COMPANY

Name: Harvest₂O

Legal Name: Harvest2O, LLC

Location: Skokie, Illinois

Founded: 2017

Founder(s): Brock Adam Leach and Hank Adams

Website: https://www.harvest2o.com/

Social Media: 40 Likes on Facebook, 309 followers on Linkedin

INDUSTRY –  USA’s Hydroponics Market

Size: $880.7Mn in 2017 (Source: Research Nester)

Projection: $3.7Bn by 2025

Introduction

You can now grow your salads in your kitchen or living room, as Harvest₂O makes commercial-grade hydroponic technology accessible for consumer use. The company’s Smart Garden employs a form of vertical farming to make the concept of farm-to-table food easy to achieve, all year round. It also facilitates a cleaner and more productive home gardening experience.

Harvest₂O has a sister concern, LeewardFarms (a commercial indoor farming startup), that provides sustainable and locally cultivated food to regions that traditionally import their produce.

The Product

Harvest₂O’s product ecosystem comprises of a physical appliance to grow the produce in and an app that can share intelligence on how to manage the plant growth in the appliance. It also features a complementary service that provides all the supplies a customer would need to keep the farm running productively.

The Harvest₂O appliance is modular in nature. This means that you can decide to scale up or down the volume of food you wish to grow. And having been modelled to look like a piece of furniture, it fits in quite seamlessly with the room aesthetics.  

Next, the Harvest₂O app harnesses algorithms to optimize plant care by telling you what, when and where to grow each variety of crop. It also aids in nutrient dosing and tracking of harvest.

The first Harvest₂O growing system, is expected to be priced at $1000. And it will feature lighting, plumbing and two-levels of growing.

Additionally, by paying a one time cost for the AI-powered and interactive Smart Gardener you can automate 95% of the work that goes into growing vegetables and plants – from adding nutrients to managing the lights.

Powered by all these features, if Harvest₂O is able to deliver on its promise of simplifying home gardening, we might get one step closer to solving the world food crisis.

Origin and Founding Team

Ever since he was a child, Hank Adams, has been a gardening-buff. He even used to grow strawberries, in his hometown of Colorado, while growing up.

After completing his MBA from Northwestern University (1994-99), Adam went on to set-up several businesses such as Real Fans Sports Media, Sportsvision and TeaSquares. Then in 2017, he took a break from his work to focus on his passion for gardening in Chicago. But the harsh winter literally prevented him from enjoying the fruits of his labor. The plants couldn’t survive the intense weather elements.

Hence, Adams resorted to home-hydroponics. He started off by growing his vegetables and fruits in giant plastic tubs. Adams kept iterating the design of the system to get a model that would look good and help plants grow optimally too. And that’s how he founded the sleek, yet functional Harvest₂O modules.

Performance and Trends

According to Built in Chicago, Harvest₂O currently has six employees. In September 2018, it raised $500k in seed capital. The company is currently conducting advanced UX testing and hopes to roll out the first batch of its products in 2019.