It comes when somebody has proof of concept. They know it works, but they cannot get to the manufacturing phase. Typically you have university and government funding to get to that proof-of-concept stage, and then you have to try to attract some funding from the private capital market, the angel markets, or the venture markets.
In agriculture, we have a real dearth of financiers. We have people who will take companies, if they have $2 million in sales, and will help grow them. But we don't typically have any investors for that valley of death.
One thing the government could do would be to set up a matching grant fund to support these types of things, to de-risk some of the technologies that are out there.
A lot of the technologies don't have the interest of the venture players, because the venture players are looking for the home runs. A lot of the technology in agriculture will be profitable, but they're not home runs. That's another part of what we do.
Will's company grew with support through the university and the SBIR program, which is something we should think about embracing.