Heavy gear producer CNH Industrial has a protracted historical past of mergers and acquisitions, at instances supervising legendary manufacturers like Ferrari. However 5 years in the past, as agtech was booming, the worldwide big was struggling to faucet into the startup scene.
The conglomerate turned to one in all its longest-tenured executives, a swashbuckling Italian businessman named Michele Lombardi.
Lombardi had come up via CNH’s enterprise improvement group, a part of what he describes as a “black belt workforce” that solid company alliances on the highest ranges. When the corporate got here to him in 2019 with this new process, he was basically beginning a brand new chapter “from scratch.”
“They bought caught, they usually couldn’t actually construct a pipeline of profitable transactions,” Lombardi advised TechCrunch. “Once we began, we knew we had very restricted attain. We had no community.”
The best way to construct one? Simply begin speaking, Lombardi defined. Specifically, he went proper to the enterprise capital companies, understanding many can be in search of exits for his or her investments in startups constructing issues like autonomous farm gear or precision farming knowledge.
These conversations led to extra connections and in just some years his rising workforce — which now sits at round 14 workers — had constructed that lacking pipeline to attention-grabbing startups and founders.
That work has led to 12 offers during the last 5 years, cut up between six acquisitions and 6 principally minority investments. They run the gamut technologically, starting from farm administration software program and to AI-powered drone imaging to satellite tv for pc navigation and even tractor firms.
The success of Lombardi’s workforce has matured at a time when, like many different sectors, enterprise funding in agtech has been laborious to return by. Valuations, complete quantity invested and exits are all down from the highs just a few years in the past, in line with knowledge from PitchBook.
This drought has proved a ripe alternative for firms like CNH, making a type of funding and acquisition arms race as they attempt to nook the market on new applied sciences.
“Now is definitely a good time” to be in company enterprise capital, he mentioned. “Now’s when you may actually assist, the place you may actually are available in and be a great accomplice. There’s phenomenal alternatives on the market, loads of anxious entrepreneurs. And it’s a good time to determine good concepts that possibly are extra reasonably priced.”
Just like different industries, Lombardi mentioned agtech went via “a euphoric part” three to 4 years in the past, which he says inflated valuations “a bit an excessive amount of.”
“This downturn will likely be painful, however we’ll clear up a bit [of] the panorama from each traders that possibly don’t have the information and expertise to be on this house, and startups that in all probability by no means had a sufficiently articulated thought, or one thing that may find yourself being a aggressive benefit that made them a sustainable enterprise,” he mentioned. “Your entire panorama will come out a lot, a lot stronger. And I believe will probably be nice to be in that house with the expertise we’ve developed on this interval.”
A profession he was constructed for
To construct out his community, Lombardi leaned on his 20 years of expertise at CNH working varied arms of the multinational firm’s sprawling agriculture and development gear enterprise.
He got here into the corporate at a time when it was going via an unlimited restructuring that concerned the mix of the businesses Case and New Holland (therefore the trendy consolidated title). His early days had been spent inside CNH’s enterprise improvement group in Italy, which he describes as a holding firm that sat atop a wild cornucopia of firms that included Fiat, Ferrari and even a newspaper.
Over the following 20 years, he managed components of CNH’s companies in Switzerland, Thailand, China, Australia and New Zealand. With every put up, Lombardi garnered contemporary expertise. Whereas in Thailand, as an example, he oversaw the conglomerate’s whole Southeast Asia operations because it grew from a $40 million enterprise to a $400 million affair.
That expansive expertise immediately knowledgeable the work he’s completed since 2019 when he says he was “poached” again to Chicago to pilot CNH’s funding and M&A workforce.
On the funding aspect, Lombardi stresses the important thing distinction between being a VC and operating a company enterprise store. “Our job just isn’t merely to do the funding and get a return,” he defined, whereas juking left and proper a bit at his standing desk. “My lens is totally different, yeah? I put money into firms once I suppose that they will speed up my technological roadmap.”
Lombardi can focus much less on returns as a result of CNH has hauled in round $20 billion in income every of the final three years. That frees him as much as suppose extra strategically about who his workforce palms cash to — one thing that different traders could not have the luxurious of, particularly because the funding market dried up.
On the M&A aspect, Lombardi says he likes to usher in folks from all of CNH’s totally different organizations when evaluating a startup. It’s these workers who will inform him: “Sure, I like that expertise workforce, I like their resolution, I just like the product, we expect it’ll make a distinction in our business,” he says.
Lombardi says his workforce typically goes past funding and M&A because it appears to supercharge CNH’s skills. And he exploits the corporate’s world attain to trace developments in all varieties of totally different markets.
“We’ve a mapping of the prevailing startups at totally different maturity ranges earlier than any advisor would come to us and suggest us something, and we spontaneously attain out to entrepreneurs and chit chat with them, perceive what they’re doing,” he mentioned. “Typically we construct collaborative alternatives that don’t essentially result in an funding, however assist the startup, assist our business round us develop with extra confidence and it educates us.”
Lombardi likes to look these entrepreneurs within the eye, so he prefers in-person or video calls when potential. Lombardi mentioned he must look somebody within the eye — and watch how they reply to questions — to find out whether or not he desires to work with that individual.
“I be taught so much from that, greater than from the speech,” he mused. “Entrepreneurs are very, superb at giving me the 10-minute speech. I’m not very fascinated about that. I imply, I can promote you something. It’s not what I would like. I’m not going to be taught something from that. I’m not going to grasp if I may also help.”
He added that it’s extra necessary for him to see the individual, how they react, in the event that they open up and present their vulnerabilities.
“And thru that I then construct that sense if I need to spend extra time with that individual or not,” he mentioned. “I imply, tremendous necessary. And there’s so many on the market, proper? So how do you choose? I choose out of the smarts I see and the way prepared they’re to collaborate.”
