Technology
How a Red Bull Basement winner is putting agriculture tech in the spotlight
As the winner of Red Bull Basement 2024, Soj Gamayon won a three-week trip to access mentorship and resources in California. The experience changed him, and it may just change the future of farming.
When Gamayon arrived in California from his home in the Philippines, he was determined to make the most of it. And he did. The experience featuring intensive mentoring and networking opportunities has not only affected the way Gamayon thinks about developing his AgriConnect idea, which uses AI to help farmers identify crop threats, but it has also altered his view of himself.
“What this trip has meant to me is that I’m actually a risk taker!” says the student entrepreneur. “And I think that’s always going to be something I learned about myself and that maybe changed me as a person.”
The journey started with two weeks in Los Angeles before concluding with a week in the tech region of Silicon Valley. While in LA, Gamayon got together with Hans Yang, the head of Microsoft for Startups, who had been a global judge at the Red Bull Basement World Final in Tokyo. Yang even gave him a tour of the University of Southern California’s Iovine and Young Academy, which is dedicated to preparing students to innovate at the intersection of technology, design and business.
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Soj Gamayon in LA and Silicon Valley
Take a look at Soj Gamayon's three-week trip to access mentorship and resources in California.
Gamayon says, “Microsoft had helped me think through the systems that I have on the backend of my startup, and Hans and I were catching up. I was able to tell him about the progress I was making, and it was a very genuine interaction.”
Yang commented, “The highlight of my time at Red Bull Basement in Tokyo was watching founders go from an idea to a real business. With someone like Soj, who came in with a concept, what he left with was a journey that he can now follow for the rest of his life.”
The highlight of my time at Red Bull Basement was watching founders go from an idea to a real business
Throughout his time in Los Angeles, Gamayon was provided with resources to prepare for the culmination of his trip: three immersive days at Plug and Play’s Silicon Valley Summit, where more than 4,000 attendees from over 20 industries come together to network, hear from expert speakers and discover promising AI startups. It was Gamayon’s chance to shine, as he was provided with a coveted startup booth and the opportunity to pitch AgriConnect to a room of movers and shakers.
“For the two weeks ahead of the Summit, basically every day I had a two-hour session with different Plug and Play mentors. Everything was curated according to where I am right now – a pre-product startup – and also to the industry I’m in, which is Agriculture,” Gamayon shares.
From product tech to how to pitch and scale, the mentors took a custom approach to Gamayon’s needs. Just eight months after first envisioning AgriConnect, and only six months after his Red Bull Basement win, the experience couldn’t have come at a better time.
“This is my first rodeo, my first startup,” Gamayon explains. “I don’t have a product, so I can’t answer anything too technical yet, and I don’t have revenue, so I can’t give a good financial projection. I had been pressuring myself to have all of those stats ASAP, but the time in LA taught me that I had to reorient how I was looking at my startup. The mentors told me, ‘Soj, you’re not at that stage yet. This journey should be about how you can defy the odds and take calculated risks to learn more.’”
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Even with that new mindset, Gamayon acknowledges that he was nervous going into the Silicon Valley Summit. He says, “It’s so prestigious. I felt like, ‘This is really the place to be. Do I actually belong here?’”
But again the mentors reassured him, pointing out that not only had he won Red Bull Basement over 110,000 other ideas, but by doing so he had put Agri-Tech – an industry that is sometimes overlooked – into the spotlight.
That realisation clicked for Gamayon, whose idea had originally been inspired by the needs of farmers like his uncle. He describes, “It gave me a lot of clarity to think that this is beyond me now. Beyond my uncle. Even beyond the Philippines. It’s a whole industry that I’m representing. And I think that’s ultimately what I learned: from doubting myself to believing that I’m supposed to be here.”
Gamayon pitches AgriConnect at the Plug and Play Silicon Valley Summit
© Courtesy of Plug and Play
He goes on, “Before flying to California, my goal was to talk to as many investors as I could, but I came to understand that I was there to solidify my value proposition. When I talked to people at the Summit, I always told them that I am pre-product, and that I am trying to de-risk two main things: the technical aspect of my startup and the market. And these people in the industry, they understood.”
Jamie Lipman from the Plug and Play Tech Center said, “I’m very excited for Soj and AgriConnect. I think there is a lot of potential for his company, and we know he’s going to make such an incredible impact in the agricultural space.”
That’s ultimately what I learned: from doubting myself to believing that I’m supposed to be here
Next up for the ingenious founder, besides finishing his final semester at university, is producing and testing an MVP (minimum viable product). Thanks to exposure from interviews and articles about his Red Bull Basement win, he’s in talks with potential partners in the Philippines who are keen to take on the MVP build and to provide farmland for the testing. Plug and Play has suggested the possibility of conducting testing in California as well.
Long-term, his goal has grown to help even more farmers by expanding AgriConnect’s offerings to address a variety of crops beyond his original concept of rice and corn.
While he’s working on all that, Gamayon also has some advice for any innovators who might be interested in entering Red Bull Basement 2026:
“When I think about Red Bull Basement’s theme of ‘It takes one idea to make an impact,’ it seems that ‘impact’ means something that resonates,” Gamayon muses. “For example, when I pitched at the World Final, the judges and the mentors from Microsoft and AMD said that they really felt my passion about the needs around Agri-Tech. So if you have an idea for positive change but you keep doubting it and you never put it out there, you’ll never know. What is there to lose? If I had kept doubting AgriConnect, I wouldn’t be here.”
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