Agcrowd, the tech startup born in a sheep paddock

It started with a mob of sheep.

Matt Hinds was standing on a friend’s family farm in rural New South Wales, drenched in sun and sheep drench, when an idea began to take hold.

As a university student studying finance and economics, he ran the numbers on the sheep they were tending, and realised their returns were outperforming his stock portfolio.

The farm, in all its mess and unpredictability, was producing value. But as a retail investor, he had no way to invest in it. That simple, frustrating insight led to a question: why is it so hard to invest in agriculture?

The challenge of the sector

Australia’s agricultural sector is critical to the global food supply, yet it is underfunded and difficult to invest in.

So Matt teamed up with childhood friend James Kilby and fellow co-founder Nicholas Thyne. Together, they launched AgCrowd in 2017: an equity crowdfunding platform built for agriculture and renewable energy.

Their early inspiration was unconventional.

Matt imagined a fractional investment model – owning shares in sheep, like shares in a property. You’d buy a lamb, watch it grow, collect fleece dividends, and sell your share later for a return. This would make it easier for farmers to grow their operations.

The idea was clever, but it didn’t scale. Still, it helped them land a spot in the University of Sydney’s startup accelerator and set them on a bigger path.

Finding the real problem

Once inside the startup ecosystem, the trio saw the broader opportunity beyond farmers themselves.

Startups in agtech, foodtech, cleantech and renewables were all experiencing a shared pain. After graduating from accelerator programs, they couldn’t raise follow-on capital. Investors saw agriculture as too slow, too niche, too hard to understand.

Even worse, some founders were paying up to $60,000 in upfront fees just to try to raise funds, with no guarantees of any success.

A capital gap yawned wide. But there was no bridge. No platform that brought both sides together. AgCrowd set out to build that bridge. And they set up at Stone & Chalk to do it.

How to build a marketplace

With AgCrowd, the founders designed an online equity crowdfunding platform that allowed startups to raise capital from a mix of retail, sophisticated, and institutional investors.

Companies only paid if the round succeeded – unlike traditional fundraising advisors. AgCrowd would take a small success fee and a small upfront charge to cover due diligence. It was a lean model designed for early-stage innovation.

But building a financial services business in Australia isn’t simple. They needed an Australian Financial Services Licence – a process that typically takes up to 18 months, requires two responsible managers, and demands strict compliance.

They had no funding, no track record, and no fallback plan. Still, they pushed ahead.

They hustled. They recruited seasoned advisor Jill Storey, who joined as Director and Shareholder. A lawyer from DLA Piper came on board to support the process. They scraped together documentation, cash reserves, and compliance – juggling vendor payments against a hopeful funding round.

Against the odds, they were granted the licence in just 10 months.

The first raise

Funding came slowly. Over 99 pitches returned “no.”

But eventually, they got their first yes. Five more angel investors followed. They raised $205,000 and ran lean.

Their first customer was GoMicro, a company using 3D-printed microscopes to detect pests and diseases.

GoMicro was tackling a $300 million fruit fly problem – and was easily understood by retail investors. Within 30 days of launch, AgCrowd helped them raise 215% of their funding target.

Momentum grew. The team soon built a pipeline of over 130 companies and 650 investors.

The hard reality of two-sided markets

But there was a catch. AgCrowd was a two-sided marketplace and both sides were hard to acquire.

Startup founders needed a lot of education. AgCrowd wasn’t a proven model. Due diligence was time-consuming. Each raise could take three months, and the economics only worked for larger deals.

Meanwhile, investor acquisition was even harder. The pool of Australians who invest in startups is small. The pool that invests in agtech was smaller still.

Every investor required identity verification, compliance checks, and marketing spend. For an average $2,500 investment, the margins were razor-thin.

The founders tried to push ahead, but the math didn’t lie. They needed to go upmarket.

The shift that forced a decision

So they pivoted. Instead of retail investors, they targeted high-net-worth and institutional investors.

These backers could write bigger cheques ($25k+), making the unit economics viable. Investors liked the idea: agriculture was uncorrelated with the rest of their portfolios, and had strong ESG value.

But the shift came at a cost. AgCrowd began morphing from a scalable marketplace into something more bespoke – a boutique advisory business where deals were hand-picked, diligenced in depth, and matched with curated investors.

It wasn’t the vision they’d set out to build. So they gathered their investors and laid out four options:

• Plan A: Stay the course with retail investors and ag startups.
• Plan B: Go fully boutique and chase large deals.
• Plan C: Expand into a broad ESG marketplace.
• Plan D: Seek a strategic sale.

After honest reflection, they chose Plan D.

The sale process was slow and meticulous. But the right fit came through – they found a capital raising platform that needed an Australian Financial Services Licence. Buying AgCrowd saved them months of licensing bureaucracy.

The deal went through. The investors were paid back in full.

Final thoughts

AgCrowd’s story is one of ambition, grit, and course correction. It didn’t unlock global innovation in agriculture. But it did prove that Australia needs better financial infrastructure for impact industries.

More than that, it proves what’s possible when founders commit to solving a real problem and care deeply about the people they build with.

They learned hard lessons: validate early, move faster on “no,” support your team.

But they also showed what happens when you lead with purpose, and end with grace. Who knows what the future holds. It could be the greatest success of all.