#StartupsEverywhere Profile: Deb Casurella, CEO & Co-Founder, MyAgData.
This profile is part of #StartupsEverywhere, an ongoing series highlighting startup leaders in ecosystems across the country. This interview has been edited for length, content, and clarity.
Streamlining Acreage Reporting Solutions for Farmers
Based in Effingham, Illinois, MyAgData is an agricultural-focused data analytics startup that allows farmers to utilize acreage reporting software to simplify their reports for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and for crop insurance, and also gives lenders and insurers unique insights into their customer’s acreage productivity and health. We recently spoke with MyAgData’s CEO and Co-Founder, Deb Casurella, to learn more about the firm, their access to funding opportunities, and how policymakers can work to encourage young talent to stay in rural communities.
What in your background made you interested in entrepreneurship?
I’ve been with large companies almost my entire career working in information technology to help deliver value to businesses. I was the Chief Information Officer for one of the crop insurance companies, and I got to a point in my career where I thought I could do something different. Our kids were grown and I thought I should do something that would be interesting, challenging, frustrating, and fun. And that’s basically what being an entrepreneur is. You go from highs to lows, and it can be frustrating at times, but for me it was the right point in my career and in life to do it.
Tell us a bit about MyAgData and the work that you’re doing. How did your business originate, and what is your focus?
I was in crop insurance at the time, and I was reading the 2012 Farm Bill out of curiosity. Congress included a provision in the bill about Acreage Crop Reporting Streamlining Initiative (ACRSI). Reading that, I realized that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) was going in the direction that the Internal Revenue Service went 20 years ago with electronic filings. In essence, that initiative would make it easier for farmers to do business with the USDA and allow the agency to share the farmers’ data across their programs.
And a lightbulb sort of went on in my head. I thought, “If that’s where the USDA is going, then I want to be a part of that.” At that point, though, I knew nothing about agriculture beyond crop insurance and being able to look out my window and identify planted corn. But I knew about technology, and I knew that in the agricultural industry a lot of data gets created, although I didn’t know all the ways that data could be used.
Now, eight years later, pilot tests have been completed and it’s getting closer to public availability. The Farm Bill has a Sept. 30, 2020 date for when ACRSI will be fully functioning and enabled. But in the meantime, we’ve found ways to collect and use data for other purposes, including understanding what is being planted in fields. For example, if you’re a lender, you can use our collected data to track a farm owner’s ability to repay their loan, since you can manage or measure or watch the health of that farmer’s crop. If you’re a land manager, you can do some planning upfront before planting. If you’ve got half a million acres of land, and you’re going to plant 30 percent of it with soybeans and the other 70 percent with corn, then you can procure your inputs based on what you’re going to plant across your entire portfolio of land. And now we’re really good at using data collected from a tractor or combine to do other things.
Overall, the data we can collect has become pretty valuable for streamlining a lot of processes. While we started with electronic acreage reporting, as we’ve waited, we’ve pivoted to providing valuable data for a large portion of the ecosystem.
What makes Effingham’s entrepreneurial community so unique?
For us, it was the agricultural connection. There are several large, local agricultural cooperatives in and around Effingham. Since I didn’t know anything about agriculture when I started the business, I met a couple of individuals from Effingham who really took me under their wings. I understood government programs and technology, and they understood the land and how data collection from a tractor works. Effingham and the local agricultural cooperatives were a really great place to try out the idea with farmers who were willing participants. It’s the cooperative structure that makes Effingham such a great place to combine agriculture and agricultural technologies.
You spoke with Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) earlier this month as part of Congressional Startup Day, and you had the opportunity to discuss some of the challenges you’ve experienced with finding and hiring young talent in a rural area. What steps can policymakers take to make this process easier?
Congressman Shimkus was super candid, thoughtful, and helpful—and he gave us his unfiltered perspective—so we spent a lot of time on the topic of talent. MyAgData tries to hire people based in Effingham first. If we can’t find any qualified candidates in the area, we put the job posting up as a national listing to allow people to work remotely, from wherever they are.
We hired a terrific employee about a year ago based in Effingham, and I invited him on the call with the congressman to speak about this topic further. And the very last question the congressman asked him was “Why did you stay in Effingham?” My team member responded that he came from a farming family, that he liked the small town community, and that he wanted to raise his family here. But he said the hardest part about staying in a rural community, especially when you leave high school and go to college, is not understanding or knowing what the local opportunities are.
It would be great to have a program funded by the government, at the high school level, that allows local companies to engage with students. For students at Effingham High School, it would be great to educate them about the local job opportunities as part of career development. If students going from high school to college don’t know about their local opportunities or companies, then they won’t come back because they don’t know that there are good jobs for them in rural communities. So how do you do this at the high school level? Do you create partnerships between high schools and local business owners, or do you have mentorship programs while students are juniors or seniors in high school? So some sort of program that could be facilitated by the government and implemented locally would be a huge help.
I know you were able to receive $2 million from the Open Prairie Rural Opportunities Fund in 2018. When it comes to securing funding for your business, what has your experience been like?
Two years before we received funding from Open Prairie, we saw a press release about their rural business investments in the local Effingham press. It’s a private equity fund that’s licensed by the USDA. So we reached out to them and spent two years working with them, talking to them, and educating them about our business. And they spoke with us and helped us before they made the investment. So it’s important for entrepreneurs to keep their eyes and ears open to what’s possible. Revolutionary products like MyAgData are hard to build without funding, so when an innovative technology company can spend time talking with investors to really help them understand the opportunity, it goes a long way to creating that investment relationship.
The hardest thing, by far, is fundraising. Companies that get the most funding may not have the best product, but they often have the best marketer or sales person. So an entrepreneur that is bold and outgoing and can paint a picture of the future gets more funding. An entrepreneur who is not as risky with the business, though, can get less capital. So it can be difficult to balance.
Grants are another issue as well. There are a lot of grants out there, but you can spend hundreds of hours filling out a grant application only to find out that the same universities or companies that got them last year are getting them again. And as an entrepreneur, I want to have access to the same types of opportunities.
What is your goal for MyAgData moving forward?
We want to make it easier, better, faster, and cheaper for farmers to interact with the USDA and complete the required acreage reporting every crop season and be able to participate in the agency’s other programs.
All of the information in this profile was accurate at the date and time of publication.
Engine works to ensure that policymakers look for insight from the startup ecosystem when they are considering programs and legislation that affect entrepreneurs. Together, our voice is louder and more effective. Many of our lawmakers do not have first-hand experience with the country's thriving startup ecosystem, so it’s our job to amplify that perspective. To nominate a person, company, or organization to be featured in our #StartupsEverywhere series, email edward@engine.is.
