The Innovation Fund is a four-week crowdfunding competition that gives VFA Fellows the opportunity to launch their business ideas and projects. Eleven Fellow-led teams are off to the races sharing their new ventures with the world and hustling to raise as much money as possible on Indiegogo between now and March 16th. Between now and August 4th, the team that raises the most money will receive additional funding to launch their venture.
Carolyn Jane wants to tackle the gap in food quality between socio-economic classes. Though processed foods are cheap and accessible, educating people about the accessibility and affordability of better foods helps to build healthier habits. Starting in her neighborhood in Cincinnati, she will sow seeds and ideas in impoverished food deserts to help communities regain control of their health. For 6 years Carolyn Jane has sought a way to combine her passions for art, food, engineering, and education. Two years ago, her immersion into the culture and challenges of entrepreneurship through her work with Venture for America and BTG Labs gave her the skills to pursue her own venture. This year her community presented a problem that inspired her, and from all of these great things came VegCycle – a lean, mean, mobile, vegetable-growing education machine.
I have always been intimidated by the idea of being a ‘founder.’ Or an ‘inventor.’ Even though I liked to think of myself as a creative, design and people-oriented engineer, I did not have those magical juices that give people ideas and allow them to materialize companies and conjure up products. In my first work experience, I discovered that the people who have big ideas are not all-knowing creatures pulling life-altering concepts out of nowhere. They are creative, yes. But they also listen. They string together the incoherent jabber around them – “I want, I need, I have this problem, I hate how, I wish!” – and they produce a solution.
That is exactly how VegCycle came to me. Since high school I have been working in environmental science and organic gardens. My junior year we ground up an old parking lot and turned it into a garden to supply lettuce and tomatoes to our dining hall. In college I switched to building cars with an incredible team of students, but my favorite part was seeing the team members learn, and I spent most of my time fundraising and teaching new recruits how to use the lathes, mills and other machines in the mechanical engineering prototyping lab. Once I joined the workforce in the real world, my dreams of being a gardener and teacher were tucked away for a time.
In 2015 a couple of friends and I took over the 8 raised beds outside of Road Trippers – a local travel guide startup. When I moved to Cincinnati I was warned against walking down streets like McMicken and Liberty. “Those are the streets where you wouldn’t want to be caught alone at night,” I was told. You can imagine my unease when we first started working at the garden, but as the weeks passed I began to love my time there for the opportunity it gave me to talk to the people on the street. The ones I had been told to fear. The people who came up to the fence weren’t violent. They were excited and curious. They wanted to know what I was doing and they were eager for the growing and cooking tips I offered with every bundle of herbs I gave away. I was thrilled.
Then last fall I met Harriet, the founder of SoupCycle. Harriet rides a bicycle with four large soup pots on the back in a built-in thermal carrier. She takes unwanted produce from local restaurants and supermarkets to create a variety of delicious soups which she then wheels to local schools and children’s organizations. Her mission is to provide nutritional meals for children. This gave me an idea – can I make an educational tool that also provides food? What if it focuses on gardening and cooking? What if I make a garden that can teach people across the city, not just on McMicken street?
And there it was. Instead of soup, it will be a garden. Instead of children it will be parents, grandmothers, and kids. Instead of a meal it will be seeds for a new way of cooking at home. In January I left my job, and the release has allowed me to put all of my energy into VegCycle. I spent February driving around the eastern half of the country and talking to farmers, community gardeners, professors, and agricultural specialists. If I am going to be presenting myself as an expert, I have a lot to learn – and I want to see if VegCycle could really gain traction across the country. While I was traveling I met with a farmer out of Newark, NJ who is creating the largest vertical farm in the country! That’s when I realized my little garden could be more than just a garden. I could build it with cutting-edge, farming technology to make it not just educational but exciting!
I have joined Venture for America’s crowdfunding competition – the Innovation Fund. Please help VegCycle get its wheels dirty and consider contributing to our campaign so that we can start changing the way people think about, grow and eat their food.