But for Fitzgerald, the contest was about more than cash. He wanted input and advice from people who know startups, he said.
Fitzgerald’s mentors in the competition provided “robust feedback on how to think about the business model, taking it to the next level,” he said.
Matthew Fitzgerald explains the whiteboard he created to organize his farm business that inspired the farming organization app Farm Flow. (Renée Jones Schneider/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
Finding the middle ground
While farming uses automation, Fitzgerald said, “60% or more of farmers still use pen and paper as their primary planning tool.”
The gap is real, especially among smaller operations, said Garen Paulson, an assistant Extension educator at the University of Minnesota.
Most of the 120 large commercial farms he works with through the Southwest Minnesota Farm Business Management Association have adopted digital planning, he said.
It took those large farms more than a decade to switch over, he said.