In conversation with John Gates, agtech entrepreneur

On a Spring day in mid-April, John Gates, Ankit Chandra, and I sat down in my backyard for a conversation on the importance of water in agriculture, and what this means for startups and entrepreneurship. John is currently Vice President of Product for CropX, an international agtech startup with an important presence in the High Plains and an office in Lincoln, Nebraska. 

As part of our work understanding and supporting the entrepreneurial ecosystem around irrigated agriculture, we often talk with US and international entrepreneurs about their passion, vision, companies, and perspectives on trends they’re seeing. While we always learn something new, we generally don’t record these conversations. Here, we thought we’d try something a little different to capture the insights and enjoyment of our interactions. We won’t call it a podcast as it’s not our intent to start a regular series. Rather, as we do at the end of this post, we may feature occasional short conversations with innovators and thought leaders that we engage with. 

John’s journey as a scientist and as an entrepreneur has had him wear many hats over the years. Our conversation was wide-ranging. John talked about his introduction to water at an early age through a citizen science project with his grandmother. We reflected on the joys of being able to combine fieldwork, data science, and technological innovation while working on meangingful projects with great people. John’s enthusiasm for his work, his optimism for the potential of improvements in irrigation behavior to make a difference to environment and profitability, and his understanding of the challenges of developing proof points to tell the story of water in agriculture, all came through. These and other insights were scored by the birdsong and school pick-up vehicles passing by in our socially-distanced outdoor setting.

So thank you for your time and thoughts, John! The recording of our conversation is above. We hope you enjoy it, and we’d love to hear what you think.