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Conversations with founders, engineers, investors building great products and companies. Hosted by @arish

@DBPardes
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 1:58

FROM BARN TO BOARDROOM : One entrepreneur’s journey

article image placeholderEIO Diagnostics / CEO Tamara Leigh - not pictured😆
When I look at your bio, it talks about you working in the agriculture sector from barn to boardroom. What does that mean in terms of your beginning? Can you tell us a little bit about your education, your upbringing, when you start thinking about cows and we'll go from there, I really look forward to this conversation and thank you so much for your time and for sharing this journey with us

Tamara Leigh talks about udder health and high tech diagnostics and medicine @TamaraLeigh

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@TamaraLeigh
Tamara Leigh
@TamaraLeigh · 3:44

#agriculture #food #farming #agtech #innovation #startuplife

Agriculture is rich with stories, big, complicated, human, messy, innovative, hopeful stories. And there is nothing more relevant to our existence. It's science, it's culture and economics. It's environmental issues and politics. And it's all right there, and it touches the life of every single person on the planet every day. So I fell in love with agriculture, and eventually I left government and specialized in agriculture, communications and marketing
article image placeholderLow-tech dairy merit badge.
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@DBPardes
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 2:39

Coming together as a team @TamaraLeigh

And the people who called you in to be a part of the IO diagnostics were spot on because they knew that you were coming from such a robust place of seeing the entire story, the whole ecosystem. And you sound so animated and excited and eager to share sort of how this all makes sense, not just your personal journey in your life as an entrepreneur, but how this all makes sense to this industry and how it all connects the dots, because I think that we are micros of the macros
@TamaraLeigh
Tamara Leigh
@TamaraLeigh · 3:54

#startuplife #teams #agtech #covid #honestyroom #grit

Startup are a really dynamic environment, so the ability to step into the flow is important, and at the same time, you have to be able to direct the flow to get things done. And it took me a while to find my fit. I think it took me even longer to learn my place in directing the flow and like everything else, it's really still a work in progress. When I joined as a founder, my title at EIO Diagnostics was chief marketing officer
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@DBPardes
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 2:49

Competition/ collaboration

So in the NGO space, I always wanted to say, I'm part of this world where I don't look at competition. I look at collaboration when you're looking in the space of you have a piece of hardware, you have software, you have the ability to sort of embed in the troops and really help people on the ground, literally bring a system and put a system in place and take care of their stock?
@TamaraLeigh
Tamara Leigh
@TamaraLeigh · 2:22

Customer-focused design means we have to break down data silos. #agtech #st

I'll stick with an agricultural metaphor and say there's been a real history of data silos in the dairy equipment space and startup culture is disrupting that first, by having more players at the table, generating technology solutions, and second, by turning the focus to Usability for the farmer. I think the siloed system is gradually shifting towards greater collaboration as we see more and faster technology innovation. It's actually a huge challenge, but it's attracting some really big thinking
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@DBPardes
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 1:16

Innovative and the puzzle of antiquated infrastructure

It's so moving to hear this metaphor and the breaking down of this metaphor, meaning that the silos exist for reasons, but they also need to be broken down for new and more important reasons. With reference to the description you have of knowing how you have to fit into existing systems. I know you're going to bring in some players that might give voice to their perspective as farmers, which is going to be really exciting
@Swell
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15

Welcome to Swell!

@nolanstanley
Nolan S
@nolanstanley · 0:07

Nice post!

Yeah, really informative piece there. I really love the sort of interviews that you guys are doing. Keep it up
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@TamaraLeigh
Tamara Leigh
@TamaraLeigh · 1:47

Customer-centred design creates opportunities for "leap frog" solutions.

So once we have a large aggregated data set or data sets, we can take everything we learn at large scale dairies and work to design and scale our tools to fit other use cases for other dairy barns, robotic milking stalls, parallel parlors, or even a handheld device that can be used in communities or cooperatives with smallholder farmers. We don't think of farms in terms of antiquated infrastructure
@DBPardes
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 1:38

Spreading the wisdom 🌱🌱

You just hit the word share and then share says, share this out and you say, copy link, and then you use that link to link the JPEG of your screenshot wherever you go. So that's also right for social media. We do this for you. You just hit Share and you pick the social platform and it does all the work for you. But in this case, for your website, I want to make sure that you're able to use this as an evergreen conversation
@AmaraV16
Amara Vergara Agyakwa
@AmaraV16 · 3:07
Once you get to the mountains or before the mountains, there's a lot of farming there. And you also can tell that not a lot of people live there. And I just remember going to bed. I'm a heavy sleeper. So when we're on these road trips, thank goodness. My mom, she just powers through the whole time. But I fall asleep as soon as I get in the car
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