Five Bold Questions For Artemis CEO: Allison Kopf
Warren Bobrow Contributor
Vices I work with cannabis and have done some wild things in life. cocktailwhisperer.com
Allison Kopf, CEO of Artemis | RICKEY PEETE
WB's Note: I grew up on a Biodynamic/Organic farm in northern New Jersey. Part of the difficulty of growing crops outside is the mostly inclement weather. There are just too many variables at work to make farming anything less than controllable. Lack of sunshine, oft inclement weather- hail, snow, rain, insects, all contribute to short growing seasons and lack of a good investment harvest. To the commercial grower, outdoor growing can be rewarding, or it can be a loss of an entire grow, and you should pick which one is more enticing. I would pick the one with the most comfort for the investors. Which means, don't mess it up or they are coming for their investment, as in right now! One of my fascinations in commercial growing is something that I saw in Arizona. It was a vast greenhouse, originally manufactured in Holland for growing tomatoes and tulips. What was being grown in this "Dutch" greenhouse was far from tomatoes and flowers. It was nearly three hundred thousand square feet of ultra-high-end cannabis and with the nearly 350 days per year of natural sunshine, this vast greenhouse earned it's keep in short measure.
Allison Kopf is also intrigued by greenhouses and farming. If you read on, you'll discover her passion for growing facilities and why we should embrace the sun.
Warren Bobrow=WB: Where are you from? What was your path to farming? Schooling? What did you originally want to be? (when you were a kid)?
Allison Kopf=AK: I was born and raised in New York. Not New York City; not upstate New York – but smack dab in the middle of the two. Spending as much time as I did in the black dirt region, I’ve always had a deep respect for our state’s farmers and farm workers, though I had no clue I’d end up working in the industry. As a kid, I was always interested in science and technology and originally wanted to be an engineer in Silicon Valley when I grew up. While getting my degree in physics from Santa Clara University, I started my professional career in the solar industry. I was the Project Manager for the California entry into the Solar Decathlon, which is a design and engineering competition for students at over twenty universities worldwide. We raised over $1.2M and over a period of two years, designed and built a solar-powered, efficient, fully functional home.
I loved seeing the innovation and creativity at the Solar Decathlon and I fell in love with solving problems within complex supply chains. This led me back to New York to join BrightFarms, which is one of the largest venture-backed indoor agriculture companies in the country. I was one of their first employees and helped scale up projects across the country as well as focusing on how we could improve operational performance at each individual site. I became frustrated at an over-reliance in the industry on spreadsheets and pen-and-paper to track critical operational data.
I knew that technology could be a catalyst to move the industry forward. This was the spark that inspired me to venture into entrepreneurship and start Artemis.
(FKA Agrilyst).
WB: Why cannabis? How does cannabis fulfill your passion? What is your passion? Outdoor or indoor grown?
AK: Cannabis is an exciting industry and something we started really scaling into this year, and now accounts for about half of our customer base. There’s so much going on today around regulatory compliance and consumer safety, and it seems every day there’s something in the news about a large public cannabis company going through some kind of compliance or product recall issue. It’s a bit of a roller coaster, but it’s exciting to be in the midst of such a fast-growing sector with lots of opportunity ahead for businesses that approach compliance the right way.
The Artemis platform | COURTESY: ARTEMIS
For us, the cannabis industry fits right into our passion for helping specialty crop growers minimize risk, increase profit margins, and scale their businesses in what’s becoming a highly competitive and consolidated industry, with many companies even starting to go public on the U.S. stock market. Whether cultivated indoor or outdoor, cannabis, like any crop, is subject to risk. Furthermore, as an emerging industry with a controversial product (still illegal federally in the U.S.), cannabis is subject to increased levels of scrutiny. This translates into a maze of regulations which are constantly changing. Our goal is to help growers safeguard their business from these fast-changing regulations and compliance laws. With the recent news of the CannTrust debacle, cannabis growers, now more than ever, need to make regulatory compliance a core component of their company culture. This includes conducting regular internal audits and digitizing their regulatory compliance paperwork.
It also goes beyond just compliance. Cannabis cultivators are scaling across multiple states and countries, opening up locations faster than ever before. This is hard to do without proper systems in place. One of the easiest things a cultivator can do is implement technology to help plan production and workflow. It adds a layer of accountability, even across multiple locations. The companies that will be at the top in a few years will be the companies who invest in technology and systems for growth.
I’m currently obsessed with outdoor operations. We’ve spent a lot of time in the indoor space (it’s how we got our start), but as the hemp space begins to scale in the U.S., it’s brought me to more and more outdoor operations. The opportunity for cannabis and hemp to play a major part in regenerative agriculture, sustainability, and economic re-birth of the agriculture industry is completely fascinating. Indoor will always be my first love and it’s always exciting to see a really clean, well-run greenhouse or indoor operation.
Artemis - Laptop + Phone (1) | PHOTO COURTESY: ARTEMIS
WB: Tell me about your company? What do you do? What is your six month plan? One year?
AK: Our mission is to solve a problem I’ve personally been obsessed with for a while — creating a more efficient, traceable, and compliant agricultural economy. As part of our mission, we developed the industry’s first real Cultivation Management Platform (CMP) to help global enterprise farmers growing fruits, vegetables, cannabis, hemp, flowers, and other specialty crops to manage all of their people, plants, process and compliance with a single solution. Many growers today aren’t protecting themselves from risk without technology implementation across their full operation. Existing technologies available for the industry weren’t designed for growers with business expansion in mind. Enterprise operations deploy expensive, bulky, ERP systems and/or use regulatory software mandated by states. There hasn’t been a good solution for the enterprise operation to manage cultivation designed for them as the operator. This leaves them at a disadvantage in what is already a low-margin, high-risk business.
We developed our platform as the solution to close this gap. Providing growers with a CMP to add to their technology stack (CMP + ERP or Seed-to-Sale) sets them up for true long-term success. Since launching in 2015, we’ve seen strong customer growth with companies worth a collective $5 billion using the platform daily. Over 1 billion pounds have been harvested using our system in just the past year and a half. Our core customers are enterprise specialty crop farmers interested in security, compliance, profitability, and potential to expand their operations. We also have partnered with many others in the agtech ecosystem, enabling users to further reduce risk across all areas of their business. Over the next 6 - 12 months, we have aggressive growth plans. This year, we entered into the fast-growing cannabis and hemp industries, and we plan to expand our work in this sector. We are also working hard to carve out an industry leadership role and platform in regulatory compliance — helping customers stay ahead of the curve of regulatory compliance in food and cannabis to not only improve product outcomes and satisfy regulations, but to protect the integrity of the trust between producer and consumer.
Artemis - Laptop + Phone (1) | PHOTO COURTESY: ARTEMIS
WB: Is there anything that you eat or drink *or smoke* that brings a tear to your eye when you eat, drink, or smoke it? Do you cook? What is your favorite thing to eat? Favorite restaurant? Where? What kind of food?
AK: My grandmother’s chicken and rice. This has become somewhat of a family joke over the years. My grandmother makes the most incredible chicken and rice dish – the secret is in the butter and the old baking pan. All of the grandparents and cousins have tried to duplicate the recipe to no avail. Nothing is as good as the original. At my wedding shower, my grandmother gifted me the recipe and I definitely let a tear out.
I do love to cook. I’m currently into making comfort food recipes with fresh and local ingredients. The other day, I made biscuits and a summer stew that was pretty stellar. I’ve also been known to dip into Bavarian recipes. My family is German and it’s my favorite food region.
WB: If you can be anywhere in the world right now, where would that be? Doing what? With whom, even *Dead or Alive!* Why?
AK: Easy; playing tennis with Serena Williams. Not only has she set the bar for women who excel in their field, she’s the greatest athlete of her time and it would be incredible to play a game or two against her. I love playing tennis and it would be fun to see if I could return her serve. Perhaps a speaker showdown at Forbes Under 30 in Detroit?
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Warren Bobrow, the Cocktail Whisperer, is the multi-published author of six books. Apothecary Cocktails: Restorative Drinks from Yesterday and Today, Whiskey Cocktails: