Larissa Silva

Hatch Program 3

1 Nov 2022

About

Larissa is a skilled strategist with an agile mindset, the perfect blend for starting an agtech venture! Larissa has had an extensive career in innovation and product development, with a demonstrable track record in managing products and initiatives from concept to execution, across start-ups, scale-ups and established organisations. Most recently, she worked as the Director of Product at OpenSC, a social impact venture working in key commodities with large companies to verify low-carbon, sustainable and ethical food production at the source. It was this experience, together with her family farming history who have been cultivating the same land for 150 years, instilled in Larissa a passion for food and farming systems. She also acknowledged that she thrives in uncertainty and working in the unknown, the eventual push for her striking out on her own to build her idea.

The Idea

Larissa entered the Hatch program with a clear mission statement but, intentionally, without a specific concept on how to deliver that. Her vision was to create a system which provided farmers with access to flexible, low-cost, net zero linked capital and expertise needed to transition farmland across the world to low emissions practices. Initially, she conceived this solution through the means of potentially partnering with large food & grain companies to help them achieve their net zero targets, providing downstream benefits to the farmers who supply the organisations.

Despite this initial preconception, Larissa was eager to approach the problem with an open mind so that she was flexible to pivot depending on the needs of her customer. Through conducting the customer discovery process, she realised that a critical problem for farmers engaging in the environmental markets process was the cost of access, the prohibitive nature of long-term contracts and the lack of knowledge around the process in general.

“Hatch brings together valuable content and a bunch of really smart people who are passionate about agriculture. I learned a lot from the speakers, my coach, my peers and my customers. The program really helped me better understand the problem space and further develop my idea to support Australian farmers in the transition to net-zero.“

What's next?

Larissa is currently refining her methodology and continuing to engage in the customer discovery process. Given her extensive experience in product design and development, she is comfortable with the build components of her platform, but is eager to continue to ground-truth it with real users. Larissa is hoping to establish the first pilot trials with farmers in early 2023.