Kevin Johansen, AgButler CEO
“Today marks our one year anniversary of having our initial MVP launched, so it’s kind of a big day,” AgButler CEO Kevin Johansen told the 4thEst8. “We have a total of 1,350 user profiles on the platform… we’ve been consistently having job postings in the last three months.”
AgButler is a digital marketplace connecting agricultural workers with the farmers who need them. Johansen says it’s active in 42 states and is seeing a lot of farmers lining up labor for the fall harvest right now. The app is in revenue, well beyond the minimally viable product it was a year ago, but he says it morphed into a paid Beta in early spring and the information his team has been gathering has helped them identify features for product development expected before next spring (perhaps before the end of the year).
The company formally started in July 2018 and at the time Johansen expected to do some fundraising in 2020 but those plans were ditched when the economy turned upside down. So the team drilled into the software, with some undisclosed startup capital coming from accredited investors close to the founders, a small grant and some accelerator money.
“We received a value-added grant from the Missouri Department of Agriculture and Small Business Authority, so we put the fundraising on hold to focus on building the product,” he said. “Then we got a soft launch a year ago today, and we kind of rolled out our marketing campaign in the beginning of 2021 and then started going back on the fundraising route.”
The Lebanon, MO based startup has no full time employees yet, with the team kicking in part time – Johansen says he expects to jump to full time ”in the next month or so.” The company also received a little funding from the Efactory Accelerator of Missouri State University, and participated in last years Pure Pitch Rally.
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