Tristan Wilson barely has time for a conversation Thursday morning because his schedule is booked completely with meetings all week-long.
Wilson and his company PyurSolutions—which developed a variety of nontoxic, biodegradable, plant-based pesticides, herbicides and insecticides for agriculture and the home—is one of six participating in the Iowa AgriTech Accelerator in downtown Des Moines, Iowa.
“It’s been excellent, I consider myself a sponge,” Wilson says before starting a meeting with a mentor.
For the six startups in the Iowa AgriTech Accelerator the first two weeks of the 100 day program is spent having meetings with over 70 mentors from various industries. The goal of these meetings is to identify three to seven mentors each company can work with moving forward to enhance various aspects of their business. Each meeting is 30 minutes long and held in the offices of the Global Insurance Accelerator in downtown Des Moines, Iowa.
Kurt Eaves is the Vice President of Underwriting and Production for Grinnell Mutual and serves as a mentor in The Accelerator.
He says his role varies on the company he’s working with.
“It depends on what they are looking for because as a mentor they can be looking for help on their business model or marketing,” Eaves said. “Many times it’s as simple as connections and networking. People that I know that can help them with what their problem is.”
Megan Vollstedt, Executive Director for the Iowa AgriTech Accelerator, keeps everybody on schedule.
She receives feedback from each mentor and each startup.
“The mentor can tell me how they can help a certain team in a certain area and then we can match them up that way,” Vollstedt explains.
Vollstedt calls it, “Mentor speed dating” that started as early as 8 a.m. last week and ended at 5 p.m. It will be more of the same this week.
Ted Hinton of Hintech—A company that created a corn stock remover and crusher for facilitating no-till farming—said it’s that networking piece that he’s most excited about for his company.
“There’s a company that I’ve known who I may have some strategic fit with and I know the guy who is in charge, but I really haven’t been sure about how to approach him,” Hinton explained. “Well one of the people I talked with this morning knew who I was talking about and said they would get me introduced without a problem.”
Hinton says he’s lucky he got into the program during its first year.
“I’m just tickled pink,” Hinton says. “Once words gets out about this, it is going to become fiercely competitive. We might have gotten the easiest go at this because it was kind of an unknown.”
In the Iowa AgriTech Accelerator, six companies receive $40,000 in seed funding and engagement with investor and mentor companies. This compliments office time education, outreach, networking and presentation opportunities.
In total the program lasts 100 days and finishes with the companies pitching at a demo day during The World Food Prize in October.