Pitch Perfectors: How LSU Louisiana Small Business Development Center Helped FarmSmart Win the Venture Challenge

BATON ROUGE -- Colin Raby had a problem. He and fellow engineering students Grant Muslow and Julius Pallotta were creating FarmSmart, an AI-powered virtual assistant. The app combines LSU AgCenter research with other agricultural data to answer any crop management question. Their idea powered FarmSmart to the semifinals of the J. Terrell Brown Venture Challenge, but now the partners needed to craft an executive business plan to reach the finals and a shot at the $20,000 first prize.

"We had some rough cost projections, but they were mostly technical expenses. We’re going to need this software, this equipment, this much to train our AI engine using the AgCenter data,” Raby said. “We were engineering students, not MBA graduates…. We recognized that we don’t know what we don’t know.”

The FarmSmart team entered the Venture Challenge a few weeks earlier with the sure and certain knowledge they needed cash to train their AI engine but no idea how to get it. Until one day Raby spotted a Venture Challenge poster in the E.J. Ourso College of Business.

“I’m like, ‘Yeah, why not?’” he said.

FarmSmart had a week to put together a two-minute video explaining their invention. Raby and

Pallotta shot at an AgCenter greenhouse. They kept the video simple. Here’s the problem. Each year the AgCenter updates a 500-plus page manual of farming best practices, along with thousands of research articles addressing every conceivable crop management issue. But finding the best advice is like looking for a needle in a haystack. No single person or organization can remember everything. The solution? FarmSmart, an AI that can use all of this information to generate actionable intelligence in seconds, compared to the weeks traditional agricultural consulting can take.

More than 60 teams sent in videos. FarmSmart was one of 13 semifinalists chosen to submit an executive business plan.

Shortly after that, a business plan-less Raby happened upon LSU Innovation Day at the College of Engineering’s Patrick F. Taylor Hall. The event showcased LSU Office of Innovation & Ecosystem Development’s services, which include business consulting. Raby met Adam McCloskey, director of the LSU Small Business Development Center, and Jason Boudreaux, LSU Innovation associate director of entrepreneurial services. Raby told them about FarmSmart and the Venture Challenge.

“We told Colin we had a pretty good idea of how the pitch competition was judged and would love to help,” McCloskey said.

McCloskey and Boudreaux had guided a number of entrepreneurs to wins in local and regional pitch competitions and countless startups toward success.

“Most first-time entrepreneurs are focused on perfecting their innovation and not operating a business,” Boudreaux said. “We help startups work through the details – market analysis, employee management, budgeting and so forth -- that can make or break a business.”

McCloskey and Boudreaux asked the FarmSmart team questions. What is your competitive advantage over the existing products in the marketplace? What is your marketing plan? How much will it cost to reach your customers?

The business consultants were like the analog version of FarmSmart. They cut through the clutter, offering insights that helped the team make fast, smart decisions. McCloskey and Boudreaux also shored up FarmSmart’s confidence in its financial projections.

“Our three-year profit projections showed this crazy high number. We thought we should probably lower it,” Raby said. “Adam and Jason asked us what the numbers were based on and made us walk them through our assumptions. Afterward, they said it all made sense. They told us to keep the numbers.”

FarmSmart did. The team was one of three finalists chosen to pitch to a live panel of judges and a shot at the $20,000 top prize.

Now the team had to put together a 10-minute presentation. FarmSmart brought its pitch deck to McCloskey and Boudreaux. “They had a bevy of helpful suggestions,” Raby said.

Among the most important: simplifying the slide comparing FarmSmart to  competitors, demonstrating the need for FarmSmart through the story of one farmer, and replacing the final slide labeled “Questions” with the company’s mission statement.

The slide describing FarmSmart’s advantages was wordy and difficult to digest quickly, Raby said. McCloskey and Boudreaux suggested a simple comparison: FarmSmart’s features versus its competitors. The result? A clear illustration that showed FarmSmart checked all of the

boxes.

The team also changed the introduction, dropping a detailed description of the innovative technical architecture behind FarmSmart. Instead, the team connected to the audience with an easy-to-understand, real-world example of why FarmSmart is needed: “Who here as ever taken care of a plant? Now keep your hand up if you have ever killed a plant. Well, those in agriculture often have similar problems taking care of crops and killing weeds. Meet farmer John…”

Removing the “Questions” slide seemed like a small change but was an obvious improvement.

“Everyone already knows it’s the Q-and-A part of the presentation. Instead of having a giant ‘Questions’ slide, why not put up something you want the judges to look at for five minutes?” McCloskey said. “Show them something you want them to remember, like the company slogan or mission.”

FarmSmart made the changes. The team won the Venture Challenge’s top prize.

“Adam and Jason were super helpful. The advice they gave us, from increasing the financial details in our business plan to making our pitch more digestible and effective was invaluable,” Raby said.

“Our job is to help small businesses succeed, and we love it when they do, whether it’s in a pitch competition or the marketplace,” McCloskey said. “We only wish more entrepreneurs would take advantage of these free services.”

For more on LSU SBDC's business consulting services, click here. For more on FarmSmart, check out farmsmart.ai