Based on the material covered in this chapter, what questions would you ask the firm’s founders before making your funding decision? What answers would satisfy you?

Business Idea: Create a platform that allows farmers to share data on all of their farming practices. The data is then pooled with data from similar farms in order to create analytics that provide farmers insights about costs, the best time to plant, the optimal amount of fertilizer to apply, the best time to harvest, the optimal time to market their grain, and other important factors.

Pitch: Imagine the following. You’re having breakfast at a café in a rural Iowa town. There is a long table with a group of people drinking coffee. You can tell from their conversation that they are farmers. It’s March and planting season is approaching. The farmers are talking about the seed corn they are about to buy. Two of the members of the group are comparing the prices they paid for an identical variety of Pioneer seed. They bought their seed from different dealers, and one person paid 15 percent more than the other. They each spent about $60,000 on corn seed, so 15 percent is $9,000. The farmer that paid the higher price said, “I’m trying your seed corn dealer this year. My 99 cent cup of coffee may have just saved me

$9,000. Thanks for the information.”