Erez Galonska, co-founder and CEO, Infarm
Season 2, Episode 33, Feb 28, 2022, 10:19 AM
We speak to Infarm’s CEO and co-founder Erez Galonska about the food system and the AgriTech sector, modular farming technology, "radical transparency”, and what he believes is the right approach to comms and culture.
Our guest for the 23rd interview with unicorn start-up leaders is Erez Galonska, co-founder and CEO of Infarm.
Infarm is a global vertical farming company that revolutionises the food supply chain and helps make cities self-sufficient in their food production. It was founded in Berlin in 2013 by Osnat Michaeli and the brothers Guy and Erez Galonska, who turned a 1955 Airstream trailer into the world's first mobile vertical farm. From this humble beginning, Infarm has since partnered with more than 30 of the world's top retail chains and is available in more than 1850 stores worldwide, servicing more than 2 million customers in 11 countries.
Infarm is the world's fastest-growing vertical farming company. By 2030, 20 countries in North America, Asia and the Middle East will enjoy Infarm's fresh, highly nutritious, chemical pesticide-free, locally-grown produce year-round, without fluctuation in quality or pricing. The company reached unicorn status in December 2021, having raised $200 million in Series D funding, and that took the total raised to more than $500 million from world-leading investors.
Erez believes that, for you and your business to excel in communications, you must build everything around transparency. Galonska says culture, for him and his company, is also about ownership clarity and helping people to build what they’ve been hired for. This is especially important in a start-up ecosystem, where rapid growth is a constant experience. This has led to Infarm to reorganise the business every half a year to create even more clarity around its needs. They are slowly structuring their culture and establishing a mission-oriented business that will also help them build a better farming network.
The interview, as usual, was co-hosted with Russell Goldsmith of the csuite podcast.
We have distilled the most valuable, actionable insights from our first 15 interviews with leaders of unicorn companies and bottled them in our book ‘Growing without borders: The unicorn CEO guide to communication and culture’. You can download it here.