trade, as well as sustainability topics and industry marketing efforts globally.  Annual almanacs going back several years are available, for constructing time-series data.
 
With such a wealth of data available, innovators and entrepreneurs should take advantage of these resources.  A few hours spent to capture and represent the most up-to-date information on their industry or value-chain segment, and how their innovation might save costs, improve efficiency, reduce inputs or improve sustainability, would be well-spent to enable entrepreneurs to present their businesses as knowledgeably and professionally as they can to prospective customers, partners, employees, and investors.  

About the Author: John Selep is the Co-Founder and President of the AgTech Innovation Alliance, the 501(c)3 non-profit behind AgStart. ​