Brendan Dobson

Hatch Program 1

13 Nov 2021

About

Brendan Dobson established EcoSystem Farms to positively impact the agriculture and aquaculture industries. Based in Willunga, South Australia, EcoSystem Farms uses cutting edge technology to grow fish and plants in a recirculating soil-less system.

Brendan applied to the Hatch program to validate his idea with primary producers in the ag industry, seek investors and attract early adopters for his start-up. He was quite advanced compared to other participants in the program.

The Idea

Brendan's unique proof-of-concept aquaponics farm grows fisheries and crops in a symbiotic manner, whereby the fish supply nutrients for crops and the crops purify water for the fish. The loss of water in the farm is only by means of evaporation and transpiration. The target customers for Brendan's startup are farmers and aquaculture businesses. The Hatch program provided him with a network of farmers to validate his business idea. After interviewing a range of potential customers and using the Value Proposition Canvas tool, Brendan articulated the customer profile of early adopters and zeroed in on grain growers.

Through the program, Brendan was able to identify a channel partner that could lay a valuable opportunity for promoting Ecosystem Farm’s value proposition to farmers. He plans to explore this possibility in the near future.

This program was great. Helped me to access my customers to understand what matters to them straight from them. Excellent content and coaching to help ag based start ups understand the unique challenges in the industry and provided help to overcome them.

What's Next?

Brendan is very committed to further developing his business concept and demonstrated clear learnings and benefits from the Hatch program. He has developed a 3-month roadmap with a focus on the following:

▪ Working on his investor pitch, then pitching to investors and raising 1 million to scale up his farm platform.
▪ Develop a website, introduce a quarterly newsletter and create a private Facebook group.