AgTech's Prediction Paradox: Navigating Uncertainty in a World of Assumptions
The biggest problem in agtech is that everyone is so certain about the future.
"You can't predict, but you can prepare" - Howard Marks
The biggest problem in agtech is that everyone is so certain about the future.
When we know what is going to happen next, we check out. And that’s when we make our biggest mistakes.
We’re certain things will keep going up forever…
📈 Which led to many stupid deals getting done from 2015-2021.
And then we’re certain things will continue to go down…
👇 Which led to a 44 percent decline in agtech investment between 2021 and 2022.
Before 2022, the agtech market needed some healthy skepticism towards an overwhelming amount of optimism…
And now we need to show some skepticism towards the streetcorner preachers of agtech shouting that “the end is nigh!”
I don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow and neither does anyone else - not even the Harvard MBA leading your accelerator program.
Prediction is an illusion. A trap that conditions you to a state of learned helplessness.
What you can do is realize that the future is uncertain and take action to design it.
If you want to learn more about how I believe the agtech ecosystem should be approaching the future, join me at Ag Enlightened 2023 put on by the folks at EMILI!
I’ll be speaking about how companies can design the right conditions for agtech to flourish.
Whether you can make it or not, please stop trying to predict the future and start preparing for it through action.
Make something different. Make people care. Make fans, not followers.