Welcome listeners. I'm Seb Wicheman, your host of the DoGood Founders Podcast, where we dive deep into raw and meaningful conversations with visionary founders and CEOs who see beyond profits, elevating the lives of employees and vendors and the planet we call home. At DoGood, we combine business growth and goodness, assisting our clients in optimizing their processes and nurturing high performing teams. As for me, I love a good vegan diet. I'm an avid triathlon Ironman competitor. However, my life's work truly orbits around the principles of business excellence and the nurturing of profound relationships along the way. And who better to share this journey with than inspiring leaders who live these values also. So it's with great excitement to welcoming today's guest, Craig Rapp, a visionary entrepreneur. with a remarkable journey. Growing up on a farm, Craig transitioned into a successful career in electrical engineering, contributing to the development of cellular technology over 25 years. As a true serial entrepreneur, he has founded six companies, including 640 Labs, which was acquired by Monsanto. Today, he leads an agriculture tech company revolutionizing rural farming with robotic tractors offering solutions to labor shortages. across over 25 states. Craig's leadership is defined by his dedication to creating a culture of innovation and trust. His early hires played a crucial role in shaping the company's ethos, emphasizing employee satisfaction along profitability. From navigating startup challenges to scaling with purpose, Craig's experiences offer valuable insights for leaders in any industry. Join us as we uncover his story, vision and the lessons he has learned longest incredible long journey in lifetime. So welcome Craig! Craig Rupp (03:19.713) Yeah, thanks. Thank you, Seb, for having me here. I appreciate it. Seb Wichmann (03:25.861) You're very welcome. You're very welcome. So Craig, I was really inspired to bring you on and I said, you know, as we spoke initially, you have this innate ability as a human, as a person to putting your employees first, to putting your staff on the pedestal instead of yourself. And I remember you saying, you know, Seb, I want my employees to walk away from the experience having worked with me after years and years, eventually they move on by having said this was the best work or best time in my life I've ever had. So talk me through kind of who are you? How does it all come about? Talk us through that. Craig Rupp (04:12.717) Okay, so I'm a farm boy turned entrepreneur. I became an electrical engineer and I just started starting companies in my career. I look back on my career and you know some of the companies that I worked for were some of the best years of my career. you know it was fun it was interesting work and if you if you look at our employees you know they you know they're looking for a job and you know for one reason or another they you know they were compelled to start looking at you know these these goat goat to go to work at a startup company and you know, do they choose, why would they choose going to a startup? And, you know, they know that they're part of something large. And they know they're going to play a pivotal role. not just going to be, you know, one in a thousand people. They're going to be more like one in 10, you know, at this start. They know they're going to have to, you know, they're going to have to go beyond the call of duty in their daily jobs. you know, and I said that earlier, you know, my goal, you know, is for the success of the company, but not at all costs. And what I really want to make sure is You know, I have a lot of young people working for me and 20 years now I want them to look back and say these were some of the best years of their career. And so what do I do? I give them... Seb Wichmann (05:53.201) Mm-hmm. Craig Rupp (05:58.657) I give them a purpose, give them something that they own, that they're accountable for, and I give them a lot of freedom to make decisions. We're a small company and I can't have a meeting to make every decision, and I'm not around, I can't make all the decisions. So lot of our employees are given quite a lot of leeway in their day-to-day activities. Seb Wichmann (06:04.583) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Seb Wichmann (06:29.009) Yeah. Thanks so much for sharing. You know, it's so fascinating, Craig. And we get into Sabanto in a second because you do some incredible things like, you know, looking at robotics in rural farming around tractors. It's almost like when I looked at your website initially, Craig, it almost looked like, you know, the movie Interstellar. Have you seen that movie? I mean, right. I mean, that is so cool because when we spoke about, there is a shortage around, you know, employees and all that. And I would Craig Rupp (06:45.678) Yeah. Yeah. Seb Wichmann (06:58.206) I'm fascinated how you came up with the idea. We discuss this down the road, but you know, talk us through, cause this is so valuable when we talk about a company nowadays post COVID, know, hopefully gave it the last kind of, kind of, you know, push across the border, so to speak, where a company that merely looks at profitability in my eyes is not going to survive. People want to feel a sense of belonging. They want to feel listened to. They want to feel that they are valued. Like talk us through where does this trust in people come from that you approach your work very much with, hey, you have the lenience, I trust you. You provide them with purpose. You mentioned, I think you have 42 roughly employees. Is that correct? Yeah. Craig Rupp (07:54.049) I do, yeah. Seb Wichmann (07:55.285) So it's not like, it's not a $10, it's not a 10 staff headcount. There is a, it's a significant staffing, so to speak, where, as you said, you can't anymore be there and do it all. Talk us through it to get to a question here. How does this, how do you, because I struggle with this myself being, you know, struggling with maybe providing my staff with the authority and with the trust that they are very much deserve because of myself. How do you do that? How do you trust somebody? How do you provide purpose to your employees right now, especially in the beginning? Craig Rupp (08:31.021) Well, I guess I'll start off by saying that employees, I think, are smarter and Craig Rupp (08:45.655) and I guess responsible enough to make wise decisions than we give them credit for. And I'll go back to, was it, Malcolm Gladwell had a book, Blink, and he was going over the 10,000 hours. So quite often I think about that. You get someone with five years of experience. Seb Wichmann (08:51.317) Mm-hmm. Seb Wichmann (08:58.476) I love that book. Craig Rupp (09:10.425) they're pretty responsible and they know, they'll make the right decision over 90 % of the time. as far as I see it, 90%, that's an A, right? So, I do trust the people and after a while, You know, they're always making the right decisions. quite often, when people come to me, and if you come to me to complain about something, the first thing I say is, I'm not a complaint department. OK, what are you going to do to fix this? And... Seb Wichmann (09:54.732) I love that, yeah. Craig Rupp (09:56.653) You know, I've had that talk with a number of my employees and they understand that, that, you know, you're completely responsible for the vehicle OS or the hardware or the cable harnesses and you're, I mean, this is your baby and I can't look over your shoulder. I don't have time. And, you know, I do have a structure in the company that, you know, we do have the procedures and processes Seb Wichmann (10:00.609) Mm-hmm. Seb Wichmann (10:10.774) Mm-hmm. Seb Wichmann (10:18.294) Mm-hmm. Craig Rupp (10:26.629) place to make sure you know things are tested, things are reviewed and whatnot. But at the end of the day, know it's not really my responsibility to overlook and micromanage a lot of my employees. Seb Wichmann (10:44.227) That is, found, I feel like almost you put that away, put this away as being, you know, is, I feel like it comes so natural to you, Craig, that for the listeners, including myself, I think we struggle so much exactly with this point and you probably crafted your approach also over so many different years, right? By being able to... provide your staff with the necessary trust to empower them and to make them shine and all that. So kudos to you. I think that really inspired me and in fact was the reason that I wanted to bring you on. If had to say, talk us through Sabanto. What do you guys do? Craig Rupp (11:26.827) Okay, so we make a retrofit kit that attaches to off-the-shelf tractors, and we currently support over 21 models today. And this retrofit kit contains GPS receivers, cameras, processors, know, obstacle detection, perception systems, AI. And what we do is we turn that off-the-shelf tractor into an autonomous tractor. From day one, our Seb Wichmann (11:37.442) Mm-hmm. Craig Rupp (11:57.571) guess, tenet or principle was, you know, your next generation tractor is already in your machine shed. So farmers don't have to go out and buy a brand new machine, know, spend all this capital expense on a completely new, unproven platform. We get them there in a much more financially cost-effective way. And what we're doing is we're working with farming operations across the U.S. and into Canada right now. And what we do is, you know, for some of these farm operations, that are they're doing you know very mundane you know field operations what we do is we install our system on their tractor and then we train them and teach them how to deploy autonomy into their operations. Seb Wichmann (12:53.425) You like, you do that because you experienced a labor shortage in your own company, that correct? What was the initial kind of, yeah. Craig Rupp (13:01.801) Yeah, I mean it's it started so when I was you know when my company 640 labs got acquired by Monsanto I was working hand-in-hand with farmers and you know You chat with them. What keeps them up that night every last farmer I talked to said labor and it's not the cost of labor. It's the lack of labor and You know, I spent a number of years automating, you know, high-volume manufacturing plants throughout Asia and even Europe. And it was obvious to me that, you know, automation or autonomy is going to solve the labor problem. And so I was at the Climate Corporation, which is the subsidiary of... Monsanto and I really wanted to start an autonomy team and I was told no so I you know I figured that well I really really want to do this so I quit and then started Sabanto. Seb Wichmann (14:12.435) That is interesting. Talk us through some of the operational challenges. What did you encounter operationally early on? You're obviously dealing with not just the engineering and the invention of it all, but talk us through some of the operational challenges that are right now. that are right now present in your business, in Savanto. Craig Rupp (14:44.237) Yeah, just recently we started what we call the Virtual Field Operator. So this is something we kind of learned going out into the market. Farmers, if you've ever been around one, the minute they jump out of their truck in the morning to the minute they leave at night, they're continually surrounded by emergencies. Everything is vying for their attention. You know, for them to adopt autonomy, one of the challenges we had was the farmer is not, they don't respond to notifications in an appropriate time. And what happens is if you have an autonomous system that finishes a field, it'll be two hours until they respond to that system being completed. That's just the way they are. And so what we did was we created what we call a virtual field operator. so we have, there's one right outside my office. She comes in in the morning. The farmers tell her what field operations need to be done that day. And then what she does is she deploys the system, she monitors the system, she moves it from one field to the next on private drives. And she became a part of their operation. She's currently monitoring 17 tractors across five farming operations. Seb Wichmann (16:37.237) Mm-hmm. Craig Rupp (16:37.278) So she's an integral part of their farming operations virtually. Seb Wichmann (16:44.542) So how does this work? So there's one person virtually not in person responsible for 17 tractors right now to make sure that these tractors like get moved from field to field or how do we imagine that? Craig Rupp (16:52.301) Yes. Craig Rupp (17:02.009) Her responsibility is to keep these tractors moving and performing field operations. So let me give you an example. At the onset of the day, she gets a call from Brandon down in Georgia near Atlanta. He tells her, I want you to do field A, field B, field C today. And so Brandon puts the tractor in field A. Seb Wichmann (17:06.292) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Seb Wichmann (17:25.215) Mm-hmm. Craig Rupp (17:30.329) and then calls her, and then what our virtual field operator then does, what that person does is deploys. the mission on field A performs the field operation. Two hours later when it's done, for example, then she moves it to field B. Then she performs the field operation in field B. Then another two, three hours later she moves it to field C and does that field. And then if there's something like we're running low on fuel, what she does is she either notifies the Seb Wichmann (18:00.52) Mm-hmm. Craig Rupp (18:11.435) fuel team in the farming operation that I will have this system parked on the northwest corner of this field and she'll text message him. So she's an integral part of their farming operation and you know what's interesting is the lady that have it now, she's a grandmother, she's never driven a tractor before. She's never set foot on those fields. She's never seen in person the tractors. she, you know, gosh, she's done over, you know, I'd say 30 to 40,000 acres of field operations for people in, you know, over a thousand miles away from. Seb Wichmann (18:57.219) That is incredible. And so what do the farmers do? Do they kind of sit on their veranda and watch the tractor go? like, how do they, what do they do while the tractor is doing its duty? Craig Rupp (19:02.209) It's the future. Craig Rupp (19:09.549) Yeah, I think it's the future where I think it's extremely popular with a lot of our customers. Some of our customers are building the virtual field operator locally, and then other farmers have reached out to us and said, could you do this for me? Absolutely not a problem. Seb Wichmann (19:19.82) Mm-hmm. Seb Wichmann (19:34.552) Amazing. Your team is remote or are they partially local? Craig Rupp (19:41.369) We are, we're spread across two operations. have our headquarters are in Itasca, Illinois. And then our, you know, our field operations, our field testing, our hardware group is in Ames, Iowa. Seb Wichmann (19:51.97) Mm-hmm. Seb Wichmann (20:02.039) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I'll go ahead. Craig Rupp (20:07.649) Yeah, they're about five hours in part. Seb Wichmann (20:10.702) Five hours apart. do you guys, so how do you keep the, so we talked about you, right? As the head of the helm, the leader of the group, so to speak, know, keeping the responsibility where responsibility is due at the person and not trying to interfere too much and kind of pushing back at moments when they have questions, you know, and all that, which you are so incredible at. and I learned a lot from you on that. know already. Talk me through, talk us through, like how do you keep the culture up? Like being remote, being partially, you know, in two different locations. Like, do you have all hands? Do you meet with them on a, I don't know, monthly basis, yearly basis? How do you keep the culture alive and growing as a company? Craig Rupp (21:04.985) Okay, I do that a number of ways. Some of the people in Iowa report to some of the people in Itasca, Illinois, or Chicago. Let's just call it Chicago. It's outside of Chicago. So there's people in Iowa that report to people in Chicago and vice versa. Seb Wichmann (21:18.394) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Craig Rupp (21:29.013) So that's one. The other thing too is, like, for example, I have... You know, our solution requires, you know, front end, back end requires embedded software, hardware, cable harnesses, mechanicals, whatever. Quite often, what I do is I send multiple people from multiple sites to the customer's facility. you know, I'll send them down like this recently, I sent six engineers, three from Iowa and three from Illinois, I sent them down to Georgia. And they spent two weeks together, fixing, you know, fixing problems and working with adding new features. Yeah. And when you're when you're out in middle of nowhere sitting in a Seb Wichmann (22:22.981) from different locations. Seb Wichmann (22:27.782) Interesting. Craig Rupp (22:31.193) in a pole shed trying to get this all to work. You get to know each other and you build alliances. And it's a wonderful thing. Seb Wichmann (22:35.482) You get to know each other. ERO. That is... Again, I think to the listeners, for myself, I think there's so much to learn from you because your industry is... I was about to say it's dying, but it's such a bad word to say, But let's say it's not anymore... Like it's so important to me, it's one of the most important industry there is because we need food to eat and healthy foods, right? And not just, you know, the stuff that's a lot of times is presented to us in supermarkets. So I think it's such a, one of the most important industry there is. And yet it is an industry that is not in everyone's. Not on top of minds, right? So technology, which you are obviously in, but let's say, SAS and marketing is what, what's drive nowadays and you know, FinTech and whatever it is. Right. So, but I think there's so much to learn from you, Craig. The fact that you get people together and not just in a training environment for them to get to know each other for one and half days in the all hands, like everyone else does it. You actually bring real practicality and Seb Wichmann (23:56.379) applicability to it where you get different teams that otherwise don't see each other throughout the year. At times they probably have never seen each other in the very beginning when somebody just started. You get them together and get them to collaborate. You get them to solve problems. You get them to work together as a family, as a strong unit, as a bond. And you get to bonds. You dare get to bonds, right? Like What do you say to that? Like, have you seen this being effective? Have you seen this being ineffective? Talk us through this a little bit. Craig Rupp (24:29.195) You know, what's going through my mind was, well, I, so two things are going through my mind right now. Seb Wichmann (24:32.735) Mm-hmm. Craig Rupp (24:40.759) I used to do this in a company I worked before. We would go to all parts of the world. We're in China, we're in Korea, Singapore, we're in France, Germany. And we used to deploy technology in manufacturing. Seb Wichmann (24:58.515) Germany? Germany as well. There you go. Yeah, nice. Craig Rupp (25:10.679) electronic manufacturing sites. And I used to take a team with me of four or five people and, you know, I was responsible for the algorithms and I had another guy there, he was in charge of the database, this other guy's in charge of interfacing with the UT, the other guy's, you know, in charge of the, you know, the instrumentation and whatnot. And it was kind of interesting. It turned out kind of interesting. I didn't think about this until after the fact, years later, that, you know, first of all, there's a lot of peer pressure. You want all your stuff working, at least you think it works, before you show up. Seb Wichmann (25:57.076) Mm-hmm. Craig Rupp (25:57.283) You you don't want to be the person with that, you know, everyone's standing around watching, why isn't it working? Why is your stuff working? Because, so there's a little peer pressure. The other thing too is misery loves company. And some of these outings that we used to take. Seb Wichmann (26:02.41) Hahaha Yeah. Yeah. huh. Yeah, so true. Craig Rupp (26:16.269) I'll be honest with you, I had some really good memories because we would work, we would get there at seven in the morning and leave at seven at night and then would go have a couple beers after work and regroup, all right, we got to do this, this tomorrow and you'd think about, why isn't this working? And you brainstorm over a couple beers at the end of the day. And then what happens is you develop a... brotherhood or sisterhood with the people you're working with and then everyone, it's a great way to build a team, And you know what, if you look at military exercises, quite often they'll send all these army guys out into the middle of nowhere and they have to stay in a tent for a couple days. Seb Wichmann (26:47.105) Mmm. Mmm. Mmm. Craig Rupp (27:12.547) What that really does, I think what they're doing is they're just building this collaboration, these people, they learn to depend on each other and they get along a lot better. And I do. Seb Wichmann (27:14.356) Mm-hmm. Seb Wichmann (27:29.803) Yeah, thank you again. Yeah, of course. Yeah, no, thank you. So what would you say? So you have been there and done that for many years. You know, know you're still I think, Looking at you, but that's a little German joke. You have been there and done that, right? So you have been around the block. And so there's so much goodness and experience here. What would you say to a Craig Rupp (27:47.097) No, I didn't. Seb Wichmann (27:58.73) tech founder that is maybe even the CTO, very drilled in on technology. Yes, we as founders understand that culture is important because really truly what a company is, it's a bunch of people with a bunch of brains that we need to understand how to develop to go from good to great. What would you say to a founder that is kind of a little drilled in on technology and has not the emphasis on Craig Rupp (28:19.277) Yeah. Seb Wichmann (28:27.138) the team bonding, the kind of standing in the rain outside the tent, so to speak, mentality you just talked about, like the military has, what would some words of wisdom be from you to him or her? Craig Rupp (28:39.735) Okay, for starters, get five years of experience minimum. Seb Wichmann (28:48.088) Mm-hmm. Craig Rupp (28:49.241) And you're going to find out how an industry works, how a market works. I think that helps. The second thing is I think, you know, you're going to need investment of some sort. You're going to have to, you know, initially you're going to have to, you know, whether you have uncles, parents, or you're going to have to convince them that this is a great idea. Seb Wichmann (28:56.707) Mm-hmm. Craig Rupp (29:18.771) And I guess the one word of advice is, you know, be humble, sincere and realistic. I know a lot of founders who, you know, it's amazing how silver-tongued they are. you know, sometimes, you know, well, I think a lot of investors can see through that. You know, Seb Wichmann (29:27.952) Mm-hmm. Seb Wichmann (29:38.33) Mm-hmm. Seb Wichmann (29:47.097) Mm-hmm. Craig Rupp (29:48.417) You know, and I always try to be realistic in that. I mean, what I'm doing, it's really hard. And I'll be honest with you, where I'm at today, it was so hard. But if I go back four or five years, and I didn't... I mean, we had so many problems trying to get this to work. And it took us a long time to fix those problems. But when I talk to investors and whatnot, or potential investors, I make sure that I let them know that. You know, we're, think I see light at the end of the tunnel. It took us, you know, this was not easy. And, you know, I, I try to be realistic with them. And if you try to, if you try to brag or, or, you know, kind of stretch the truth or embellish, they're, they're, they're, they're going to read that. They're, they're not stupid people and that's what they're looking for. Seb Wichmann (30:34.799) Mm-hmm. Seb Wichmann (30:43.13) Yeah, I love that. Seb Wichmann (30:51.728) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Hmm. No. Yeah. Do you believe that the world needs a bit more authenticity and honesty and just... ...vulnerability? Craig Rupp (31:06.393) Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, look at what Elizabeth Holmes had, Theranos, right? Seb Wichmann (31:09.296) Mm-hmm. Seb Wichmann (31:16.614) Mm-hmm. Craig Rupp (31:24.281) I I don't want to live in that world. Seb Wichmann (31:30.216) Yeah. Craig, thank you so much for your time and your wisdom. Again, it has been such an honor to have you on because I mean, think first time we met, was like, yes, I like you already. And you have just this, this authentic, trustworthy, honest, sincere. think sincerity is what shines through for me personally. So I want to thank you, you know, Craig Rupp (31:47.577) you Seb Wichmann (31:59.911) for, guess, giving me and giving the listeners some insights into the life of Craig, what it means to run a successful company in robotics, in the rule in farming. I think this is by itself, know, interstellar-like scenarios. So I love that already. And you combine this with what strikes me as a really special gift and talent, Craig, that you have harnessed over the years, which is that of humility, of vulnerability, of you trusting your team in moments where others probably would go down with a bit of a whip, right? And so you really inspired me to think and contemplate on kind of my own kind of approach to my company, to be honest. So thank you so much for all that. As a last kind of question to you, if you allow, thinking about this piece around that you mentioned, be humble, have humility, be sincere, which you talked about and which truly is you. What would be a, I wouldn't say advice because we talked to very senior founders and entrepreneurs, but what would be a, I guess golden nuggets be that you would like to pass on to your fellow entrepreneurs in that regard? Craig Rupp (33:24.823) I mean, in that regard, it's... Seb Wichmann (33:29.727) How do you cultivate this, I guess, right? How do you, what do you do? Craig Rupp (33:34.445) Well, there's, all right. So we deal with farmers and farmers tease a lot and they'll make fun of you. Okay, they do that, right? And I tell my employees, if they're not making fun of you, then there's something wrong with you. Seb Wichmann (33:42.088) Right. Yeah, right. Seb Wichmann (33:55.551) okay. All right. Craig Rupp (34:00.041) It is, it is true. They make fun of everyone. The people they like, right? Yes, they like and you know, it's kind of fun. Yeah, we have really good customers and you know, the one thing I try to do is I try to make all my employees know the customer personally. Seb Wichmann (34:04.97) They like. Okay. They have banter with. Craig Rupp (34:26.285) This isn't like, I know their persona, what not. No, they personally know them. I have customers that call me all the time. They give me ideas, and they're just genuinely nice people. And they tease me. I tease them. We laugh about everything. But I think it's important also. Like I met with a farmer about a month ago and he sat down right across, I was having a beer with him and he said, I will never go back. And I want to make sure that, you know, my employees, you know, some of the leaders in the company as well, that they hear that. And the only way I can do that is if I have a... I forced them to have a relationship with our customers, personal relationship. They actually like it, but I make sure that you need to go out in the field. You're going to go visit this farmer with, you know, I'm going to take, you know, I take a software guy and I'll pair him with one of my field app engineers and they'll go and... And the software guy, he's going to be working. He's not going to always be at a keyboard. He's going to be helping hook up equipment, unload, chain down tractors and whatnot. He's there to help. Seb Wichmann (35:55.294) Amazing. Craig, thank you so much for your time. It was a pleasure talking to you and yeah, to everyone. Have a great day. Have more humility. Be more sincere. The world needs it. Thank you so much. Craig Rupp (35:56.473) Yep. Craig Rupp (36:10.805) Absolutely. Thank you, Seb.