I don't think anybody thinks of farming from this perspective. To make the world smarter, happier, and richer. I think they certainly will be. Again, for their CEO, for their team to say to them not just about money, we can have more impact at scale with AppHarvest and achieve our mission and achieve our goals by working together. A former England international, he reached the World Cup Final in 1991 and was a two-time grand slam champion in the Five Nations. Prior to founding AppHarvest, Jonathan supported the Executive Director of the Army Office of Energy Initiatives to help meet the White House goal of supplying 20% of the Department of Defenses electricity usage from renewable sources by leveraging private sector capital for the projects. I mean, all of the stuff that you just talked about really does matter. But being true to our ESG values, we think it is a competitive advantage and going to make us more competitive in the years to come. You have illegal chemical pesticides where the EPA cannot track the chemicals being used on these farms in Mexico. Again, if you look at the U.S. right now, this is a USDA statistic, nearly 40% of fresh fruit and vegetables end up in a landfill. Look at how many times in the last few years you've had leafy greens yanked off store shelves. What's that Harvest's secret sauce? Most people every day are just concerned about can they put food on the table? Let's let the consumer of our product also be the buyer in our company. Visualize this, down the rows of our facility, we have a robust that's going to take thousands of photos of a tomato plant. The deal is slated to bring in $475 million in gross proceeds for Kentucky-based AppHarvest, including a private investment in public equity (PIPE) transaction worth $375 million from existing and new investors including Fidelity Management & Research Company, Inclusive Capital, and Novus. We use bees to pollinate our plans. I want to figure out what I can do, as CEO, to ensure everyone has the resources to succeed. Even with the help of AI, farm work at AppHarvest is still hard, manual labor. Follow her on Twitter at @BrookeDiPalma or email her at [email protected]. Jonathan Webb's Appharvest shares are currently valued at $20.96M. Webb: Regulators are pounding on them, consumers are pounding on them. WebThe combined company will be led by Jonathan Webb, AppHarvests Founder & Chief Executive Officer. We need to all collectively have a much more longer-term viewpoint on how we're building companies that are going to be good for communities, good for employees, and return a good return to our investors and shareholders. I'd tell you, we go through tomatoes, handover, [] in my house alone, I'm sure. Theyre looking for purpose in their life; theyre looking for companies like us.. But in its entirety not only do we have a problem we want to solve, we have a place in the world that wants to solve it with us., A crop care specialist carries boxes of tomatoes through a column of crops, pruning as she goes, I got to visit AppHarvest in November, and the sheer enthusiasm Webb has built in his staff is phenomenal. The company is building some of the largest indoor farms in the world, combining conventional agricultural techniques with todays technology to grow non-GMO, chemical-free produce to be. Clearly, the younger generation is coming up, sustainability matters, better food matters. His fund's based in DC, we had them as early investors. We just have to keep our head down and execute and do our job every day here at AppHarvest. The mission-driven approach Webb has prioritized is the companys main selling point both for investors and potential employees, whom he works to lure away from billion-dollar conglomerates. The project aimed to help achieve an Obama-era goal of ensuring the militarys hundreds of installations develop resilient on-site power generation and receive 20% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025. He also received his medical license from Minnesota. The regulators are pushing that direction. If we're going to be working with the largest players in the world, then we need to be in the big leagues, and the only way to do that is to be a publicly traded company. He is an ex-rugby player who represented England from 1987 to 1993, reaching the World Cup Final and winning two Five Nations grand slam titles. Europe, Menlo Park, China), Where the person is located (e.g. WebJonathan Webb. This year alone, more than 50 SPACs have been formed in the US, collectively raising around $36.2 billion as of last month. He has become a prominent social media star. I don't know that we're going to have enough time, but let's just start first and foremost this is one of our most recent recommendations in our service. So the problem at a macro level just started with hearing the statistic [that humanity will need] 50% to 70% more food by 2050. I go directly into the facility and talk to entry-level employees and people sweeping the floors. A Bull Market Is Coming: 3 Reasons to Buy Costco Stock, 3 Top Stocks to Buy Now to Prepare for a Bull Market, 2 Exceptional Growth Stocks to Own in 2023, 2 No-Brainer Stocks to Buy During a Stock Market Plunge, 3 Robinhood Stocks to Buy and Hold Forever, 2 Reasons to Avoid a Roth 401(k) for Your Retirement Savings, Want $1 Million in Retirement? Again, tomatoes are our first crop, but by next year, strawberries and leafy greens. If you want to know how wealthy he is, read on! Our job at AppHarvest, we need to make sure that we're keeping prices at a fair, good place where we're at today. Get the latest news and research from AFN & AgFunder in your inbox. We're really in the business of packaging up water and then shipping that out to major markets and then beyond that execution at scale. Its service leadership; our team does not work for me, I work for our team., To that effect, hes imparted a lesson to each of his team members: Every day, help five people. To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center. There won't be one automotive company transporting the world. Webb: We could not be more excited. Why? Were investing heavily in our future, so were spending heavily today, he said. Moser: That's going to do it for us this week, folks. Those robots have collected the worlds largest data set of tomato images, and each one is equipped with cameras and a laser that creates a 3D scan of the crops in front of it to determine what needs to be done at any given moment. Moser: That's exciting. We don't want to be selling just to the high-end. Jonathan Webb poses in front of his giant greenhouse, When you look at human civilization, what do you need? On this week's episode of Industry Focus: Wildcard, host Jason Moser chats with AppHarvest (APPH) founder and CEO Jonathan Webb about the growing opportunity in the agtech space, what makes AppHarvest unique, his vision of the future of farming, and much more. monitored for quality control 24/7 and harvested robotically. S&P Index data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. You have to judge yourself internally. Webb: Well, we built the company from day one. Consumers are pushing back. Maintaining that inclusive work culture, especially since he works in agriculture, is incredibly important to Webb, who aims to do everything from a place of empathy and considers his employees to be his first customers. We'll head down here and then I would start or I would end with what I started with. The Art of Self Meditation: What Are the Benefits? WebJonathan Webb grew up in Kentucky and has been committed to developing sustainable projects from Central Appalachia. What makes AppHarvest so unique? Are we perfect? www.vbprofiles.com is now www.topionetworks.com. AppHarvest is recovering from a challenging third quarter, in which it reported a net loss of over $17 million; Webb attributes it to hyper-growth. No, weve made some mistakes. It's a nice evolution in the investing world that we care more and more about it. The private markets don't need to be a part of the problem, but we can't just be quarterly earnings focused. WebJonathan Webb, the CEO of AppHarvest, says water scarcity is a growing national security concern as a heatwave continues to wreak havoc on the West Coast. On today's show, AppHarvest Founder & CEO Jonathan Webb talks about AgTech (agriculture tech), the third wave of sustainable infrastructure. Follow him on Twitter to get more updates. We're investing in our workforce. He was made a Fellow of the British Association of Surgery on the Knee (BASK), and has since taught many international and national athletes in sports medicine. Webbs England career totaled 67 points, breaking Hodgkinsons 60-point record. Cost basis and return based on previous market day close. Project Access, Inc. was founded by Mr. Webb in 1999. WebGet Chad Hill's email address (c*****@appharvest.com) and phone number at RocketReach. Here, we've had three years out of the last ten years in Kentucky have been our wettest years on state record. St John Greek Orthodox Church Easter Schedule, 7 Residential Solar Maintenance Errors and How to Avoid Them, 4 Errors with Kitchen Renovations and How to Avoid Them, An Informative Guide to Livestock Transportation, A Tool That You Need If You are Into Live Stream. Webb was named a World Rugby Council RFU representative in 2016. For us, this year, it's less about the dollars and more about hitting our targets and we were able to hit our Q1 guidance and ramp up our facility to, later on, this year by Q4, we'll be at full capacity in Q3 and Q4, selling tomatoes out of this facility in more Kentucky. Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with Jonathan about the growing opportunity in the AgTech space. AppHarvest CEO envisions 'couple-decade journey' after going public For example, we use integrated pest management, good pest to kill bad pest. I've tried to say, we have a team that looks at this as this is our 30-year journey here at AppHarvest. Project Access offers ESL/ESL classes, after school programs, and computer literacy. Growing up in Appalachia, Jonathan Webb watched the slow decline of the coal industry firsthand. Is there any one thing or is it a collection of many things? Webb is a consistent presence at the companys flagship greenhouse in Morehead. In our first month or two, we're already at all those outlets. We're building large facilities to grow fruit and vegetables running completely on recycled rainwater using LED lights, software, and sensors. I pay attention to my kids. That world will look pretty different from the one we live in now, but Lessing assured me that even as AI gets firmly integrated into agriculture, AppHarvests robots are, fundamentally collaborative. Very excited about the Root AI transaction. But really its water and food first. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy | CA Notice at Collection and Privacy Notice| Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information| Ad Choices The other thing is scale. Making the world smarter, happier, and richer. You talk about sustainable. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. In the latter, Webb was the only English player to score in the game. We were just talking earlier and you mentioned how you're in the DC area, it was fortunate that we had Steve Case, the founder of AOL, and he fundraised the rest. One of AppHarvest's Crop Care Specialists operates a tomato-picking robot. We love DC, but we don't want to just be selling to the high-end restaurants in DC. This year alone, more than 50 SPACs have been formed in the US, collectively raising. AppHarvest knows its far from being the only player in the CEA game. Linked companies : AppHarvest, Inc. Summary. Most countries in the Middle East import nearly all of their fruit and vegetables. When he says sustainable, he doesnt just mean that in an environmental sense. We're farmers, we are growing fruits and vegetables, and we're utilizing sunlight, we're utilizing rainwater. With significant tailwinds from heightened investor focus on ESG initiatives and the secular shift to plant-based foods, we believe AppHarvest is well-positioned to execute on its strategy for rapid growth and value creation, he continued. But the production we've left in the US is being grown in areas that are running out of water. If I'm a grocer and I'm saying U.S.-grown in a controlled environment we solve for all that. "For us, being transparent with not only the consumer, but having that transparency of a public company as we build a large global food company, we think the long-term benefits are great.". Typically, you would do 40 to 60 meetings to get a couple of investors. Then by the end of the year in 2022, we'll have five facilities operating. The same way there won't be one energy company powering the world. Youre reading a free article with opinions that may differ from The Motley Fools Premium Investing Services. Visualize our facility in Murray, Kentucky, it's 2.8 million square feet, nearly 50 football fields under-glass. WebJonathan Webb - Founder & CEO @ AppHarvest - Crunchbase Person Profile Person Jonathan Webb Overview Number of Founded Organizations 1 CB Rank (Person) 4,704 Public asset : 44,698,475 USD. Fresh Take: A Make-Or-Break Food Trade Show, Inside The Food Labor Movement: An Update From Starbucks Front Lines, Its The Gourmet Toast Driving Expansion At Toastique, Fungi-Based Protein Company Meati Launches Scientific Advisory Board To Support Scale-Up, Nutrition Research, City Saucery Takes Pride In Its Ugly Tomato Sauces, By Helping The Ukrainian Community In Manhattan, Veselka Earns A James Beard Nomination For Outstanding Restaurant, French Wine Region Bourgogne Should No Longer Be Translated To Burgundy. Moser: Yeah, absolutely. To get started investing, check out our quick-start guide to investing in stocks. Almost every company in the coal industry has gone bankrupt over the last 10 years. Let's force that rigor early. WebAppharvest (: ) is owned by 29.32% institutional shareholders, 30.67% Appharvest 40.01% retail investors. If you look at the grocery and then you go, wait a second. But the journey hasnt been without pitfalls. His military experience allows him to leverage private capital for his projects. Are you going to have drought? ET More on the future of agriculture and vertical farming innovator To do that and look out for the long term is true sustainability, or resilience., Webb, who began his career developing renewable energy projects for the U.S. Army, believes any company is either part of destroying the planet or part of rebuilding its industry to align with the planet: I think its our obligation as CEOs to build companies that create long-standing values.. I made the point at one point in regard to AppHarvest. Jonathan Webb, a Maryland attorney, has experience in criminal defense and DUI/DWI defense. We can better understand what product we are going to have available? We've just been selling product for a matter of months. There's a level of rigor that comes with that, and so for us, the SPAC was just a vehicle. Originally from Kentucky, Webb is dedicated to sustainable projects in Central Appalachia. We hit our Q1 guidance, $2.3 million in revenue. Every year, he gives a lecture to students enrolled in a post-graduate shipping LLM program. My answer to that is always; sustainability is profitability. David and Tom just revealed what they believe are theten best stocks for investors to buy right now and Walmart wasn't one of them! You start to do the math, and realize you might need two planet earths to have enough land and water to grow that food.. I watch them, I watch their friends, the things that they care about. WebJonathan Mark Webb net worth is $800,000 Jonathan Mark Webb Wiki: Salary, Married, Wedding, Spouse, Family Jonathan Webb is an actor, known for Graffiti Bridge (1990), In I have a 16 and then going on 15-year-old daughters. This company has plans to open two additional indoor farms in Kentucky and has already announced partnerships with the Dutch government and multiple universities to make Appalachia a hub for the agtech industry. Tomatoes will be the first fruit rolling out of AppHarvest's soon-to-launch facility in Morehead, Kentucky. As founder and CEO of AppHarvest, Ive been listening to a podcast called The Future of Farming and Investing, where Jonathan Webb discusses how AppHarvest has built a three-million-square-foot indoor farm, twice as large as Amazons largest distribution center. We need to change the profits versus purpose narrative; purpose drives profit and, ultimately, is what makes an organization durable and resilient for decades to come, Webb told Fortune. It is a non-profit organization that provides education and social services to low-income residents living in low-income apartments. We have a lot of work to do ahead of us over the years to come. After serving as an assistant public defender in Marylands Office of the Public Defender, Webb joined Ethridge Quinn for 2020. Jonathan Webb, CEO of agricultural technology and indoor farming startup AppHarvest, wants investors and founders alike to know that he doesnt struggle to balance purpose and profit; if a company loses track of the former, its only a matter of time until it loses the latter. The agriculture-tech startup raised $250,000 in its first round of seed capital in February 2018, AppHarvest CEO and founder Jonathan Webb told Insider. Then we have to remember this isn't just a U.S. problem we're trying to solve. Which is important, because AppHarvest employs well over 300 people in its Morehead facility alone. On Twitter, the actor shares his personal experiences with his followers. That might sound straight from science fiction, but AppHarvests CTO Josh Lessing, who designed many of these universal harvesting systems says we only think that because farming has been so slow to innovate. Why is that important? ", "It's easy to be a CEO that's looking for the next three months," Webb stated. Dr. Webb graduated at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine. You have to get permitting, communities [buy-in], state and federal support, infrastructure, inspections. There are many sources of information on Jonathan Webbs networth. Webb is a highly-respected knee surgeon in the United States. The last thing I would say to that is whether or not we want to do it or not, the world is changing and regulators are approaching back. We're feeding our country with people in Mexico who are making $5 a day. We've had 8,000 people apply to work at the company and we've hired 500 people in the middle of a global pandemic. Who were the most active food and agriculture technology venture capital firms in 2022. Thanks as always to Tim Sparks for putting the show together for us. We thought in order to build an organization that's going to be selling to the top grocers. I encourage anyone to go out there Google Root AI and go check out the videos of what some of this stuff does. We're going to be based in Central Appalachia. According to AppHarvest's earnings report released Feb. 24, the company had net sales of $9.1 million and net loss of of $166.2 million in 2021. I was really excited to be able to recommend it after all of the work I had done on the business, learning more about it, listening to you in your passion regarding this company, I think it would be beneficial for our members, for our listeners to hear it from your own words as the founder, as the CEO of AppHarvest. I know you're in the DC area. Below, we look at some of his most popular tweets. We had 22 meetings and had almost 20 yeses. Very few passed on this deal and we eventually had to cancel meetings.. In the 1987 Rugby World Cup, Webb made his debut for England. Dr. Jonathan Webb, a specialist knee surgeon at Nuffield Health Bristol Hospital, is the doctor. There's going to be a lot of companies hopefully working to solve our food and agriculture problems. Other AppHarvest investors include TV cook Martha Stewart, VC veteran Peter Thiel, We are about to plant our first crop in a 60-acre, controlled environment, chemical-free farm. We talk about how, It was clear that their work culture is infused with a pioneering mentality, and that Webb feels strongly about keeping that culture consistent as the company expands. The show also discusses the benefits of Martha Stewart being on their board and how they plan get their products onto shelves. Yahoo Finance's Julie Hyman at the 2022 SXSW Conference, 3 big things in investing you might have missed this week, UPDATE 1-North Korea says US causing international arms control collapse, EU releases funds, prepares aid flight for eastern Congo, Rheinmetall in talks on building tank factory in Ukraine - report, Ukraine Latest: Metsola Urges More Sanctions Pressure on Russia. If people remember that ice storm back in February, our facility operated, ramping up into full capacity with no issues in the middle of a global pandemic and the middle of an ice storm. He also has experience in civil litigation and Title IX proceedings. We're going to be headquartered in Central Appalachia, execution at scale here in the U.S. but this is a global problem that we've gotten phone calls from around the world about how and when we can take our solution and go elsewhere. The SPAC opportunity, let you, I think, become a publicly traded company maybe sooner than you really felt like you needed to. Director recently sold US$216k worth of stock Nov 24 AppHarvest, Inc. All Rights Reserved. In 1985, he joined Bristol Rugby and won the John Player Cup. I want to know what the problems are from them, not just our executive team. But then what have we done with Root AI? I don't want to keep you all day, but before we wrap it up, I did want to talk to you a little bit about ESG, environmental sustainability governance issues. You mentioned your children. "The public market needs to have a robust category of companies that are building stuff that matters," he stressed. Jonathan has a Bachelors degree from the University of Kentucky in Business. That to me, was in a nutshell what it's all about. I like thinking about a future where AppHarvest and companies like you all are helping make our food supply not only here domestically, but really around the world better, more reliable, more transparent. His grandmother grew up in Whitley County, where a coal mining accident killed his great-grandfather. A full transcript follows the video. *Average returns of all recommendations since inception. But for us, it's not a back-and-forth, it's not OK, well, I'm going to invest in an ESG company and I'm going to sacrifice profitability. Its the single largest LED installation in the United States despite using constant passive solar, waters its plants using recycled rainwater, employs an integrated pest management system to avoid any pesticides, has a 30x higher production yield than traditional open field agriculture, and has the ever so modest goal of transforming the future of agriculture. But I wanted to ask you before we do, the Root AI acquisition. We just want to be one of those and we're cognizant that there's going to be plenty of large players. This will result in a $1.7 billion return of investment for the company. Jonathan received his bachelors degree from the University of Kentucky. Now, his company AppHarvest (the name is a play on both Appalachia and the high-tech nature of what they do), operates a sixty acre greenhouse in Morehead, Kentucky that grows hydroponic tomatoes up to the ceiling. Once operational, it will ship 45 million pounds of fresh produce annually to grocery stores in the Midwest and Southeast. Did we help them reach their goals? It's the workforce that we're going to use to grow the organization. Again, if we look at agriculture, there's a lot of trouble in our current agriculture system and we can use ESG metrics to clean up our food supply and create better food systems. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*. My background was a part of building some of the largest solar projects in the U.S. David Lee, who joined us from Impossible Foods, joined impossible foods five years ago as their CFO and COO raised them nearly over $1 billion in the last five years and turned them into what was a boutique idea, into a mass-market product on store shelves. Now, we want to turn this region into an area of the country that's known for sustainable food production, but beyond just loving the place, I'm from Kentucky, beyond just loving this area, we can get to three quarters of the U.S. on a day drive. By us running on completely recycled rainwater, we have no water cost. We're in our first decade and we're going to try to look at judging the company on decade one, decade two, and decade three. This is still a very new space though. Ten years ago, Tesla made electric vehicles popular in the mainstream, and right now, it's controlled environment agriculture. His final international was against Ireland in March 1993. Your email address will not be published. We'll talk a little bit about that in just a second. Even though you entered at such a young stage of your business, You essentially were pre-revenue coming into the public markets, and now, you're just getting that started. I want to talk with you about in regard to AppHarvest. It made good logistical sense since Kentucky is within a days drive of 70% of the United States, plus there was an untapped labor force there ready and waiting to be hired.

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