Pollinating Vertical Farming

HIROKI KOGA（古賀大貴） is the CEO and Co-Founder of Oishii, the company behind the world’s largest indoor vertical strawberry farm. Hiroki is on a mission to change the agriculture industry and how we grow food. He has his sights set on making Oishii the largest producer of strawberries in the world. Hiroki founded Oishii in 2016 while pursuing his MBA at the University of California, Berkeley. Under Hiroki’s leadership, Oishii is the only company in the vertical farming industry to successfully produce pollinated fruits – considered the most sophisticated crops to grow indoors due to long cultivation cycles – on a commercial scale. By integrating ancient Japanese farming techniques with A.I. and machine learning technologies Oishii cultivates perfectly ripe, delicious, pesticide-free strawberries year-round

Iroha: Where are you originally from?

Hiroki: Japan - born and raised. I graduated from Keio University and got a consulting job. Then, I came to the U.S. and went to Berkeley for my MBA.

Iroha: What spurred your passion for agriculture?

Hiroki: As a child, and I think it’s the same for my entire generation in Japan, I grew up constantly hearing about how great Japan used to be but that now “we’re doomed”. I was fed an idea throughout my childhood - a gloomy outlook for my future.

In elementary school, I spent three years in France, where I realized that Japan has a significant country brand abroad. When I would say I was from Japan, people would grow excited and want to talk to me about Pokémon, Toyota, and more.

In Japan, I was constantly told Japan would have no future, but outside Japan, that was not the sentiment at all!

I decided I wanted to leverage my bilingual skills to share what Japan does best with the rest of the world. I went into consulting on a quest to find what exactly it was that I was best at and what it was I could share globally. I earned a broader view from consulting. I intentionally switched industries after every project to gain experience in as many industries as possible. In one of those projects, I discovered my passion for agriculture.

Japan has high quality everything when it comes to produce. It is an old industry. The traditional industry is expected to come to serious struggle in the next 30-40 years since the number of farmers is dramatically declining. I decided I wanted to flip this industry and run with it. I wanted to turn it into a more delightful industry that people would have higher hopes for.

During my consulting year, I spent my evenings and weekends in school to learn about agriculture. Later on, through my consulting job, I helped various leafy green vertical farm companies try to reach profitability. 

In 2015, I came to the U.S. to earn my Master’s. This was the same time when sustainability started to become a real topic of conversation in large industries. It was also a huge drought year in California. While it was already 10 years after vertical farming had been invented in Japan, the U.S. finally started looking into it as a viable option.

Japan tried to launch the vertical farming industry too early. Electronics companies did it to showcase the capabilities of their tech, but the sustainability factor wasn’t a societal pressure yet and leafy green products weren’t differentiated enough to excite consumers.

I realized, “This is it.” It was my “Eureka!” moment. Japan had the tech and the delicious varieties of crops, and I had the knowledge and passion to, hopefully, make it succeed. I began writing and building my business plans while at Berkeley.

Iroha: How did you choose strawberries specifically?

Hiroki: Japan experienced its first boom of vertical farming in the early 2010s with leafy greens. Beyond leafy greens, crops require pollinators, and bees don’t thrive in artificial environments. As I began researching, I realized that the cost of vertical farming was dropping while the cost of conventional farming was skyrocketing. I asked myself, “How do I bridge this gap?” I decided I wanted to try to grow something that people could not only taste the quality difference in but also something that people would be willing to pay a premium for.

Next, I needed a location. I chose New York. I needed to show profitability in order to land investors. I knew that if we could master flying bees in a vertical farm, we could grow anything. Bees are flying in nature, so why can’t they thrive in a vertical farm? I had a conviction that whoever won the pollination race in vertical farming was going to be the winter.

I started taking note of produce as I went to grocery stores and thought hard about which crop I wanted to start with. I realized that in Japan, everyone could name at least a few different brands of strawberries. In the U.S., everyone could really only name one. Japan has a long history of trying to grow the best quality strawberries, which sell at a premium, so we decided to bring new and better berries to the U.S.

Iroha: Can you share your upcoming expansion goals?

Hiroki: We are currently working to bring pricing down for all our products. The demand is far more than we can keep up with producing right now. Our focus is to build more farms and capacity so we can serve more than the couple hundred stores we are serving right now. We would love to expand geographically. 

Long term, we also aim to add more products to our lineup. We launched tomatoes in New York, and they are going crazy. We want to expand that product and also add melons and other fruits and vegetables.

At the end of the day, we want a whole OISHII shelf in every single supermarket.

If you’re a foodie and you care about what you’re putting in your body, we want you to head to our shelf. We want to be the first fully global food brand, bringing premium taste at an affordable cost.

Iroha: Based on your background, do you have any advice or a message for young people who want to follow in your footsteps?

Hiroki: I find that our young employees have high aspirations of being a part of a global startup on the business side. They all are as passionate as us founders. We want to be the Apple of agriculture. The engineers don’t really care about strawberries, but they are interested in the questions like: How do we reinvent a whole industry? How do we solve the problem of creating an indoor environment in which bees can thrive? Curiosity drives them.

Traditionally, people would grow certain things in their specific climates. With vertical farming, you can bring the best of what Japan has to the rest of Japan, even if that crop usually would not grow in this location – and that can be expanded around the world! I feel that I am on my way to where I need to be, but also that I am in no position to give advice. I might fail tomorrow.

I guess one thing I probably have going for me is that if I see an opportunity, I act on it immediately. I used my time during my two years of study for my MBA to really search for my passion and constantly self-assess and self-reflect. I have spent my career seeking my passion. I do not feel I have ever wasted one minute.

I am just an ordinary person. I am not a genius. I am not a born leader. The amount of times I have stood in the batter’s box is just a thousand times more often than others and that’s what has seemingly created more opportunity for me. So seek out and take every chance and opportunity. The more opportunities you create and take, the more chances you have of something being successful.

Iroha: Did you intentionally seek out your passion with the intention of starting a new business?

Hiroki: No. I just wanted to find my passion. I realized that the only thing I am good at is being bilingual. So I started thinking about bridging Japan and the U.S. I went through 20-30 industries. I thought I’d work under someone to bring their idea to the rest of the world, but then I became an entrepreneur.

Iroha: Tell me about your investors.

Hiroki: We have raised over $200 million. Most of our investors are from Japan right now, but previously the balance was 50/50 between the U.S. and Japan.

Iroha: That is very impressive for a startup. It is a huge milestone and accomplishment. How do you feel about that?

Hiroki: When I realized there was this opportunity, I felt like all the arrows were pointing at me. I just happened to be at the frontier of vertical farming in Japan. I moved to the U.S. and thought it was a better market and realized, “This has to be the moment.” I did not know if I was a capable founder, but it didn’t matter. This was the opportunity I was waiting for.

Every single person I told in 2015 at Berkeley said this was a terrible idea. I was a first-time founder. I was a foreigner. They said agriculture takes too long. It was hard. The person I looked up to most taught entrepreneurship at Berkeley, and he told me he would absolutely back a good idea and introduce students to investors and his contacts, but that my idea was not going to work and was destined to fail. He told me I would be better off going to work for Google and calling it a day.

This is why I don’t give advice. I never want to give advice and be wrong. When there is something that you know better than other people and you find yourself in the right place at the right time, you feel it. You have to snatch the opportunity with both hands.

If I was five years earlier or five years later, this wouldn’t have worked. You must seize the opportunity at the right moment. There are chances and opportunities everywhere; if you do not think so, you are just letting them pass you by.

I think many people are much smarter or more capable than me. If I were them, I’d think, “How can I conquer this world?” But most are not doing anything. If you are not afraid of opportunity, then you can absolutely succeed and thrive. Just have courage.

Iroha:  Have you ever had any experiences with Asian Hate and/or the Asian Glass Ceiling?

Hiroki: I definitely think so looking back, but I never really thought about it at the time. I knew in general about things like that going on, and I guess I just never really felt like it was a big deal since it was the norm.

I like to look at facts. Such as, in my niche, there are dozens of vertical farm startups, and the top five are all led/founded by a white guy who got his MBA at an Ivy League or Stanford. They have all raised their money from similar types of funds. Because of my background, it is difficult for me to connect with those investors. It is easier for me to talk to and connect with Japanese investors. I find that investors in the U.S. often judge you based on who you know. My co-founder is a white male from Georgetown, and he helped a lot in gaining U.S. investors. He took on a lot of that burden from me. Meanwhile, I can connect and impress Japanese investors. It is what it is. I am a foreigner, and I knew about this going in. It exists, but I just think, “What am I going to do about it?” I've had to accept that I am moving forward with a handicap, and push on.

 

Iroha: What other opportunities did you think about besides vertical farming when you were starting out?

Hiroki: At Berkeley, I felt I should try to start a company. One thing I learned along the way is that if your passion and what you’re good at don’t intersect, you probably won’t survive. Either you were bad at it or the grit/love/passion wasn’t there. I spent a long time identifying what I am good at and what my passion is. Testing, failing, testing, failing, until I found the intersection. I was good at vertical farming. I found passion in that work. And the timing was right. That was an important factor too.

I did not really consider other options. I thought about a startup in data services, and I still think it’s a good idea, but there is definitely someone else who knows more about that space than me – and has a passion for it. Without passion, what would I get out of it? The best I could think was to eventually cash out, and I am not attracted to money at all. If I start using my time to optimize for money, then I would waste my life.

Life is short. You only get to do it once. The whole point of life is that when you are on your deathbed you can look back and feel content and happy with what you did with your time. I do not want to be on my deathbed wondering why I used my time for data collection. I would personally think of it as a life wasted. I just isn’t for me. I think life is all about the adrenaline and living every moment happy. If I die tomorrow, I would feel I lived a pretty good life. I wouldn’t have gotten this level of excitement from anything else. In Japanese, we call this “Ikegai”, a passion that brings value and joy to life. I found mine in vertical farming.

Iroha: Outside of work, what are you most interested in right now?

Hiroki: This question tortures me every time. I used to love to scuba dive, ski, and play soccer. I used to travel and backpack everywhere I could go. After starting this company though, nothing else excites me like this. I would genuinely rather keep thinking about this company than almost anything else – besides my family. I really love my time with my kids. I can’t walk away from them, and I enjoy spending time with them outside of work. It is great that they are being raised in a diverse environment and that they are American with Japanese heritage and culture alongside that. 

written by Jessica Woolsey 

 

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