Feb 28, 2018
Speaker Bio:
Alain Goubau who is the Co founder and COO and CFO of Farmlead an online grain marketplace were farmers and grain buyers can buy and sell any type of green. Alain, also has extensive project management and operations experience as a field engineer throughout Europe and Asia and as a co-founder at Alta Arrows, energy's a telecom infrastructure startup based in Boston. He's also previously worked with Mckinsey and company in the agribusiness team and of course, Alain, who was also raised on a farm in eastern Ontario.
Episode Overview:
Farmlead makes the grain trade easier than the way it, traditionally, was. It is a business to business marketplace where buyers and sellers can list what they're either looking to buy or sell, negotiate with each other, come to terms and then manage transactions. Offering innovative procedures to make grain trade as efficient and easy as possible, Farmlead makes a lot of sense because it is a tool that would help sellers connect with the potential buyers for the grain they’re trying to sell.
FarmLead brings together thousands of grain sellers and credit-checked buyers, online. Watchlists allow you to immediately receive notifications when a grain you are looking to buy or sell gets listed. This creates more opportunity for your offer. It puts you ahead of your usual market whether you are selling or buying. This mobile app offers to provide exclusive market research, price visibility, grain testing, reduced brokerage fees and risks at the tip of your fingers. This app marketplace can save you time, money and energy.
What you’ll learn in this episode:
- Making sure you stay close to your customers is very important.
- Discovery is part of the equation. Not always knowing what lies ahead or what to do is part of the equation
- Learning to really have the discipline or be able to realize faster that you're in one of those situations and pull yourself back when you're tempted to either hire someone that isn't exactly right or to make excuses for someone that just isn't fitting for whatever reason
- Doing things that don't scale when you're trying to change the way an industry approaches things.
- Eat your own dog food, which has we stopped the entire company for a full hour for once a month and everyone gets on our mobile apps are the web version of our application and tries to buy and sell Grit.
- Alain mentioned one of Bill Gates’ quote “Customers that don't like your product or that aren't happy are the ones that learned, that teaches you the most about your product.”
Resources Mentioned:
Book: 7 habits of highly effective people
Facebook: FarmLead
Twitter: @thegoubs
Twitter: @FarmLead
LinkedIn: Alain Goubau
Website: FarmLead
Delight: Maples and making Maple Syrup on his hometown of Ontario.
Overview of the Company:
FarmLead aims to facilitate greater equality, efficiency and transparency in grain marketing. Our online grain marketplace allows farmers to find more buyers and identify the best possible deal, while grain buyers easily access and identify the grain for sale in their desired location.