Going back to where it all began
Returning to the family farm during the COVID crisis has reconnected Chairman & Co-Founder, Justin Webb, with what makes AgriWebb so important.
Where the heart is
Itâs a 13-hour drive from Sydney, where AgriWebbâs head office is, to Eddington Station, Victoria, the family farm of company co-founder, Justin Webb. Leave at dawn, and you arrive in darkness when car headlights catch kangaroos grazing by the roadside.
At the end of the day-long road trip, when the sealed highway has given way to a red-dirt road, Justin rolls down the car window and breathes deep.
âIâll always think, âitâs Godâs countryâ!â he says. âI know it sounds trite, but I really do mean it â itâs home, itâs where I chose to propose to my wife.â
His wife isnât always so swept up in the moment. âEvery time, it drives her crazy,â Justin concedes. âSheâll yell: âWind up your window!â Admittedly it does get very cold in the Western District.â
When Justin was growing up, his family moved every few years. Summers at Eddington became an anchor through his childhood. âMy hero would be the manager or jackaroo riding around on a motorbike, chasing sheep, cattle and kangaroos. To a young boy, that was just everything you wanted to be.
âNow, Iâll wake up in the morning and go for a walk around the property. As I pass the cattle yards and the sheep yards, I feel connected again. This is where my roots are.â
Business as usual (aside from a few thousand livestock)
It was COVID-19 that brought Justin back to Eddington for his current stay. When AgriWebb decided staff should work from home, and before borders closed, he packed the family in the car and headed south.
âAgriWebb didnât set out to have all these tools specifically so we could work remotely. They were already part of our infrastructure,â Justin says. âThis isnât just an Aussie business, itâs a global business. Even if Iâm sitting in Sydney, weâve got employees in London, Belfast or Denver, and the connection between everyone in the team has to work seamlessly.â
That said, his day starts a little differently at Eddington. Instead of grabbing a coffee at a local cafe, heâs helping round up a thousand-head of sheep, with his son by his side.
âHeâs three, nearly four, and this is paradise,â Justin says. âWatching the sheepdogs, flying behind the flock and climbing over their backs as they get them in the yards â itâs amazing.â
Connecting with core values
Returning to Eddington reaffirms AgriWebbâs guiding philosophy: Live for the farmer.
âWorking on AgriWebb from Sydney is fantastic because youâre right there with the developers, but you tend to get caught in spreadsheets, especially in my role,â Justin says. âYouâre looking at the next sales number, the next product release, whatâs driving those top-line metrics and then, frankly, trying to on-sell them to investors and stakeholders.
âDown here, I see our manager and stockman and stockwoman using AgriWebb on a day-to-day basis. Theyâre reviewing the feed in paddocks and checking inventory â the tool we originally conceived here is a critical part of the daily operation. And that is amazingly satisfying to me.â
Being on the farm also reinforces that, for all the uncertainties caused by COVID, farmersâ work is as essential as ever. âThe animals donât know the rest of the worldâs in lockdown; they still need to be fed, and we still need to be out managing pastures and recording inputs â the life cycle of operations carries on. Otherwise, the shelves go bare.â
What has changed, is that advisors canât visit the property. âSo how do you maintain a continuity of insight, in this time of isolation?â Justin asks. âThat has to be done online.
â10 years ago connectivity wasnât ubiquitous. Farmers were slow to adopt smartphones, because, well, youâre not catching an Uber in the top paddock are you? Now digitisation of their own lives has happened â they have email, theyâre online banking â and the digitisation of their businesses is becoming a reality.â

Reflecting on the team
It was at Eddington that Justin realised the considerable gains to be found by digitising farm record keeping. He was frustrated by the old way of keeping records â using pen and paper â and the lack of data to make informed decisions. âI knew a lot about business operations â having founded, built and sold three previous companies â and I couldnât understand why we werenât approaching the production of animals like a business â itâs still a business,â he says.
Reflecting on the company he co-founded, to build on the opportunities he saw, heâs quick to give credit to the people around him. âWhen Kevin Baum joined me on this journey, he couldnât tell the difference of a sheep from a cow,â Justin jokes. âWhat he brought was this whole world I had no concept of, with best-in-class Silicon Valley SaaS techniques to drive and deliver scalable excellence to an industry.
âJohn Fargher brought this absolute best-in-class grit, a refusal to relent in sales and value delivery. Finally, Phil Chan, with Kenny Sabir and Eric Martinez de Morentin, has a mind-bogglingly good ability to build scalable infrastructure.
âWe have people with best-in-class skills, bringing them to an industry theyâve never worked in before, and itâs through to the newest of starters: Mel Novacan comes with insights from a decades-long career in digital marketing and building online brands, and Huw Davies has generations of farming in his blood, but he has never worked for a technology company.
âItâs that confluence of skills that makes AgriWebb a robust company and a robust product, as well as a phenomenally exciting place to work.
âPeople arenât transferring their skills from, say, one banking company to another and claiming, âIâm going to change the world.â No, youâre not: Youâre doing the same thing, under a different logo.
âBut walking around the farm, seeing the animals and the pastures, I realise weâre creating a technology that incrementally makes the production of food more efficient, more sustainable, and improves profitability.
âYouâre improving such a core industry that benefits truly everyone. And I think thatâs the best of technology: isnât technology meant to make our society better? ⌠If only I could get technology to convince my wife to want the window open!â
If youâre interested in Justinâs journey as he looks to drive the digitisation of agriculture, you can follow him at LinkedIn.