If you haven’t read Simon Sinek’s book, “Start with Why” yet, we at Artemis recommend adding it to your list. And if you want the abridged version, Simon did a great TED talk on the topic here. The even more abridged version is this: great leaders inspire and inspiration starts with your why. As a consumer, why should I buy your product? As an employee, why should I join your team? As an investor, why should I invest? All of these questions originate around a more general question: why should we care?

Startups often miss the boat when it comes to setting a company vision. Founders are taught to pitch their company in the standard format: what’s the problem, what’s the solution, how are you solving it, why are you the right people to solve it? What’s fundamentally missing, or when done correctly weaved throughout that story, is the why. Rather than start with what, start with why.

In both his book and TED talk, Simon explains how most companies tell their story backwards, starting with the what, then moving to the how, and ending with the why.

If we were one of these companies, we would tell you that Artemis builds software for farmers. That software is easier to use than spreadsheets. We do this because digital infrastructure will lead to a safer, more transparent agriculture system. This is important because we need to produce more food to feed the growing global population while using less resources. This, while true, isn’t inspiring.

At Artemis, we’ve always been a mission focused company. We believe deeply in solving some of the world’s largest problems and we believe in radically adhering to our core values internally. We’re not a company that starts with what. We live and breathe our why. Instead when we tell our story, it goes like this:

We believe that no one should ever get sick from consuming plants, farmers should make a good living, farmworkers should be treated with dignity, and profitability is the key to scaling our agriculture system.

We do this by focusing on simple, user friendly tools built for growers, by growers.

And this starts with software.

There are many people entering the agtech space right now and many will design great products, some will not. In a world where information overload is killing decisions, Artemis wants to be your partner not your vendor.

Instead of focusing on how to sell investors or capitalize on the cannabis consumers, we’re focused on working with our farmers to solve their problems. It’s what sets us a part and we’re incredibly proud of our product.  If you’re interested in learning more about Artemis or how we can partner together to fulfill your why, we’d love to hear from you at info@artemisag.com.