Founder Spotlight
We share our members’ achievements; the challenges they overcame, and the advice they want female entrepreneurs everywhere to know.
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Meet Jenny Lemieux, CEO & Co-Founder of VIVID MACHINES, Automating fruit production to manage growth and predict yield
Jenny has been a part of the CWN community for quite some time now. She was raised on a farm in Ontario, and as an engineer, product designer, and data scientist, she set her sights on tackling the problem of how to make fruit farming more sustainable and efficient.
What problem is Vivid Machines tackling?
“Vivid Machines is a company that aids permanent crop production that is currently working with fruit producers. If you go to your local grocery store, you’ll see that the fruit is similar in size and color, and has no blemishes. However, 30% of fruit does not meet this standard. Instead, farmers have to sell it at a lower price for juice or processed food. It is a tough job to make a living on a farm. Every percentage of food that farmers can sell as fresh produce leads to a better living.
To mitigate risks, farmers use crop load management techniques to determine how to maximize the volume of fruit that meets retail quality requirements, which is no small task. The farmer needs to understand the growing fruit across their entire orchard.
Unlike broadacre crops, such as corn or soybeans, you cannot use satellites or drones to monitor the trees as the canopies block the view.
We’ve built a spectral sensor and computer vision system that a farmer can add to a tractor or ATV while driving through an orchard to provide insights and help growers make decisions for how to optimize fruit volume.”
Coming from an engineering and product design background how did you get into fruit farming?
“I grew up on a small farm just outside of London, Ontario. It wasn’t fruit, but corn, soybeans, and wheat. I have 15 years of experience working in product development for media and martech applications. With the onset of COVID-19, my son turned 10, and I re-evaluated what I was doing. He and I often talk about how we can use our power for good and make the world a better place. So, I decided I wanted to pivot and work on something that had a larger impact.
My co-founder, who came from academia, felt the same way. We were both interested in food and agriculture and wanted to find an important problem to solve, which led us to found Vivid Machines.”
What challenges have you faced as a founder?
“Similar to most parent founders, learning how to balance my company and family and ensure nobody gets neglected has been challenging. Finding the perfect balance is hard, but I manage by involving my family in various ways. My son is really interested in our work. This month, he’s coming to a conference with me to see other AgTech companies talk about their businesses.”
What are some time management tips you learned as a parent founder?
“I’m an avid list maker, and so each morning, I like setting objectives of what I want to accomplish. I try to get over the onerous things earlier in the day before everyone else jumps online. I find breaking big projects into smaller, bite-sized tasks makes it easier to feel like I’ve accomplished something. One other thing for me is to balance strategic and tactical tasks. Strategic work usually gets pushed to the weekend, but I always make sure to take Saturdays off, no matter what is going on. I like to go skiing with my son or take the dogs for a long walk. To be truly productive and creative, you need to take time away from things to allow for moments of clarity. For me, getting outside is essential.”
What strategies do you use for managing a remote team?
“My team’s touch points depend on their preferences and their role. Do they prefer a daily meeting for 15 minutes or an hour meeting once a week? I use several tactics to support each individual and align the team. We also mix in small things. For example, on Fridays, we play Wordle on Slack and solve the word together. Last week, the term was Vivid! We look for small things that make us feel like a collective but don’t require us to join a zoom call. We also have monthly meetings. We’re doing a virtual March Madness breakfast next Friday, complete with UberEats. I’ll provide an investor update, and the team will share their accomplishments. It helps everyone get excited for the next month of delivery. We focus on designing more thoughtful touch points.”
When it comes to the engineering talent pool and hiring, how do you ensure you’re creating fair opportunity?
“We’re a technology business, and when we post job applications for engineering, 1 out of 300 applicants are women. So, we’re working with the University of Waterloo’s engineering department to sponsor their Women in Engineering initiative, and we’re launching the ‘Vivid Women’s Division’ to mentor and foster young women in STEM programs. For example, our first session is tips and tricks on how to spruce up your LinkedIn page. We want to build up a community of female engineers, scientists, and future founders. We want to provide young women with sponsors to learn about leadership positions.”
What’s next for Vivid Machines?
“We’re in a really exciting time for Vivid Machines. We are launching our first commercial products in April to our customers. We’ve got our heads down and are building like crazy. We raised a pre-seed round of $1.1M USD, and those funds got us to where we are today. We are just starting to raise a seed round to scale our product and customers.
Our focus right now is expanding the team. We are looking to hire individuals that are curious, excited to learn, and passionate about food and agriculture. That is another reason we are building recruitment funnels with early and mature students in different programs. We’re also building up our employer branding, and it’s vital to communicate how we differ. We must build foundations for the future to prepare us to grow.”
A piece of advice for our network?
“Don’t wait for others to validate what you’re doing because you will never get what you want from that. Validation has to come from within yourself. You have to believe in yourself and try new things.
I think the Canadian Women’s Network is doing a fantastic job. The programs I’ve participated in are so positive and supportive.”
Thank you, Jenny!
If you’d like to be considered for our CWN Founder Spotlight, please reach out to Armita Maroufi, Partnership Manager at CWN, and share more about your company.
