Did You Just Say “Cows”? How Halter Became a Unicorn by Reimagining Livestock Management
Now live on 1,000 farms and with a billion-dollar valuation, agtech startup Halter is proof that software beyond the screen can rewire even the oldest industries—right down to the cows!
At Ubiquity Ventures, our thesis has always centered on “software beyond the screen”— pushing technology beyond the screens of computers and phones to tangibly transform the real, physical world.
I see Halter as an embodiment of that vision and a natural fit with Ubiquity Ventures. Back in the spring of 2018, I sat down in a Palo Alto coffee shop with founder Craig Piggott, who shared his vision for Halter. He detailed his background—growing up working on his family’s 300-cow dairy farm, studying mechanical engineering with top honors, and working in the disciplined but nimble culture of Rocket Lab (a prior investment of mine that similarly combines hardware and software). By the end of the hour, I was fully convinced that Craig was placed on this planet to launch this exact company. I said “yes” on the spot to co-leading his 2018 seed round and this month Halter announced a $100 million Series D financing at a $1 billion valuation (official announcement).
This new round was led by BOND, with participation from NewView Capital as well as existing investors Blackbird, DCVC, Icehouse Ventures, and Promus Ventures. Last year, Deloitte named Halter as New Zealand’s fastest-growing company in their Fast 50 Index.
Halter is now live on over 1,000 dairy farms and ranches with strong international expansion into the US (150+ ranches across 18 states).
Halter’s platform for livestock management
Halter’s platform serves as an operating system to run a dairy farm or cattle ranch. The Halter system starts with 3 components: a smart collar for each cow, towers for connectivity, and an app that lets farmers and ranchers manage their animals and pasture from their phone. Animals are guided by the collar’s sound and vibration cues to enable virtual fencing, digital shepherding, data-driven insights, and a lot more.
Customer benefits:
More pasture harvested, boosting milk production and lowering costs
Reduced workload, thanks to automated livestock movement (a win for labor shortages)
Real-time insights into herd health, fertility, and early illness detection
Learn more about the full Halter platform at halterhq.com
Halter offers a glimpse into the future of farming, where technology and tradition work hand in hand. Halter customers are able to embrace data, trigger real world movement, and in the end run more profitable and sustainable businesses.
Customer love & category creation
Our co-investor BlackBird Ventures said it perfectly here, so I’ll cite them directly (thanks Sam!):
Halter’s product inspires deep customer love. Almost all farmers use it daily, and the brand has achieved near cult-like status on-farm, from customized license plates to passionate word-of-mouth referrals. It's not uncommon to hear farmers say they’d “give up farming” if Halter were taken away.
It’s nice to be the best in a category. It’s better to BE the category. There simply is no real competition in any of the regions it operates, with nearest alternatives orders of magnitude behind Halter in both scale and product maturity. In the emerging market of virtual fencing, Halter now operates at a scale and level of sophistication that firmly establishes it as the category leader, with a data flywheel that will be hard to unseat.
Halter has elevated the way farmers and ranchers operate and they frequently share their love for Halter. In addition to what’s below, Halter’s website has dozens of customer video testimonials.
What this means for budding “software beyond the screen” founders
Halter proves that empathy, engineering, boots‑on‑the‑ground tech, and venture backing can converge in unexpected industries to create unicorns. While Halter was literally a “greenfield opportunity” bringing technology to lush pastures, the application of deep tech for other physical industries is also rife with opportunity – but it demands a team that combines technical depth with customer empathy.
Over the last 7 years, I’ve witnessed Craig’s process — not forcing tech on tradition, but rather matching his customers’ cadence, understanding what is possible, and guiding farmers and ranchers confidently through that adoption.
If you enjoyed this post, you can read more in our April 2021 founder profile of Halter CEO Craig Piggott.
Ubiquity Ventures — led by Sunil Nagaraj — is a seed-stage venture capital firm focused on startups solving real-world physical problems with "software beyond the screen", often using smart hardware or machine learning.
If your startup fits this description, reach out to us.