A few weeks ago, we learned that Bilberry, a startup alumni ofaccelerator Hectar, had been acquired by the American giant Trimble. From the beginnings of the R&D in France to the development in Australia and the acquisition by Trimble, Guillaume Jourdain, co-founder and CEO of Bilberry, tells us about this international entrepreneurial adventure.
🇬🇧English below
Can you introduce us to Bilberry?
At Bilberry, we allow farmers to spray herbicides only where they are needed, i.e. on the weeds and not in the entire field. We put cameras every 3 meters on the booms of agricultural sprayers, they scan the field in real time and thanks to artificial intelligence algorithms that we have developed, they know if it is a weed or not. For farmers, this represents very significant savings: to give an example, the first farmer who used the Bilberry technology on a large scale on 12,000 hectares saved an average of 90% on herbicide, which represents more than a million liters of water, more than 40,000 liters of product and more than 200,000 dollars, so it's a significant impact on the farms.
On the video below, we first see the "selective spraying", with the nozzles that dispense product only on the weeds. Then we can observe what the cameras see: 8 images per second, the white rectangle is the detection zone, and in red are the weeds detected by the algorithms, when there is detection the algorithm sends the information to the nozzle to open or close it.
How did you build the growth of your startup, from R&D in France to commercial development abroad?
It happened in two stages. In 2017, we were already working with agricultural sprayer manufacturers, and in particular a Dutch manufacturer called Agrifac, who thought that there were opportunities for cameras in Australia, so they wanted to buy a camera system from us and send it there. This was the very first system we sold, we were still in the R&D phase, so we went back and forth for two years between France and Australia to test and improve the system. In parallel with this development, we asked ourselves many questions about the potential of this technology, which was quite enormous, and about how to adopt the right approach on the market. We thought that the technology would become standard worldwide because it generates too many benefits for farmers and the planet. But it's not going to develop everywhere at the same speed, so we tried to understand where it would develop first and why. We did a whole analysis, and the main criteria that came out were the size of the farms - the larger the farm, the faster the return on investment - the climate, which has to be dry and arid, because this limits the proliferation of weeds and therefore increases the possibility of saving herbicides. From our analysis, we said that the development would be done first in Australia, so to accelerate I moved there in 2019 with part of the team, and now we have 6 people on site who develop the business. Australia on this product line, it's 95% of our turnover.
For further development, we are starting to establish ourselves in Canada this year, and we are also targeting the USA.
What made you joinaccelerator Hectar and its ecosystem ?
The main reason is that we were in a bit of a transitional period, the business was quite developed in Australia and we were well established in the Australian ecosystem whether it was at the startup or agricultural level, so we decided to put the focus elsewhere, and we thought that Hectar was a good gateway into the ecosystem both startup and AgTech in France. We were also interested in terms of visibility and communication, but also to accelerate and make several people in the team benefit from Hectar's expertise.
We recently learned after the accelerator program that you sold your company to Trimble, a large American company. Can you tell us how that happened?
Like a lot of things in Bilberry's history, it came about by opportunity. We weren't selling at all and we were very happy with the way we were growing. We had reached our goals, in 2022 we will make about 3M euros in sales and the product is performing very well. We were in the process of working on our next round of financing in order to make a nice series A between 10 and 15 million. In this context, Trimble came to see us, they were not interested in investing but they wanted to acquire a startup that does what they call "selective spraying" because they think it is the future and wanted to be present in this technology.
The goal now is to become part of the Trimble Agriculture organization. Without wanting to, we built a company that was in fact very complementary to Trimble, so we keep the same logic, the same target markets.
What future for Bilberry now?
What's interesting with Trimble is that we have the same vision, this desire to be a pioneer in this green revolution, they have it just like us, so we are very aligned.
Nevertheless, Bilberry is going to change: historically, Trimble has grown a lot by acquisition and 4 years ago they changed their CEO and strategy to do what they call "connect and scale", with the goal of linking together the companies they buy, for more coherence and structure.
What is also changing is that we will have more resources, more distribution networks throughout the world, so access to markets will be easier. The objective today is to go faster and stronger thanks to the synergies we have with Trimble.
What advice would you give to a French entrepreneur who wants to get into AgTech?
The thing that I remember and that was very important for us and that I still apply today is to always think from the customer's point of view, from the end user's point of view and from the positive or negative impacts that this can create. Going to Australia to visit farmers was a decision that allowed us to succeed: in the fields, we understand what goes well with the product and what the farmers use it for, and this allowed us to get very direct feedback. This proximity is vital, if you don't know your customers you are dead.
A second point that seems important to me, which we didn't do at the beginning because we needed cash and we were going in all directions, but which we did better and better as we became more financially secure, is that we became hyper-focused: we wanted to make only one product, cameras, and to become excellent in that. Some people decided to make cameras and nozzles, several geographical areas, several cultures... We decided to make only cameras, only in Australia and only on cereals. We refused projects that were not in this scope, because when you don't have a lot of resources, to manage to have only one objective and to be really the best on this small perimeter allows to learn a lot, to generate more resources and to grow faster. Doing one thing but doing it better than everybody else, that's really an important point that I always keep in mind.
--
🇬🇧
What is Bilberry?
At Bilberry, we allow farmers to spray herbicides only where they are needed, i.e. on the weeds and not in the whole field. We put cameras every 3 meters on the booms of the agricultural sprayers, they scan the field in real time and thanks to artificial intelligence algorithms that we have developed, they can know if it is a weed or not. For farmers, this represents very significant savings : to give an example, the first farmer who used the Bilberry technology on a large scale (12,000 hectares) saved an average of 90% on herbicide, which represents more than a million liters of water, more than 40,000 liters of product and more than 200,000 dollars, so it's a significant impact on the farms.
In the video below, we first see the "selective spraying", with the nozzles dispensing product only on the weeds. Then we can observe what the cameras see : 8 images per second, the white rectangle is the detection zone, and in red are the weeds detected by the algorithms, when there is detection the algorithm sends the information to the nozzle to open or close it and spare some product.
How did you build the growth of your startup, from R&D in France to commercial development abroad?
It happened in two phases. In 2017, we were already working with agricultural sprayer manufacturers and in particular a Dutch manufacturer called Agrifac, who thought there were opportunities for cameras in Australia, so they expressed a desire to buy a camera system from us and send it there. This was the very first system we sold, we were still in the R&D phase so we went back and forth for 2 years between France and Australia to test and improve the system. In parallel with this development, we asked ourselves many questions about the potential of this technology, which was quite huge, and about the way to dress the market. We knew the technology would become standard worldwide because it generates too many benefits for farmers and the planet. But it's not going to develop everywhere at the same speed, so we tried to understand where it would develop first and why. We did a whole analysis, and the main criteria that came out were the size of the farms - the larger the farm, the faster the return on investment - and the climate, which has to be dry and arid, because this limits the proliferation of weeds and therefore increases the possibility of saving herbicides. From our analysis, we said that the development would be done first in Australia, so to accelerate I moved there in 2019 with part of the team, and now we have 6 people there who develop the business. Australia on this product line is 95% of our turnover.
For the next stage of development, we are starting to establish ourselves in Canada since this year, and we are also aiming for the USA.
What made you join the Hectar accelerator and its ecosystem ?
The main reason was that we were in a bit of a transitional period, our business was quite developed in Australia and we were well established in the Australian ecosystem, both in the fields of startups and agriculture, so we decided to focus elsewhere, and we thought that Hectar was a good gateway into the ecosystem of both startups and AgTech in France. We were also interested in terms of visibility and communication, but also to accelerate and make several people in the team benefit from Hectar's expertise.
We recently learned that you sold your company to Trimble, a large American company, at the end of the acceleration program. Can you tell us how that happened?
Like many things in the Bilberry story it happened by opportunity. We weren't selling at all and we were very happy with the way we were growing. We had reached our goals, by 2022 we'll be making about 3M euros in sales and the product was performing very well. We were in the process of working on our next round of financing in order to make a series A between 10 and 15 million. In this context, Trimble came to see us, they were not interested in investing but they wanted to acquire a startup that does what they call "selective spraying" because they think it is the future and wanted to be present on this technology.
The goal now is to become part of the Trimble Agriculture organization. Without wanting to, we built a company that was in fact very complementary to Trimble, so we keep the same logic, the same target markets.
What is the future for Bilberry now?
What's interesting about Trimble is that we still have the same vision, they have just like us the desire to be a pioneer in this green revolution, so we're very aligned.
Nevertheless, Bilberry is going to change: historically, Trimble has grown a lot by acquisition and 4 years ago they changed their CEO and their strategy to do what they call "connect and scale", with the aim of linking the companies they buy together, for more coherence and structure.
What is also changing is that we will have more resources, more distribution networks throughout the world, so access to markets will be easier. The objective today is to go faster and stronger thanks to the synergies we have with Trimble.
What advice would you give to a French entrepreneur who wants to get into AgTech?
What was very important for us and that I still apply today is to always think about the customer, the end user and the positive or negative impacts that our product can create. Going to Australia to visit farmers was a decision that allowed us to succeed : in the fields, we understand what goes well or not with the product, what the farmers use it for, it allowed us to have very direct feedback. This proximity is vital, if you don't know your customers you are dead.
A second point that seems important to me, which we didn't do at the beginning because we needed cash and we were going in all directions, but which we did better and better as we became more financially secure, is that we became hyper-focused: we wanted to make only one product, the cameras, and to become excellent in that. Some people decided to do cameras and nozzles, several geographical areas, several cultures... We decided to do only cameras, only in Australia and only on cereals. We refused projects that were not in this scope, because when you don't have a lot of resources, to manage to have only one objective and to be really the best on this small perimeter allows you to learn a lot, to generate more resources and to grow faster. Doing one thing but doing it better than everybody else, that's really an important point that I always keep in mind.
