#20: Be a leader worth working for - Kate Hofman
How do you build an indoor farming company to produce delicious salads at scale and make the food system more sustainable? You may need to start with a greenhouse on top of a shipping container. Then raise >100mln of euros of external funding. But most importantly, you’ll need to create a company culture based on values that aren't just some words on your website.
Kate Hofman is the Founder and Brand Director of GrowUp Farms, an indoor farming company helping to build a more sustainable food system in the UK.
How to have a fresh salad on the shelf at a competitive price?
GrowUp farms started in 2013 driven by an aspiration to create a more sustainable food system. The company focuses on growing restaurant-quality lettuce and brings together engineering technologies and horticulture. GrowUp Farms grows plants in a consistent and scalable way indoors. Kate discusses how the team not only created perfect growing conditions for their produce all year round but also cracked the business model to scale production.
“We’ve spent almost a decade growing restaurant quality food, bringing down the cost of production and perfecting the ideal conditions for our crops to thrive in.”
Company values that not only sound great but also guide the team
Company values can be just words written on the website but can become a North Start driving the team in all aspects of work, including difficult decisions. For GrowUp Farms, values are the foundation of a healthy team work. Each team member should be able to answer the question ‘what matters for us as a business” and embrace all aspects of the work. In a challenging business situation values helped the founders to explain to the team the logic behind complex decision-making and support the team members. In the episode, you will learn what happened exactly and how Kate and the team dealt with the situation.
“You have to have a set of values that unites everybody; living and breathing those values as a leader yourself is what shows people that you are someone worth working for.”
Hiring for growth
Operations are at the core of vertical farming. Early on, GrowUp Farms needed people with a unique skill set: agronomy and horticulture skills as well as good understanding of food production process and business. But there is no vertical farming university to hire employees from. Kate talks about their approach to hiring and how it changed. She now examines whether a new hire will help to grow the business and get it to the next stage. In the episode, you will learn about the three questions Kate asks herself during the recruitment process inspired by Jeff Bezos.
About Kate Hofman
Kate is passionate about making delicious and sustainable food more affordable and about business as a force for social and environmental change. She's a fellow of Barclays Unreasonable Impact and sits on the WWF Farming Advisory Board. She lives in London, UK with her family, their dog, and 11 stick insects.