Raising capital benefits more than just monetary resources

At first glance, the importance of raising capital seems straightforward: it provides a company with the monetary support it needs to advance its business. However, an investment’s benefits go far beyond that, often impacting everything from brand awareness to time management.

The team at Verge Ag have experienced this first-hand. Though the company was started through the investment of sweat and capital from its owners, it has since grown thanks to the attention and investments from external parties.

Wilson Acton, Chief Commercial Officer with Verge Ag, explained the company’s path to raising external capital truly began after the launch of the project they co-invested in with Protein Industries Canada, Provision Analytics, Skymatics and Coutts Agro. Together, these companies are developing a data platform that will improve on-farm logistics and food traceability. While external capital has helped them add resources, one of the biggest benefits has been enabling the companies to complete the project at a faster pace than they would have otherwise been able.

“Time’s always important,” Acton said. “Time is only accentuated when you’re innovating and leading in the market. We’re really the only people doing what we’re doing around operations planning and optimization. We believe improving operations is a really important aspect of production agriculture that hasn’t had a lot of attention paid to it beyond bigger or faster machines. What happens, naturally, is that the more successful we are, the more competition will come.”

While increasing competition doesn’t come without its challenges, Acton and the team at Verge have seen raising capital as an opportunity to combat it. Even if a potential investor chooses not to put money behind the company, Verge has still brought itself to their attention, helping build interest.

Additionally, Acton said, the process of working on the project and raising capital has given Verge’s team an opportunity to think bigger than they have in the past.

“The more we dug into the problems and how we could solve them in a way that generates a meaningful return for farmers, the more opportunity we saw. Essentially, the further we went, the bigger the problem got, but in a good way. The problem didn’t get bigger because it was harder to solve, the problem got bigger because there was more opportunity to solve and therefore more opportunity to provide value.”

He admits, however, that not every experience with a potential investor is a positive one. Some audiences choose not to invest, even going so far as to criticize a project or company.

But Acton sees this, too, as an opportunity for a company to grow.

“You have to kind of take it all in, and you have to digest it,” he said. “Find the nuggets of insight in those otherwise negative conversations. Each is an opportunity to grow.”