On Nebraska Development Campus, The Combine incubator hatches new agtech startups

Before Seattle-based Costco began on its $280 million poultry operation in Fremont in 2017, Scott Niewohner remembers a discussion with his cousin about the advantages and disadvantages of structure barns to raise chickens to supply the plant.

Chief among the cons, according to Niewohner’s cousin: daily retrieval of the dead birds scattered throughout the barns, which at a ‘typical’ capacity can consist of as much as 50,000 chickens at the same time.

“He said he desired nothing to do with getting all those dead birds every day,” Niewohner remembers.

However one cousin’s dread chore is another’s concept. And while the Herman native and serial business owner wants little more to do with chicken carcasses than his cousin, Niewohner found inspiration for his newest endeavor in his teenage son’s then-incipient proclivity for robotics: “I thought about my kid’s robotics club, and I recognized we have actually been doing this for several years: getting a ball and moving it to a box throughout the space.”

Years later, and as the Niewohners get closer to their next turning point as a Nebraska-based agtech start-up, they’re still pulling themselves along by the bootstraps. They aren’t going it alone.

Birds Eye Innovation is amongst six such start-ups presently wending their method through based on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Nebraska Innovation School. The Integrate aims to profit from the concepts that form the core of companies like Birds Eye Technology and change the capacity for high growth into a reality.

“The mission here is to be the connective tissue that these rural business owners require to be effective,” stated Matt Foley, program director at , which operates The Combine. “We’re constructing that trust between agri-tech entrepreneurs and the boots on the ground by expanding these service designs, connecting them with the manufacturers, and most notably, making sure they’re truly solving an issue within the industry by validating the technology.”

Instead of the typical mate design where incubator participants go into, proceed through, and finish an incubator program as a system, The Combine takes companies through its programming on a rolling basis both on-campus at NIC and virtually. Foley stated that’s important to ensuring that business owners west of the Lincoln and Omaha metro locations likewise have an opportunity to scale their incipient business: “(We hope The Integrate serves) a sector of the population that a great deal of times has actually been neglected of the discussion as far as state-of-the-art entrepreneurship in Nebraska goes.”

The agtech area is financially rewarding, and growing quickly. It comprised $4.7 billion in financing throughout almost 700 handle 2019, according to Silicon Valley-based agtech equity capital company AgFunder; that’s up from deal volume of $2.1 billion in 2015 and volume of about $1 billion in 2012 and 2013.

The Combine’s network of Invest Nebraska-connected coaches and financiers will match a growing partnership network that will help validate participants’ pitches. It includes organizations like Nebraska Farm Bureau, Nebraska Corn Board, and UNL’s Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources, all of which have a statewide reach and deep relationships among the Nebraska farming neighborhood.

A $600,000 federal grant awarded to Invest Nebraska from the U.S. Department of Commerce Economic Advancement Administration in late September will assist seal those partnerships and reinforce The Integrate’s mission. Far, the incubator has assisted roughly 10 business, and Foley is positive that the federal grant will assist boost capability to bring even more Nebraska startups into the fold.

With Costco now counting on northeast Nebraska manufacturers to provide its $4.99 rotisserie chickens, Niewohner and his kid, Lucas, remain in the house stretch of straightening out the wrinkles in the demonstration unit that is the cornerstone of their venture.

When that work is complete in the coming weeks, the Niewohners will have a completely autonomous, robot that uses AI to separate dead birds from live ones in poultry barns and remove them from the barn. Niewohner states the breadth of understanding and proficiency he can access as a Combine individual makes all the distinction as he and his boy method the turning point.

“It gives us the self-confidence that we’re not as far off track as we believed we might have been. With Invest Nebraska devoting time to us (through The Integrate), we understand that the majority of anybody in Nebraska has become aware of them, and if they have not, they can look them up and see that there’s credibility here,” Niewohner said. “We have this force behind us and that indicates something.”

The post On Nebraska Innovation School, The Combine incubator hatches brand-new agtech startups appeared initially on Silicon Prairie News.