Founders with the ability to recognize when their business might not be providing the right solutions, listen to the needs of their customers, and then do something about it can be keys to success. When Ulupreneur Jayce Hafner co-founded FarmRaise five years ago with Sami Tellatin and Albert Abedi, their solution was to help farmers streamline their USDA grant applications. But the trio quickly realized there were many more ways to help American farmers; in fact, they could even encourage them to use AI to streamline their finances.
We caught up with Jayce as the firm sees new opportunities to grow its business and also help farmers grow theirs, as both sides navigate a changing political climate.
How have you changed the business?
Initially we built a “Turbo Tax” for farm funding that made it straightforward and easy for a producer to create a fast, streamlined grant application that could be submitted to the USDA. But we quickly learned this was the wrong solution on its own because even though they used our tool to generate an application, producers would be put in a 3- to 12-month waiting cycle.
We wanted to provide ongoing value to the farmer and enable them to have all their financial data clean, structured, and organized, so they can access opportunity in an ongoing way—including grants, which, it turns out, is just one slice of the pie.
We’ve now built a full-stack financial services platform for the farm, and what that looks like is an end-to-end accounting solution”
FarmRaise enables the farmer to generate invoices so they get paid faster. We have payroll integrated into the platform, and we still have our farm grant-matching platform, where we search for different funding resources for the farmer and help them get integrated into those opportunities. But the value prop is ongoing; they are using it to grow smarter, more profitable operations.
Now we have tens of thousands of farms in every state in the US who use FarmRaise to grow their business. In the past few months, we’ve been significantly growing the team by bringing more engineers, bringing on folks who are going to help us professionalize our operations. We’re growing our team and building out a culture that’s aligned around building and maintaining farmer trust.
Many farmers depend on federal grants. Are folks uncertain about the current political climate?
Farmers are wondering … “Are my contracts going to be honored across the board by the government?” I think they will be”
but some farmers have not had that assurance yet, and so that’s definitely a question mark at this moment. The Fed is having trouble predicting what the environment for the economy will be moving forward because there’s so much uncertainty with tariffs, which directly impact farmers. We see a lot of uncertainty overall in the farming sector. But we also see this as an opportunity to go faster in this moment, because there are so many chances to plug in. On the farmer side, we can provide value and stability by connecting them with resources and ensuring they’re compliant, so farmers can continue to grow and steward their operations amidst these ups and downs.
How can AI help the agriculture industry?
We believe AI can drive change and impact in the farming sector. We believe this political moment could be a catalyst for building sustainable systems that endure across generations and enable farmers with a much more accessible and empowering experience when they work with AI.
There is massive opportunity right now to drive digitization and efficiency at the government level. One of our largest partners is the USDA Farm Service Agency; they are going through a transformational period, one where they’re working to digitize every possible aspect of their customer service. We’re continuing to build enduring partnerships in this environment, even with the macro uncertainty.
At FarmRaise, we find that women farmers are often the ones keeping the books and pushing for innovative ways to keep track of their farm business.”
Also, now that most accountants have adopted software platforms, there is a significant tailwind in farmer software adoption as accountants encourage their producer clients to run their businesses on a software program for more efficient tax prep and recordkeeping.
What are your dreams for FarmRaise?
We have this bold ambition to be the intelligent platform for American agriculture, and we start by really zeroing in on the farmer—always putting that farmer user experience first, and asking ourselves, “How can we give more power to farmers, and with that power give them back time and money?”
We’re then taking that value and passing it up the chain to all of the partners—the government, the lending partner, farm product buyer —that empower the farmer. We’re removing barriers and friction points. Our goal is to connect the dots and drive efficiency, but also to increase empowerment across the whole ecosystem. We talk about digitization, but it’s about building that real-time, intelligent map of what is happening in agriculture and ensuring that farmers get to be at the center of that.
