Startups love to tackle big problems in entrenched industries, but when it comes to the biggest problems, like say the Global Climate Crisis, sometimes it can be hard to find a new way to solve the problem. Our guest today, Devon Wright, Founder and CEO of Lumo, a smart irrigation system that helps growers save water, improve crop quality, and reduce costs. We talk to Devon about what Lumo is doing and how other startups can help solve the climate crisis.
About Devon Wright:
Devon Wright founded Lumo. Our mission is to massively improve fresh water efficiency for humanity. Our focus is on helping growers optimize their irrigation to continue to meet our growing food demand with an increasingly volatile water supply.
Prior to this, he co-founded Turnstyle Solutions and grew it to one of the largest local marketing platforms of its kind before being acquired by Yelp in 2017. He helped build and run the Yelp Restaurants division until 2022.
A word from our sponsor:
At Ripple, we manage all of our fund expenses and employee credit cards using Jeeves.
The team at Jeeves helped get me and my team setup with physical and virtual credit cards in days. I was able to allow my teammates to expense items in multiple currencies allowing them to pay for anything, anywhere at anytime. We weren’t asked for any personal guarantees or to pay any setup or monthly SaaS fees.
Not only does Jeeves save us time, but they also give us up to 3% cash back on our purchases including expenses like Google, Facebook or AWS every month. The best part is Jeeves puts up the cash, and you settle up once every 30 days in any currency you want, unlike some other corporate card companies that make you pre-pay every month. Jeeves also recently launched its Jeeves Growth and Working Capital initiative for startups and fast-growing companies to enable more financial freedom for companies. The best thing of all is that Jeeves is live in 24 countries including Canada, US and many other countries around the world.
Jeeves truly offers the best all-in-one expense management corporate card program for all startups especially the ones at Ripple and we at Tank Talks could not be more excited to officially partner with them. Listeners of Tank Talks can get set up with a demo of Jeeves today and take advantage of our Tank Talks special with a $250 statement credit after the first $2,500 in spend or a $500 statement credit after the first $5000 in spend. Lastly, all Jeeves cardholders receive access to their Lounge Pass program and access to over 1300 airports globally.
Visit tryjeeves.com/tanktalks to learn more.
In this episode we discuss:
02:44 Devon’s background and how he got here
05:47 How capitalizing on opportunities has helped his career
07:14 Challenges he’s faced as a non-technical founder
11:05 The perils of outsourcing versus trying to make it work yourself
13:26 How Devon found himself living on a farm
17:10 Why the pandemic helped spur his interest in sustainable farming
21:02 How Lumo came to be from Devon’s person need for a better solution to irrigation
26:08 The prevalence of manual watering in 2022
27:35 Building the early prototypes
32:38 How Lumo actually works
33:54 Where Devon found his co-founders
38:48 Why speed to market is so important to founding a company
40:24 Lumo’s recent fundraising round led by Fallline Capital
42:53 The longterm vision of Lumo
Fast Favorites:
🎙- Podcast: My Climate Journey (MCJ)
📰- Favourite Newsletter/Blog: Wine Industry Advisor
📲- Favourite Tech Gadget: Arduino
📈- Favourite New Trend: Substack and direct content monetization
📚- Favourite Book: “Dreamt Land” by Mark Arax and “The Water Paradox” by Ed Barbier
🤔- Favourite Life Lesson: Follow your heart. Do what you care most about. Your passion is your biggest asset
Follow Matt Cohen and Tank Talks here!
Share this post