This article was originally published in the R.M. Williams OUTBACK Magazine.

Entrepreneur Jonathan ‘JJ’ Quigley grew up on a cotton farm in Warren, in central NSW. Now based in Orange, in the Central West, he and business partner Mal Nutt set up an agtech fund and business accelerator program called SparkLabs Cultiv8 in 2017 and have now financially backed more than 50 agtech start-up companies, about half in Australia and half overseas. They are proud to be regionally based at the Department of Primary Industries Agricultural Institute site in Orange, which they claim is now the “silicon valley of agtech” in Australia.

“We’re both passionate about entrepreneurism and agtech. When we first started this, it was important we weren’t just another business in another city. Orange has now attracted leading scientists from around the world.”

Mal says.

From about 1000 companies, up to 10 are chosen each year for the Cultiv8 accelerator program, which includes mentoring, help with business planning, fundraising and other issues, as well as capital injection. Cultiv8 also puts the businesses in touch with farmers to ensure products being developed will be useful. The total market capital of all the businesses is now $1.7 billion, and the agtech startups have created more than 750 jobs.

“When we started this program 6 years ago it was a challenge to find 8–10 companies to support,”

Mal says.

“I reckon there’d be 5 times more businesses now. We’re finding really strong investment opportunities.” Although backing start-ups can be a risky business, only about 16% of the companies they have supported over the 6 years have since failed. “We went in assuming 40–50% would fall over,” Mal says. “The first thing is you need to back the right people who have got the experience, who act locally, but think globally.”