The Entrepreneur's Ethic

Our latest podcast episode features my compadres from Ag Startup Engine, the AgTech fund that we started ten years ago, Joel Harris, Colin Hurd, and Mikayla Mooney. We discuss the state of agtech investing. To borrow from Dickens: It is the best of times. It is the worst of times. Entrepreneurs at Ag Startup Engine portfolio companies continue to do great work in building impactful businesses. And we discuss some of those. But you don’t have to look far in the agtech venture investing world to find zombie businesses, dead businesses, and billions in investment that’s went up in flames.What have we learned? How can we build the right kind of muscle memory in the Midwest for effectively deploying risk capital and building the next generation of great businesses? I enjoyed the conversation with my teammates and know you will too.

Brady Sidwell is an entrepreneur from Enid, Oklahoma who runs Sidwell Enterprises, an agricultural conglomerate with multiple businesses including a grain elevator, local food distribution, a flour mill, and a brewery. 

Entrepreneurs tell stories. And some get others to tell their stories. Vance Crowe is a communications expert, widely sought-out speaker, a podcaster, and the founder of Legacy Interviews. Legacy Interviews creates professional video recordings of individuals or couples telling their stories and the lessons learned along the way.www.kevinkimle.com

Jackson Kimle is CEO of Midland, a business that’s developed land-based seafood technology and a business model aimed at scaling shrimp production. Using innovative Algae-Based RAS™ (recirculating aquaculture systems) technology, Midland Co. now has three contract farms raising shrimp in Iowa. Midland's farms are dedicated to quality, handling each batch from tank-to-table.Seafood played a key role in the early development of the economy of what became the United States. Cod caught off the coasts of New England and Canada were a significant export for centuries. Whaling was the deep-history source of what today we call venture capital. And American founders like George Washington harvested fish as part of their farm enterprises. I enjoyed the discussion with Jackson about Midland, shrimp, seafood, and the state of aquaculture, and know you will too.https://www.midlandseafood.com/https://www.kevinkimle.com/

Welcome to season TWO of The Entreprneur's Ethic Podcast! Throughout this season, we'll be tracing the arc of American entrepreneurship.We’ll kick off the season with an interview of John Berlau about George Washington. Yes, THE George Washington. The Founding Father, Revolutionary War leader, first President, model for Mount Rushmore, face on the one-dollar bill, namesake of a Capital City, a state, and much else. But in many ways, he was not just the Father of a country, but the Father of American entrepreneurship.Find John's book herehttps://cei.org/www.kevinkimle.com

In the last podcast of 2024, we take a shot at interpreting the spirit of the time for change-makers, what I call the entrepreneurial zeitgeist. What’s potentially interesting or notable for innovators and entrepreneurs in late 2024? I had a great discussion with two people I’ve learned a lot from, Rob Trice of Better Food Ventures and The Mixing Bowl and Brett Wong of Anterra Capital. Rob’s home base is the Bay Area, California and Brett’s Boston, Massachusetts so our viewpoints are mix of West Coast, East Coast and No Coast.

In this podcast, we talk about insanely great olive oils and vinegars. I interview Brie Thompson, with Olivelle. Brie founded Olivelle after graduating college in 2006, along with her mom, Michelle, in her hometown, Bozeman, Montana. Brie aimed to source high-quality infused oils and vinegars for the newly independent shop, but struggled to do so, disappointed by the available offerings where suppliers were compensating for lower quality oils by masking them with flavors. So, Brie did what entrepreneurs do when they can’t buy what they want; she started sourcing and making her products. www.kevinkimle.com

In this podcast, we talk about insanely great chocolate. I interview Adam Pearson, an owner of Fortunato Chocolate, a business that makes very high-end chocolate. He’s also an author. His book, Finding Fortunato: How a Peruvian Adventure Inspired the Sweet Success of a Family Chocolate Business, was how I first came across Adam’s story and the story of his family’s business. www.kevinkimle.com

This week’s podcast is an interview with Dr. Michael Cusumano,  the SMR Distinguished Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He specializes in strategy, product development, and entrepreneurship in computer software as well as automobiles and consumer electronics. Our discussion is inspired by a book he wrote with David Yoffie, Strategy Rules: Five Timeless Lessons from Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs. It was great to talk through the five strategy rules with someone who’s interacted with these three legendary business leaders.

This week’s podcast is a case study set in 1995 and 1996. Steve Jobs was at that time CEO of two businesses, neither of which was Apple. Rather, he was CEO of technology company NeXT and animation studio Pixar. He aimed to take Pixar public but faced substantial obstacles in doing so. The most prominent investment banks turned down the opportunity to help Jobs do an IPO, assessing it as too risky. www.kevinkimle.com

This week’s podcast is an interview with Callum Laing, a Partner at Unity Group, Founder of the Veblen Director Programme, and past CEO, Chair, or Director of multiple public and private companies. www.kevinkimle.com

This week’s podcast is an interview with Mike Ihle, founder and President of Ihle Fabrications, a farmer-built company that has become a leading provider in manufacturing agriculture wear parts for combine harvesters and other farm equipment. Started in 2002 on the family farm, Ihle has since grown into a Certified Case IH Remanufacturing partner, as well as making parts for John Deere, Claas, Drago and more. www.kevinkimle.com

This week’s podcast is an interview with Dr. Matt Clancy, Economist of Innovation, Research Fellow at Open Philanthropy, and Creator of New Things Under the Sun, a living literature review on research about innovation. www.kevinkimle.com

This week’s podcast is an interview with Al Myers, Founder and President of Ag Leader Technologies. Al is a pioneer in precision agriculture technologies. Ag Leader launched an on-the-go yield monitor in 1992 and has introduced many innovative precision agriculture tools since that time. Today, Ag Leader has almost 300 employees who make tools used by farmers around the world. www.kevinkimle.com

This week’s podcast is an interview with Clayton Mooney, Chief Farmer and Co-Founder of Clayton Farms Salads. Clayton’s journey to today, ‘delivering the world’s freshest salads,’ is a winding one. www.kevinkimle.com

One of the Entrepreneurs featured in my upcoming book, The Entrepreneur’s Ethic, is Wilbur Wright. Wright’s work, along with his brother, Orville, exemplifies Ethic 3: Fail Successfully. This is the experiment-orientation of entrepreneurship. www.kevinkimle.com

Jim Fay is an innovator who’s been a part of development of multiple billion-dollar products. Jim defines his work as that of an ‘Entrepreneurial Product Engineer.’ He shares four product development principles, with a contrarian view of the idea of a minimum viable product. He also shares seven principles for success. www.kevinkimle.com

Zeitgeist is a word that comes straight from German — zeit means "time" and geist means spirit, and the "spirit of the time" is what's going on culturally or intellectually during a certain period. In the last podcast of 2023, I take a shot at interpreting the spirit of the time for change-makers, what I’ll call the entrepreneurial zeitgeist. What’s potentially interesting or notable for innovators and entrepreneurs in late 2023? www.kevinkimle.com

This week’s podcast is with Dr. BJ Johnson, CEO and co-founder at ClearFlame Engine Technologies. We talk about his design of a sustainable diesel engine with the capability to reach net-zero emissions and even reverse greenhouse gases to yield a negative balance in carbon emissions while reducing the costs of long-haul trucking for fleets large and small.

This week’s podcast is an interview with Dr. Josh Storrs Hall is an independent scientist and author. One of this books is, Where Is My Flying Car?: A Memoir of Future Past. Dr. Hall was the founding Chief Scientist of Nanorex, Inc, which is developing a CAD system for nanomechanical engineering. He remains a member of Nanorex' Scientific Advisory Board, and well as a Research Fellow of the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing. His research interests include molecular nanotechnology and the design of useful macroscopic machines using the capabilities of molecular manufacturing. His background is in computer science, particularly parallel processor architectures, artificial intelligence, particularly agoric and genetic algorithms as used in design, and reversible computing. Editor's note: this interview was conducted virtually. We apologize for a handful of internet connectivity hiccups throughout, and have done our best to maintain what Dr. Storrs Hall was conveying. www.kevinkimle.com

This week’s podcast is an interview with Joel Harris, co-founder and CEO of GenVax and my compatriot with agtech investment fund Ag Startup Engine. Joel co-founded another business more than fifteen years ago, Harris Vaccines, that pioneered development and commercialization of mRNA vaccines in the livestock industry. The GenVax team is working on the next generation of livestock vaccines for diseases that would be devastating for agriculture and food security like African Swine Fever and Foot and Mouth Disease. www.kevinkimle.com

One of the Entrepreneurs featured in my upcoming book, The Entrepreneur’s Ethic, is Henry Ford. There are seven parts of The Entrepreneur’s Ethic. Ford’s work exemplifies Ethic 2: Solve Hard Problems. This is the priority setting-orientation of entrepreneurship. It tackles the profound question of “what should I work on?” This week’s podcast is an historic case study from early in Henry Ford’s journey. While set at a time more than one hundred years ago, it deals with an issue very relevant to today, the tension between entrepreneurial talent and risk capital. What proportion of rewards for entrepreneurial success are owed to entrepreneurs and what proportion to investors? Ford  and investors in his early businesses struggled with this in a manner no different from entrepreneurs and investors today. www.kevinkimle.com

In this week’s podcast, I interview Brent Blum, Executive Director of the We Will Collective at Iowa State University, an organization that supports student-athletes through NIL deals and helps them to contribute to the community. www.kevinkimle.com

In this podcast, I try a new format, a solo riff on mentoring. Last week’s podcast on talent; how to attract it and how to keep it, resonated. So, I’ll do a deeper dive into mentoring through the lens of three decisions I’ve made, one practical, one principled, and one whimsical or weird. www.kevinkimle.com

Matt Pozel is an Associate at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, Missouri, which provides access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity. He is deeply knowledgeable about Ewing Kauffman’s story and legacy, and I enjoyed insight that Kauffman offers us on attracting and developing talent and translating business success into community and philanthropic impact. www.kevinkimle.com

One of the Entrepreneurs featured in my upcoming book, The Entrepreneur’s Ethic, is Ewing Kauffman. Kauffman founded Marion Laboratories, a pharmaceutical business, in Kansas City in 1950. By the 1980s, Marion was a billion-dollar business. But a non-pharmaceutical piece of Kauffman’s legacy is in professional baseball, and this case study will dive into one of the most interesting experiments in professional baseball talent development in history, the Kansas City Royals Baseball Academy.

Agricultural entrepreneur Zack Smith is bringing ancient agricultural ideas into the present time at his startup, Stockcropper. Combining livestock and crop farming is ancient. A robotic barn with multiple species and a creative strip cropping method? That's new. We discussed three decisions, one practical, one principled and one weird. There’s Rock ‘n’ Roll, whiskey and Twitter stories you don’t want to miss. We’re always looking for feedback on the podcast as it evolves, so let me know what you like and what you think can be improved. www.kevinkimle.com

Agricultural entrepreneur Harry Stine has worked over his decades on another core agricultural technology, the seed, at Stine Seed Company. He started breeding soybeans before there was intellectual property protection for open-pollinated crops like soybeans. Today, his business is the largest independent seed company in the U.S. This is the fourth installment of my exploration of Ethic 6: Enjoy the Edge from my upcoming book The Entrepreneur's Ethic. www.kevinkimle.com

Serial entrepreneur Colin Hurd has worked on much more modern tools for agriculture and beyond. His most recent business, MACH, develops technology for solutions in perception, navigation, route planning, monitoring, and connectivity. If it’s off-road and autonomous, Colin is probably working on it. This is the third installment in my exploration of historic entrepreneur John Deere and the way he exemplified Ethic 6: Enjoy the Edge. www.kevinkimle.com

In this week’s podcast, I interview Deere historian and archivist Neil Dahlstrom about John Deere and his legacy. Neil describes John Deere as a frontier entrepreneur archetype. You’ll enjoy learning about what he means by this and how a frontier mindset might be useful for you today. This is the second installment in my exploration of Ethic 6: Enjoy the Edge, as exemplified by historic entrepreneur John Deere. www.kevinkimle.com

One of the Entrepreneurs featured in my upcoming book, The Entrepreneur’s Ethic, is John Deere, the historic agricultural entrepreneur. Deere’s fame and fortune resulted from his work innovating the plow over decades, that most ancient of agricultural tools. There are seven parts of The Entrepreneur’s Ethic. Deere’s work exemplifies Ethic 6: Enjoy the Edge. This is the truth-seeking-orientation of entrepreneurship. www.kevinkimle.com

This week’s episode is a great conversation with Jon Housholder. Jon is co-founder, co-owner, director, editor and producer with Unrivaled Films. Unrivaled Films has produced critically acclaimed documentaries for major streaming services, network television docuseries, viral music videos, and nationally televised commercial branding ventures all around the world. He is a three-time Emmy Award winner as a producer, editor, and director. This is the fourth installment in my exploration of Ethic 4: Invest in Tomorrow.

 This week’s episode is a great conversation with ⁠Derral Eves⁠. Derral is one of the world’s top YouTube and online video marketing experts. As an example, he’s coached and worked with ⁠MrBeast⁠, whose ⁠YouTube channel⁠ is considered to be the most-subscribed channels whose owner is an individual. There are seven parts of The Entrepreneur’s Ethic, as discussed in my upcoming book. This episode is the third installment of my exploration of Walt Disney, whose work exemplifies Ethic 4: Invest for Tomorrow. This is the future-orientation of entrepreneurship.

This week, I explore the entrepreneurial legacy of Walt Disney with David Bossert. David is an award-winning artist, filmmaker, and author. He is a veteran of The Walt Disney Company, and a Disney historian, and an authority on Disney art and animation history. We discuss Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, as a book David wrote about it was the primary source for last week’s historic case study, what it was like to work with Disney, and his core strengths and legacy. This is the second episode exploring Walt Disney and the way he exemplifies Ethic 4: Invest in Tomorrow. www.kevinkimle.com

This is the story of Walt Disney's first breakout animated character. But this character is not a mouse. Disney would eventually envision the business model that guides the business he founded to this day, but this case study explores how early mistakes and business betrayals helped shape his later decisions. And seventy years after these events, Disney (the company) would enter a sports trade to get back what Walt Disney had lost in a set of events that can only be called weird. This is the first episode exploring Ethic 4: Invest for Tomorrow. www.kevinkimle.com

Kevin explores today’s distilling industry with Rob Taylor, co-founder of Revelton Distillery, a business located in south central Iowa. More alcohol is distilled in Iowa than any other state – by a significant distance actually – but most of it goes into cars as ethanol-blended gasoline. Rob is distilling for a different purpose. They discuss the origin story of the business, Rob’s grain to glass strategy, his ‘go big or go home’ approach, the role of artisans in alcohol and why the weather in Iowa is good not just for growing corn, but for making fine bourbon. There’s also discussion of the role of mentors, another important part of The Entrepreneur’s Ethic. This is episode four in Kevin's examination of historic entrepreneur Francis Cabot Lowell and his impact on the world. Editor's note: this episode was recorded in October 2022. www.kevinkimle.com

Fashion and textiles account for a significant portion of plastic pollution. Kevin and Dr. Luke Haverhals, founder and CEO of Natural Fiber Welding, discuss NFW's plant-based engineered textiles, which are already being used by some of the world's most recognizable brands. This episode is part of Kevin's ongoing examination of historic entrepreneur Francis Cabot Lowell.

Virginia Postrel (vpostrel.com), author of The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Shaped the World, joins Kevin in discussion of the importance of textiles in the history of humanity. This episode is part of his ongoing examination of historic entrepreneur Francis Cabot Lowell. www.kevinkimle.com

Francis Cabot Lowell (b. 1775, d. 1817) is one of America's most forgotten entrepreneurs, but is among our most important. Before he established a new way to manufacture textiles — thus influencing the Industrial Revolution — he cut his teeth first as a tradesman, then as a rum distiller. In this episode, Kevin imagines the scenes that shaped his talent for innovation. This is Episode One of an examination of Lowell's life and influence. Follow along as Kevin interviews modern entrepreneurs and historians who illuminate what he calls "The Entrepreneur's Ethic" — seven guiding stars for making a dent in the universe. www.kevinkimle.com