Founders Fund has made a name for itself by backing what Peter Thiel calls “zero-to-one” companies: businesses that don't just improve on existing ideas, but create something entirely new. Its portfolio includes Facebook, SpaceX, and Palantir. Its latest bet is a New Zealand startup that puts solar-powered smart collars on cows.
Holter, which closed a $220 million Series E at a $2 billion valuation last month with Founders Fund leading the round, isn't the kind of company that tends to dominate technology headlines. There is no agentic AI involved, no humanoid robots.しかし、非常に大きく、ほとんど未解決の問題があります。 How do you manage cattle spread across some of the most remote terrain on earth without dogs, horses, bikes or helicopters?
Craig Piggott, Halter's 30-year-old founder and CEO, has spent nine years working on an answer. “When you run a pasture-based farm, whether it's dairy or beef, the most important variable is how you manage the productivity of the land,” Piggott told TechCrunch in a recent interview. “Fences are like levers, controlling where animals can graze and how they can rest the land. It makes a lot of sense to be able to do that virtually.”
The system Holter built combines solar-powered collars, a network of low-frequency towers, and a smartphone app that allows farmers to create a virtual fence, monitor all animals 24 hours a day, and move their herd without leaving the farm.牛は首輪からの音声と振動の合図に反応するように訓練されています。ピゴットのこのプロセスは、車が駐車中に壁に近づくときにビープ音を鳴らすのに似ています。 Most animals, he says, learn within three interactions with a virtual fence. “Then you're able to guide them and shift them around on sound and vibration alone.”
首輪は群れを守るだけではありません。 Because it's always on and collecting behavioral data, it can track an animal's health, monitor its reproductive cycle, and even flag when an individual animal may be sick, Piggott says, and its capabilities have improved dramatically now that Holter has amassed what is likely the world's largest dataset on cow behavior. The company is now on its fifth generation of hardware, and its reproduction product is currently in beta with US customers.
Piggott grew up on a dairy farm in New Zealand, then studied engineering and briefly worked at rocket company Rocket Lab, which gave him his first glimpse of what a tech startup was like. “Rocket Lab was kind of my introduction to technology and startups and the world of venture capital,” he said. “Realizing you could raise money, hire a team, and chase an ambitious mission was inspiring. I wanted to do that in agriculture.” He started Halter at 21. “Probably a bit naive in hindsight,” he acknowledged, “but that was fine.”
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Nine years later, Halters collars have been fitted to more than one million cows on more than 2,000 farms in New Zealand, Australia and the United States, and the company operates in 22 states.農家にとっての財政上の提案は単純明快だ。 By giving ranchers precise control over where their herds graze, Holter can increase land productivity by up to 20%. This is not to save on labor costs (though it is), but to allow the cows to graze more efficiently and leave less grass behind. “In some cases, we see customers literally doubling the output off their land,” Piggott said. “The upper ceiling for returns is very, very strong.”
この機会を狙っているのはホルター氏だけではない。 Pharmaceutical giant Merck has already developed its own virtual fencing system for cattle, called Vence, and new companies are also entering the market. At Y Combinator's recent “Demo Day,” a startup called Grazemate presented its vision of herding cattle with autonomous drones (no collars required).
Piggott seems unbothered by either.ドローンについて尋ねると、彼は次のように答えています。 “Will drones play a small role in the future? Maybe. But I don't think drones are the right form factor for the core fencing element of virtual fencing. Collars will probably be the right form factor for a very long time.” And as for the bigger competitive picture, he argues the real obstacle isn't rival technology at all. “The biggest competition is just not changing anything,” he said.
Piggott argues that what sets Holter apart is the difficulty of engineering the problem, which the company spent nine years solving. 1000頭の動物を管理するシステムは、9の稼働時間に対して信頼性が高くなければならない。なぜなら、故障率が1%でも、常に10頭の動物がいないことを意味するからである。 “Chasing the nines of reliability takes time, and that long tail is something we've proven over many years in New Zealand before we started expanding globally,” he said.
Holter is something of a maverick in the agricultural technology field, but it has languished in recent years as startups struggle to manage high operating costs and convince farmers to adopt new products. Piggott attributes Halter's traction to its relentless focus on financial return. “From day one, Halter has been built around a really strong financial ROI,” he said. “If you can lift the productivity of land by 20%, that flows through the entire business.”
しかし、残された機会の規模は、おそらく単一の数字で捉えるのが最も適切である。 Those numbers will no doubt resonate with Founders Fund and Holter's previous backers. Halter's collar is on one million cattle, while there are one billion more in the world. Penetration in its home market of New Zealand alone is less than 10%, and Piggott said “we have a long way to go and we still have a lot to build.”