With Global Entrepreneurship Week this month, and our preparation for Who Wants to Be an Entrepreneur and the 2022 Entrepreneur’s Cup underway, we are particularly focused on encouraging Oklahomans of all ages and expertise to consider entrepreneurship as a career.
There is nothing more inspiring than the journeys of Oklahoma’s advanced technology startups. Bison Underground is one such company, an ag-tech startup that launched about a year ago in Norman, OK.
Here are five strategies from the Bison Underground playbook to help a startup start right:
1. Mission. Bison Underground is tackling carbon capture with a scalable process to remove carbon from the atmosphere and put it back in the soil. “The world has a lot of carbon where we don’t want it and not enough where we do,” said Steven Adams, founder and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Oklahoma.
Bison Underground is developing a method to recycle waste plant material that captures carbon from the atmosphere via photosynthesis and injects the nutrient-rich biomaterial back into the ground in a non-invasive way. The machine they are inventing works with the tractors and combines farmers already use. The process enriches the soil without chemicals.
2. Talent. A founding team of geoscientists, engineers, and management experts with remarkable resumes and track records of accomplishment is key to the early success of Bison Underground. The diverse group includes women, immigrants, and U.S. military veterans.
3. Bootstrapping. Venture Capitalists (VCs) want to see revenue before they invest. Until VCs write checks, successful startups figure out ways to pay as they go. Bison Underground was founded in August 2021 and the team immediately set to work applying for funding, starting with the first round of the XPRIZE, a $100 million carbon removal competition from the Musk Foundation.”
Two months later, Bison Underground was named one of five U.S.-based winners of $250,000 seed funding from the XPRIZE for Caron Removal. “We thought it was a mistake,” Adams said; it was no mistake. In May 2022, Bison Underground went on to win the University of Oklahoma’s Startup Venture competition.
4. Product/Market Fit. Adams, a former Marine who comes from a family of farmers, has a long-standing interest in the application of geology to advance sustainable development.
“Our idea,” Adams said “is to take crop waste that usually decomposes on the surface of the soil and put it deep into the ground with a machine that makes small holes, rather than invasive cuts like a tiller does. The plan improves the quality of the soil and reduces the amount of fertilizer needed.”
Bison Underground is an i2E E3 alumni company. W