Awards and Advisors

During the last two years the Agribots team has entered and won various different awards as well as received support and mentoring from different sources.

Current Advisors

The following professors are active advisors and supporters of the Agribots idea. These relationships were cultivated during our two year MBA/MA program at The University of Pennsylvania.

Patrick Fitzgerald

As the a founder and investor in Recyclebank, Nanny Caddy, Philadelphia Distilling, and ChargeItSpot, Patrick Fitzgerald has lent his entrepreneurial experience and knowledge to the Agribots team. Currently he helping the Agribots team continue to develop their pitch and refine their product. Mr. Fitzgerald is also one of the managing directors of Philadelphia's Dreamit Ventures.

Mauro Guillen

Professor Guillen is the director of the Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, and is also a Professor of International Management at The Wharton School.

Professor Guillen has been instrumental in helping Agribots establish best practices when conducting business abroad and has also served as an advisor during the Start-up Chile application process.

Dante Pirouz

Dante M. Pirouz is a Professor of Marketing at the Richard Ivey School of Business. Previously she received an MA from the University of Pennsylvania's Lauder Institute, and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business.

Professor Pirouz helped Agribots target consumers in both the California and Latin American agricultural markets.

Robert Borghese

Mr. Borghese is a member of the faculty of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania as a Lecturer in Law and Entrepreneurial Management. He teaches courses in the Wharton MBA on legal aspects of entrepreneurship and legal issues for growth companies and on mergers and acquisitions. He has also lectured extensively on legal and strategy issues for start-up and emerging growth companies.

Regina Abrami

With primary expertise in political economy, Dr. Abrami’s research focuses on the political economy of national industrial strategy and doing business in emerging markets.

Regina has served as a conduit for many of the connections that Agribots has made in Silicon Valley.

Robert A. Stein

Professor Robert A. Stein is part of the Statistics Department at The Wharton School. His interests include credit scoring, model selection, pattern recognition and classification, statistical computing and graphics, time series analysis and forecasting.

Through his tutelage, Professor Stein is helping Agribots develop the algorithms necessary for the analytics suite.

Awards

13th Start-up Chile Class

Start-Up Chile begun four years ago with the mission to transform the Chilean entrepreneurial ecosystem. Since then, the program focuses on bringing global talent to Chile and giving them the resources necessary for establishing a working business.

Startups that join the program participate in a six month stay in Chile that is facilitated through the help of the government. As with most accelerators, Start-up Chile also has a demo day and program participants compete to win more funding.

Agribots was selected to participate in both the 10th and the 13th Start-up Chile competitions. We are extremely excited to participate with the current class. Read the Press Release.

2013-2014 UPenn Y-Prize

The Y-Prize is a contest in which members of the UPenn community compete to propose the best applications for an existing technology. The technology in question is normally developed by research members of the university and include everything from robots to nano-materials.

During the 2013-2014 competition, Agribots submitted an original idea to utilize quadrotor robots to monitor crops and to prevent freezes in global regions with temperate climates.

Although Agribots did not ultimately win the grand prize, the team did receive considerable support and resources from the university as well as placing 2nd in the competition. Read About The Contest.

Wharton & Lauder Awards

The Wharton and Lauder community have actively been supporting budding entrepreneurs that ideate during the 24 month tenure. Wharton offers support through the Venture Initiation program and the Wharton Business Plan Competition. The Lauder Institute provides support through the Santander Venture Award and general advising and support.

Agribots participated in the Wharton Business Plan Competition and received the feedback necessary to receive non equity funding from the Wharton Innovation Fund. Additionally, the Lauder Institute also gave funding to Agribots through the Inaugural Santander Venture Award.

Silicon Valley Bank Trek

Although this was not explicitly a contest, participation in the inaugural Silicon Valley Bank Trek was a huge step for Agribots in making deep connections in Silicon Valley.

Participants for the program were chosen from among all entrepreneurs in their respective institutions. Agribots was chosen to participate because of our development of social impact software focused on agriculture.

The program put the company in touch with many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and VC's, including Theresia Gouw, Joe Lonsdale, and Jason Mendelson. This experience has served as the foundation for our networking in Silicon Valley. Read Our Blog Entry.