Watch CBS News

Leaders & Innovators: Jesse Vollmar

JESSE VOLLMAR is founder and CEO of FarmLogs in Ann Arbor. FarmLogs is an agricultural tech startup that helps farmers digitally manage their farm to increase yield and profitability. FarmLogs' web and mobile apps bring critical farm data online in real time to help farmers manage and analyze the large amounts of heretofore underutilized data collected from their fields in order to make smarter, more efficient, and more profitable farming decisions. Vollmar grew up on his family's fifth-generation organic row-crop farm in Michigan and started an IT consulting business while still in high school. Under his leadership while a full-time student, FarmLogs grew to more than $350,000 in annual revenue and five employees in less than five years. The company was accepted into Silicon Valley's startup accelerator, Y Combinator and raised $5 million in capital from several notable technology investors. In less than two years, FarmLogs expanded beyond web to mobile and its software is being used by thousands of commercial farms throughout the United States and in 130 countries. The product is used by more than 5 percent of U.S. row-crop farms. FarmLogs recently closed a $4 million Series A round of financing led by Drive Capital with the participation of investors Huron River Ventures, Hyde Park Venture Partners, and Hyde Park Angels. Vollmar serves on the advisory committee for the technology and computer curriculum at the Tuscola County Technology Center. He was recently selected by Forbes as one of its 30 under 30. Vollmar received his bachelor's degree in computer information systems from Saginaw Valley State University. Read the full profile at www.ltu.edu/leaders.

View CBS News In
CBS News App Open
Chrome Safari Continue
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.