Farming is one of the oldest industries out there, but Barn2Door wants to make sure it’s keeping up with the times.
Seattle startup Barn2Door creates digital solutions for farmers, allowing their businesses to take advantage of e-commerce. The company does everything from build websites to process online payments, help with marketing emails and more. The goal is to help farmers by giving them the right software to sell to their customers.
Barn2Door recently raised $3.4 million in funding to achieve that goal. The funding was part of a Series A led by Lead Edge Capital, an investment firm that has also invested in big tech players like Uber, Alibaba, Spotify and more.
Barn2Door was founded in 2015, and now it’s servicing farms across 40 different states. It works with farmers, fishers and ranchers, helping them sell both crops and livestock.
Barn2Door’s CEO Janelle Maiocco recently spoke to GeekWire in an interview, where she gave insight about the company’s direction: “At Barn2Door, we aim to make it easy for farmers to sell their food online, improving the convenience for their customers,” she said. “By doing so, we can promote better stewardship of our planet, and improve the margins and viability of family-owned farms.”
This is Maiocco’s second agricultural startup. Her first one, Farmstr, acted as a food marketplace, which was responsible for customer acquisition, aggregating the products and fulfilling orders. Because Farmstr handled all these different aspects of business, it was harder to turn a profit. This influenced Maiocco’s decision to make Barn2Door much more narrow in scope.
“There is a lot of innovation in food right now, capturing a lot of publicity,” she told GeekWire. “We steer clear of the trends, and remain purely focused on enabling farmers, with clean and sustainable practices, to better serve their customers directly — their success is our success.”
