When American poet Robinson Jeffers first laid eyes on California’s Carmel Bay in 1914, it was obvious, he said, that he and his wife had finally found their “inevitable place”.
Jeffers lived there with his family for the rest of his life, writing poetry, developing a philosophy of ‘inhumanism’ that decentralises humanity in favour of nature, and building a house named ‘Hawk Tower’ that stands to this day as an environmental monument.
A century later, he remains an environmental icon to many. That includes former Silicon Valley exec Danny Bernstein who recently created HawkTower, an eponymous investment fund that looks to embody many of Jeffers’ very ideals.
“It’s about the future of natural resources, the future of California, the future of the American West,” says Bernstein.
HawkTower is an early-stage venture capital fund with a dual focus on agtech automation - especially for specialty crops – and digitisation software. It has made four investments since launching in April, including Farm-ng, a start-up making robotics for small farms, and Agrifull, a software platform for fresh produce.
Why is California falling short?
Bernstein himself, much like Jeffers, holds California as his “inevitable place” having lived there most of his life including a 20 year stretch in Silicon Valley at Google and Microsoft. His view on California is idealistic - “a place of opportunity where people can find a deal that works for them, a job that works for them, a situation that works for them” – yet he now sees it to be falling short.
“Maybe the number one reason I started HawkTower was I began to see that deal really changing,” he says. “California is not working as well as it could.”
Agricultural is central to California’s fortunes. It employs hundreds of thousands of people, produces over a third of the country’s vegetables and over three-quarters of its fruits and nuts, yet faces existential threats in the form of labour and water shortages.
The core objective of HawkTower is therefore to find start-ups with promising solutions to help rural California thrive, says Bernstein. Yet while California is undoubtedly the focus, with countries as geographically diverse as the UK, Australia, and Japan just as affected by shortfalls in labour, its impact could be much wider.
Bernstein has two key ideas to try and maximise its impact. The first is The Reservoir, a non-profit innovation centre launching next year that will look to provide around 12 “trailblazing start-ups” from around the world with real-world product testing in cutting-edge facilities.
The idea goes that much like San Francisco is a hub for artificial intelligence, or London a hub for financial technology, The Reservoir can help turn California into a hub for agricultural innovation.
“A friend of mine who works in automation for agriculture said ‘agtech can be rather lonely’. Which aren’t the words I would use, but I would say that we need to improve the start-up ecosystem and support for rural innovation companies,” Bernstein says.
Bernstein therefore wants The Reservoir to be “The Olympic village of Agtech”, bringing start-ups together in a community that gives access to everything they need – including working agricultural land – all under one roof. This will be unique, Bernstein says, who has been unable to find an equivalent offer anywhere else in the world.
Farmer mistrust is a bottleneck to innovation
The incubator is intended to accelerate innovation and make start-ups much more efficient with capital by giving them full access to crop fields at the same place they develop their technology.
“They will be able to have very efficient cycles [of testing], and they will spend less time in the car,” Bernstein explains. “They will have more trust from growers, who I think are not very trusting of the promises of agtech companies even in this moment where they desperately need this technology because of the labour challenges we mentioned.”
Without this, start-ups are typically forced to find a grower to take them under their wing, give them access to a few acres which the farmer will have to keep farming even though they’re not making a profit on it, and in return, will often want a share of their company. “Those are all impediments to innovation,” Bernstein says.
The Reservoir, by contrast, is not only bringing all the necessary facilities under one roof, but will provide farmer know-how thanks to a formal partnership with the Western Growers Association. “There’s an underrated aspect of the agricultural community which is how much they want to teach people. That’s a huge opportunity.”
While HawkTower will look to invest in some of the start-ups coming through The Reservoir, it is not a condition for joining. Instead, from HawkTower’s point-of-view at least, the incubator is about giving it the best possible deal flow while simultaneously reinvigorating the agtech ecosystem of California.
Solving ‘real world’ problems
To stoke the fires of innovation further, Bernstein is “unabashedly” looking to poach some of the world’s best software and hardware talent from Silicon Valley.
“You have amazing people working on an incremental gain to advertising technology, or incremental gains in games on your phone… What I’m trying to do is attract great talent to solving what are some of the most critical issues of our of our lifetime.”
“And that’s not a new idea, right? There have been many moments in history where people tried to shift the focal point of technology talent.”
Ideally, these Silicon Valley alumni will have grown up rurally before receiving a world-class education and experience in California’s tech sector, before finally turning their sights towards solving some of America’s biggest rural issues as either founder or CEO of a latent agtech start, Bernstein explains.
“The idea that you could leverage arguably the best software and hardware talent in the world and attract them to focus on real world imperatives, real world environmental and economic imperatives, just outside of Silicon Valley,” he explains.
“That’s a uniquely Californian opportunity.”
