Dairy-ing to do butter with data

As far as bad food related puns go, that’s probably our wurst.

Data isn’t modern

“In God we trust, all others bring data.” Data is ubiquitous. Our ability to use it, draw insight and put it into nice dashboards is critical. “Data driven” they said. Our favourite search engine companies company, social media platforms, marketplaces have all built their business off the back of data (our data but let’s keep it civil). Snowflake, Datadog or MongoDB are a few examples of category leaders who have emerged in the last decade or so (even if they sound like nicknames you'd get in prison). And did someone say AI? Fuhgeddaboudit. But data isn’t modern. The agricultural sector has been generating data for thousands of years. Yes, thousands.

Commodity data today (and a throw back to my previous life)

Commodity data (and Patagonia vests) can be found across trading floors and investment banks through Bloomberg terminals or Eikon. They have excellent coverage of large commodity groups like oil and gas, metals, bulks etc. because much of these have been standardised and exchange traded. You can jump on a Bloomberg terminal, pull the data and add a forecast on top. You want global supply and demand data? Say no more. For these globally ‘sexy’ commodities, data was in abundance.

One day, my MD in banking asked me to pull data on wheat, soybean, rapeseed, and sugar. Computer says ‘hold on’. It’s not long before you get used to the USDA (US Department of Agriculture) or DAFF (Australia’s Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) databases at 3am in the morning. You realise not all data is created equal and that you should probably get some sleep.

Vesper – doing the udderly dirty data work

So when you live in one of the top five dairy exporting countries in the world, you wonder where people go to for data for all things dairy? We soon learned that producers, buyers, traders and brokers used disparate sources from government databases to newsletters to good ol’ personal networks. Vesper’s founder, Alexander Sterk, lived this reality. The ex-dairy trader hung up his telephone after eight years of trading at a leading global diary trader to found Vesper and build the single source of dairy data truth.

It’s not just raw milk but the platform tracks your favourite lunchables – gouda, emmental, cheddar, you name it. In dairy alone, they track over 150 products. Beyond that, they cover sugar, edible oils and fats, and will expand into additional commodities including meat, nuts, grains and more. The list goes on. Over 20 commodities, +1,900 products, one platform. But that’s not enough, Vesper literally puts the AI in dairy 😏 with their price forecasts and the Vesper Price Index supercharges users across 500+ companies in their procurement decisions with real-time data, forecasts and insights.

So in the spirit of shameless plugs, we couldn’t be more chuffed to co-lead Vesper’s Series A with Piton Capital and join their journey to build the Bloomberg for the long tail of commodities 🐮