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NWA Founders is a voice for Founders, Owners, and Builders driving growth in Northwest Arkansas, and is hosted by Cameron Clark and Nick Beyer.
'NWA Founders' is a voice for Founders, Owners, and Builders driving growth in Northwest Arkansas, and is hosted by Cameron Clark and Nick Beyer.
To recommend a guest or ask questions, reach out at nwafounders@gmail.com and follow us on YouTube and LinkedIn for video content.
Cameron Clark: Good morning, Carter.
Carter Malloy: Morning.
Cameron Clark: Uh, thanks for coming on. We're sitting down in your office here in downtown Fayetteville. Yeah, right in the corner of the square. How long have you all been here now?
Carter Malloy: Three years in this spot. So we've been on the square for most of our lives, uh, with the exception of a tiny period we were on top of Bordino's on Dixon Street.
Cameron Clark: Yeah, yeah, but, but in, in the heart of Fayetteville. Absolutely. So before we dive in, give everybody a 30 second overview. What is AcreTrader and what is Acres? Yeah, just so everyone knows who may not be aware.
Carter Malloy: AcreTrader is a farmland investing platform we've been working on for the past seven years here.
Inside of that, we built a data and mapping platform called Acres. com. Uh, so we have two separate businesses in house here.
Cameron Clark: Tell us your story. Let's start from the very beginning before we dive into the business. You're from Arkansas, correct? I am. And was it Stuttgart where you're from too?
Carter Malloy: That's right.
I was born in Stuttgart and then grew up. My parents were separated so I grew up in Little Rock and then going to Stuttgart on the weekends often.
Cameron Clark: Okay. Is that, I assume that's where the inspiration for Farmland began. It's
Carter Malloy: been a big part of me my whole life, right? Just being around there and being out in the country, in the Delta.
Cameron Clark: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Were you always an entrepreneur, kind of, you know, through middle school, high school, going to college?
Carter Malloy: Yeah, I think so. My mom was. My stepdad, or I call him my dad as well, was also an entrepreneur. So that was, uh, you know, quite a volatile, Uh, financial thing for our family and, uh, not always in a great kind of way.
Uh, and then my, my real dad, uh, is, is a, uh, doctor, a practicing doctor. So had a little bit of both like this sort of stable science dad and then the wild entrepreneur dad. Uh, so I was lucky to, to grow up with, you know, with two families actually.
Cameron Clark: And so what does your mom and stepdad do? Different businesses throughout the years or
Carter Malloy: different businesses throughout the years, uh, everything from my stepdad did, uh, uh, banking and oil and gas exploration.
He's a geologist by trade. My mom was in the candy business primarily and then some real estate. So, uh, all kinds of fun stuff throughout the house.
Cameron Clark: Wow. And so, did you go to high school in Little Rock? I did, I went to Central. Okay, went to Central. And then from there, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles of Arkansas?
That's right. Were there any businesses you started kind of high school into college there?
Carter Malloy: There, there were. So, did plenty on the side in, in high school and college. My parents were always a fan of Uh, us needing to work as, as kids, so. Yeah. And whether it was working in restaurants or actually going and, and trying to start businesses.
And then at the end of college, I started three businesses. Two were absolute disasters. Uh, one was a medium success, I guess, so. Generally around automotive stuff, I was studying physics in school, but I was a traveling musician.
Okay.
Carter Malloy: And we fixed up our van to run on grease, like used vegetable oil. And we found out like, oh, this is like a great way to save money.
And so we're like, well, let's turn it into a business. So the bass player and I started this business. We ran for a few years. Uh, doing just that, just converting old, or new as well, trucks, uh, diesel cars to run on vegetable oil.
Cameron Clark: And how far, I mean, were you going the same amount of mileage you would on, on gasoline?
Carter Malloy: That's right. It's pretty crazy. Uh, so, uh, diesel and vegetable oil have very similar cetane, butane characteristics, but the viscosity is quite different. Uh huh. So you need to either Make the vegetable oil thin to make it biodiesel with chemicals primarily glycerin or you can heat it up and by heating it up It makes it, you know, silky smooth and more like a liquid So we didn't install these secondary fuel systems that basically would heat up vegetable oil and then pump it straight into your your block Wow
Cameron Clark: So what yeah, I guess what kept that from From going there, was it just, just too complicated trying to get?
Carter Malloy: No, you know, it was, it was, we made a living on it, but like I came home every night, you know, covered in diesel fuel with my, my now wife. It's just like, you smell awful. You can't wash off your skin. It was, uh, it was quite an adventure. And we, both my friend and I moved to Little Rock in 06, and I had a weird chance interview to go work at Stevens.
And ultimately, I knew I had a real passion for business and business building. And my thesis at the time was, I'm going to go learn, I'm going to go study businesses so I can then build a better business. And strapped on a necktie and thought I would do that for a couple of years and ended up spending seven years there and then five years on the West Coast at a long, short equity hedge fund.
So a dozen years of studying businesses that was invaluable and incredible.
Cameron Clark: Yeah, so what would you tell someone who's maybe at that point right there before you dive into Stevens, um, to do that yes or no, you know, if you're thinking about if you see yourself as an entrepreneur, kind of early age, like, like you did, um, would you recommend doing that path or, or not?
And, um.
Carter Malloy: You know what? I don't know. It's always like what, what you are going to make of it. And I found the opportunity to be incredibly helpful just because I, uh, like digging. I like research. I like, I'm an analyst by, by, at heart, right? I really, really like the idea of going in and studying new things all the time.
And so that really appealed to me and, and I think because that's natural to me, I was able to be at least decent at, at that job. But it certainly needs to be a characteristic of the person if you want to go succeed in that.
Cameron Clark: Where did that come from? Is that, have you always, always been a learner in that way?
Always been very data intrigued?
Carter Malloy: Yeah, you know, my, I was referring to my Uh, stepdad earlier. I call him dad. It's confusing because I have two of them. He, uh, you know, he's, he's, he's 90. He's, he's an old man. Wow. Um, married my mom and, and he was much older than her when I was, when I was a tiny baby. And, and he's always said, he is like, I've lived a, a really full and adventurous life because I'm curious.
I'm, I'm lucky to be curious. And I think that was just a big part of our household growing up, was just like, and frankly, like, it's not necessarily about academics. It's about going and learning the things you wanna learn. It doesn't matter how bizarre or, or off color or what, you know, if you want to go be a Dungeons and Dragons freak, like just go get really good at it and go, go dig in and go have fun.
Sorry, not freak, uh, uh, but a Dungeons and Dragons person, right? Like, and, and, uh, I always, uh, I think appreciate that mentality and perhaps that's nurture in nature. I'm not, I'm not quite sure.
Cameron Clark: Wow. And it sounds like that's kind of the mentality you have with your family. Yeah. Just stay curious.
Carter Malloy: Yeah, like, I think the, the thing that my parents, you know, I've gotten plenty wrong as a parent.
My parents got plenty wrong. One thing they got very right as a kid was keeping the screen off. And I think that in our household we feel the same about me personally, but also around our children is just like no screens and very, very intensely. So, uh, you know, we'll have a movie on the weekends, but.
We're not like complete Luddites, but, but, but the idea is just like, if you allow yourself to be bored, then you immediately start to go find new creative things to do and different pursuits to go after.
Cameron Clark: Not enough people are bored. So talk about maybe your time at Stevens. What were some of the valuable things maybe you learned during that process?
Carter Malloy: So I had a really great mentor and boss there, actually, actually a couple of them while I, while I worked there. And that company was really good about giving folks autonomy and letting, letting us each sort of build your own small business inside your own practice, if you will, inside of Stevens. Oh, wow.
I was in the research department there, so I, I learned excel really well. I, I've had a knack for that. I've math's been a thing I've always enjoyed, so it's like simple math with a computer does it for you. And so learning and, you know, diving in to learn how to build macros and visual basic and, and really, uh, nerding out Excel was a, was a, a fun thing to me.
Wow. Uh. I went from a really bad writer to an almost passable in grammar. I'm still not great, still to this day, but it was a really great training ground for me to do those things and then to learn the muscle of being an analyst. The thing that became really apparent there is, in the research process of studying a business, or really anything, it's like, all right, here's the primary outline, the things that we all understand, and there's a couple things over there that are confusing and weird, and I'm not going to look at those things, because it's going to be too much trouble.
And over time learning, and especially as I became a short seller, learning like, those are actually the things you need to spend all of your time on. The things that most people pass by because they're, they're footnotes or they're not necessarily important. Uh, everybody already understands the big story, going and digging on the, the hard thing or the weird, confusing, uh, uh, options set up around the equity, whatever that may be.
Uh, it tends to be where the alpha, where the outperformance is in public markets, but, but more generally speaking, uh, the fun thing, right? You get to go learn the thing that most people aren't paying attention to.
Cameron Clark: And it may give you the competitive edge. You know, over somebody else or just help you win
Carter Malloy: that.
That's right.
Cameron Clark: Yeah. So leaving Stevens and then going to Bay Area, what was, what were you going to do and what was the purpose of the move out there?
Carter Malloy: So I had some friends that were in a very large, uh, hedge fund out there and they were going to leave to start their own. And so I went to go join them.
This is in 2013. So my wife and I moved out there, it was just like, hey, let's go have some adventure. Frankly, we always knew we were going to come back to Fayetteville. We met here the first night of college, and it's just a place near and dear to us. So, hey, let's go have some adventures, then hopefully someday we can have a family and go to Fayetteville.
Actually got that part right, a lot of misses along the way. It took us a dozen years to get back, we thought it would only be like a couple.
Yeah.
Carter Malloy: But, uh, been here for seven now almost, not leaving.
Yeah.
Carter Malloy: Unless you guys kick me out.
Cameron Clark: No, don't plan on it. So, uh, help them start that hedge fund out there. Tell me again, how many years were you in San Francisco?
Carter Malloy: We were there for five years.
Cameron Clark: Okay.
Carter Malloy: And my, my role was primarily as a short seller. So the fund was deep dive fundamental analysis. Of, uh, medium and larger sized public companies.
Okay. And
Carter Malloy: so while I, I would always have a, a long investment or two, and we, again, we think about a concentrated book. We had a a billion dollar, uh, book, and, you know, we would have positions of 50 to a hundred million dollars in individual names.
So you better get it right, right? It's a really, really intense deep dive study of the company, of its, of its leadership, and its culture, of its outlook, et cetera. And so I, I had long positions, uh, usually in, in, uh, consumer retail technology here in the U. S. and in Europe. But, uh, most, spent most of my time doing the opposite, which is going and finding companies.
where they were covering things up or where there were real issues and, and, uh, betting against the, the bad players in the market.
Cameron Clark: Okay. And for someone who's not, maybe not familiar with that world, uh, the timeline of a short seller, what's that?
Carter Malloy: Yeah, so, um, our long, our average duration on our longs were multi year.
Our average duration on our shorts was like six to nine months, which is a really long time for, for a short. But again, we were, we were very, very fundamental in our analysis, so this was not about trading so much as it was about like, Hey, we, we've identified a big picture trend or a big picture. Problem or or lie right and so we're gonna actually go in and lean against this because we think that this this equity value will correct Yeah, see seeing through it Trying to we gotta you know, you can get you can be very very wrong in that world Yeah, right a stock can go up infinite.
You can only go down 100 percent right? So your risk reward is really It can be very dangerous in the world of short selling.
Cameron Clark: How
Nick Beyer: was the fund's performance while you were there? We
Carter Malloy: were always proud in particular of the alpha we were able to generate on the short side. That is a muscle that is not as well tuned.
And there was a leader in the fund that had a really great history of that. I had spent a lot of time on the sell side of Stevens as well. Uh, it's, it's really rewarding, uh, in, in those moments to, and we all want to be right. Like I'm a stubborn person. It feels good to get, to be right sometimes. And those are really rewarding moments when you're like, up against a lot of, a lot of folks, and you've actually identified something that folks may be overlook, overlooking.
Cameron Clark: Hmm. And so when was the cue? Hey, it's, it's time to come back.
Carter Malloy: So, you know, I, I said the thing a moment ago about like, always look at the, the thing over on the side and pay attention to it. I utterly failed to do that in the world of farmland, right? Yeah. So I spent my life around it. I had been, I, uh, begun buying and selling and had a real interest in investing in farmland.
Uh, at, at Stevens and then on the West coast when it was actively doing so. And yet like I just dumbly, like never zoomed out, right. It was always like a, a me thing. And it's like, Oh, I'm going to go trade farmland. It's this completely idiosyncratic wild asset class that there's very few people playing in and it's totally opaque.
So there's opportunity to create real upside. And I, and I like view that from my own personal investing lens rather than like, it's embarrassing, like, but I, I didn't zoom out and say like, hang on. I'm like, Other people would like to do this as well until friends began asking me that and then, and then frankly, my, my dad I was referring to earlier was just like, Hey, why don't we, uh, if we want to have other people invest in Parliament, why don't we like, uh, create a token?
And I was like, you idiot. Those are a fad. This is like, you know, 2016, right? Those are a fad. That's dumb. And then, uh, he's like, well, I'm thinking about investing in Bitcoin. And I called him an idiot. Uh, you know, again, like. Don't take investment advice from me when it comes to crypto. Lesson number one of the day.
Um, but, but that idea really dug at me. Like, can, can we make this an approachable asset class? Because for, for most people, buying farmland is just a non starter. You gotta go out to a place you've never been, put down a huge amount of capital. Probably through some broker you've never met, an accountant you've never been to, and now you get to manage a farm.
And like, that's just not a muscle that folks have front to back. And
Cameron Clark: were you, how were you doing it before? I mean, were you going out and buying these farms? Yes.
Carter Malloy: I had an interest of like, I like to hunt. I, you know. Sure. Like, uh, the world of agriculture. And so it just, it was really a fascinating investment opportunity for me.
And then ultimately zooming out and realizing, hang on, there are new, uh, there were new securities laws and securities exemptions that come about via the JOBS Act. In 2012 and put in place thereafter, and that allowed you to basically go do an IPO for really small assets. So doing an IPO used to be a six figure consideration.
Hey, I want to take my company public. I'm going to have to go spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal and filing fees. to get that, uh, up and into the wild. And these new regulations, um, allowed you to go do that at a very small level and cost dramatically, dramatically less money so you could do it with smaller assets.
So that was the, the genesis of, of this idea of fractional investing that has, uh, since grown quite a bit in popularity. of taking large assets, put it in a unique LLC. So in our case, farmland, but people are doing it with art, with real estate investments, whatever that may be. Take it, put it in a unique company, basically, then divide it into units or shares and allow folks to buy into it.
Cameron Clark: And, uh, And so you and your, you and your dad are talking at the time you're still in San Francisco, or have you already, as soon as that idea happened, did you immediately move back or what?
Carter Malloy: I did not. I, I spent a better part of a year, you know, ruminating ki kicking it around, uh, working with attorneys to make sure this was actually feasible from a legal standpoint.
Sure. And then scoping the technology side when, you know, new from the beginning, like this needed to be scalable business. So we've gotta build our own, uh, financial technology or fi, FinTech mm-hmm . Platform underneath it to operate it.
Cameron Clark: And, and did you, were you the ones who was building that at the time or did you have friends or colleagues that were helping you build the software kind of on the side maybe as you were at the hedge fund?
Carter Malloy: That's correct. I, I, uh, I know nothing about actual, you know, Python and front end code. Yeah. So I love product. I really love. Going to websites and interacting with, with them and trying to understand mechanically how they work. Uh, but, but not at a code level. And so I spent, I just created a sheet. I'm like, all right, I'm gonna go put my favorite 100 FinTech companies on here.
Ones that I think, you know, I, I knew like 26, so I had to go do real research. Put together a list of all the ones that I thought had interesting technology, boil that down to the 20 where it's like, hey, these work really well and they're like,
And one of them was a guy named Vlad that we, you know, sat down with him and scoped out, Hey, this is sort of what I'm trying to build. And he's like, yeah, that's ridiculous. It's going to take a lot of time and money. It's way harder than you think. It was way worse than what he said, by the way. But ultimately, after speaking with Vlad, it's like, all right, this is approachable, and this is reasonable to do.
What this would actually take to, to get off the ground.
Nick Beyer: Wow. This isn't Robin Hood Vlad to be clear. No, it's not Robin Hood. Okay. That'd be funny.
Carter Malloy: Um, no, again, again, I thought he was an idiot, right?
Crypto. It's so dumb. Yeah.
Cameron Clark: Yeah. Well, and we'll get, we'll get there. But just, you know, I've, I have the Acres app and I've been looking at the website.
It's definitely evident that you were very intentional about the technology from the beginning.
Nick Beyer: Um, but uh, sorry,
Cameron Clark: go on.
Nick Beyer: No, I just, I think kind of hearing you speak, even to the analyst part you spoke to earlier, I think a lot of people maybe graduating from school start in an analyst job and it's almost like a, not derogatory, but it's very entry level to use the word analyst.
And you're sitting here saying you're at the Sedge Fund and you're You're analyzing 26 companies and that's the thesis for like what you're going to start. So I think there's some power in like, no analysis and being an analyst is actually one of the most powerful tools, um, to find a solution and a need to a problem in the marketplace.
So.
Carter Malloy: Yeah. You know, I, I, in, in inside of business, there's this idea of being strategic and being tactical, right? And strategic is like, I have this vision, I have these ideas, and here's how I'm gonna design the flows within the business and the process in the business. And then tactical is like rolling your sleeves up and getting in there and doing the work.
I tend to default to, to tactical and, and sometimes that's a, a real weakness within our company. Um, but I, I do believe that. Diving in, understanding the details, going in, like, actually working in Excel yourself, going in and actually reading the documents yourself, uh, is important to build that foundational understanding of, you know, how you're going to ultimately attack your larger strategic goals.
Cameron Clark: Um, so talk about making the jump, um, moving, launching the software, did you raise money from out the gate when you're building the software? Talk about that time frame.
Carter Malloy: Yeah, so the, the jump from Arkansas to San Francisco was great. Pretty daunting. 'cause the, the, the fund at that point as well was a startup, right?
We, we didn't, uh, have, have real assets and then coming, coming back and starting a business, you know, and, and like frankly, over a dozen years studying businesses, it was always like, that looks like it's probably a lot harder than, than I think it is as an outside analyst. What are your incremental EBITDA margins?
It's like, no, those are humans. You know? This is, this is not a, uh, this is not math and paper. I, I, I could not have possibly ever understood how actually difficult it was. Right? Yeah. Until you, until you get in the trenches. And it's just, my goodness, it's overwhelming, uh, the amount of difficulty in, in revving up a startup.
So, uh, I'm sorry, I'm a little off track. It, was it scary? Yeah. Yeah. Like, I, I, you know, left a job and it was my dream job. I, I loved the job, I loved the people I worked with. Uh, but I, I had this like. I had a burning desire to build something and I finally had an idea. I built, you know, backstory, I'd built a dozen business ideas over the years and four or five of those came, like I actually built out a full business plan, slide deck of what I wanted to do and did not pursue any of them.
And this was the one where it's like, this makes sense. I can't find the big holes. I'd have my friends and other short sellers challenge it. Like how am I going to fail and decided to pull the ripcord. So, uh, that, that moment though was still pretty, pretty scary.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Carter Malloy: Hopping over
Cameron Clark: and,
Carter Malloy: uh,
Cameron Clark: Was it just you from its inception?
Carter Malloy: It, it was, yes. You, you had asked about, uh, raising capital. It was, it was me initially, and I, I, uh, it saved up and so I self-funded the business for the first year and, and hiring the, the technology teams. We had a squad of five or six folks, uh, that I, I worked with. They were actually initially a Ukrainian based, uh, team.
Oh, wow. And then began to add some folks here in, in Fayetteville. It was really, really hard to find technology talent here initially. So they would jump on with like, you know, one crazy guy in an office above Bordino's. Uh, but found some really great operational folks in, uh, marketing and legal. Some of which I've, you know, all of which I'm close friends with still today after six years.
Cameron Clark: Yeah. And so once the, just to make sure we understand the timeline, did you move and then start the platform or were you operating it for a little while out of San Francisco? And then kind of got the office here?
Carter Malloy: Moved and then started. So I actually transitioned out of the fund. I managed the positions I had through.
Most of that year.
Uh,
Carter Malloy: so ramped that down. Let me rephrase it, ramped that down and then ramped up the, uh, the acre trader business.
Nick Beyer: That's roughly 2017. You're kind of exiting the hedge fund 2018 is we'll call it the inception of acre trader. That's, that's roughly it. And farmland. I mean, you're coming from where you're coming from the investment world, like.
The returns historically on farmland, we'll call it the alpha, as you, as you cited earlier, is, has been historically lower. Is that correct?
Carter Malloy: So this was the, the fascinating thing, right? It's like I was in there investing in farms and like making returns. I was proud of, but like I, I failed to recognize that, like, actually as an asset class, it had been performing pretty well.
And so zooming out on the asset class and, and beginning to do research in that. Far too late after I was already like, you know, well invested in playing with it myself, it's like, Oh, I am not actually that smart. It's just that this asset is relatively super interesting. So, uh, those historical turn returns have looked like 11 or 12 percent a year, but with far less volatility, uh, or variability in asset price than you see.
And lots of public markets. So it was a little more of a consistent compounder. It was not a get rich quick scheme and it never has been, never will be. Um, but, but it was really attractive as something that was, could play as a hedge against other asset classes was relatively isolated in its performance.
And, and, uh, Uh, ultimately was, was, had been performing really well historically. So it's actually a pretty fascinating asset class to dig into and one that is worth checking out.
Nick Beyer: Yeah. And I think that's one of the, that was one of the most fascinating things on, on the website, on, on your acre trader website was seeing your charts from 1990, but seeing how the asset class has performed since 1990 versus gold.
Crypto, commercial real estate, bonds, whatever, S& P 500. And I think that's the question a lot of investors would have, right? It's like, well, cool, you know, land, that's great. But like, how does it compare to other asset classes? And I think y'all have done a great job of highlighting that.
Carter Malloy: You know, the 1990 thing is an interesting call out.
Um, that is as far back as we have good data, which is crazy. This is a multi trillion dollar asset class. And, and that's really what we'll get into acres. com and, uh, the exciting story there in a moment. But that's really what, what drove. Usbuildingacres. com just like there, there's no information about this, uh, what is physically the largest asset in the, in the U S uh, but, but quite literally a 4 trillion market, just farmland, right?
Before we talk about recreational ground or timberland, uh, it's just, it's, it's like staggeringly large and yet. So few people have been paying attention to it.
Nick Beyer: What changed in 1990? What data existed or exist, you know, didn't exist before that?
Carter Malloy: One group of smart institutional investors got together and, uh, worked with a, uh, a third party to, to validate and begin to verify the investment returns on farmland.
So, uh, before that, there's some rough USDA data out there that shows just the. The asset price itself, but, uh, that ignores the fact that there's also yield, there's cash, you know, just like a, if you own a building, right, you can, you can earn money from that building appreciating in value and you can earn money from rent coming out of that building, same as true with farmland.
Nick Beyer: So let's double click into farmland because I don't think a ton of people know about it. You're, you're getting into your 2018, like how, how has farmland changed since then? I mean, you said, you know, farmer leases, that kind of stuff. At that time, I assume primarily it was just institutional money in farmland.
Y'all were really the ones kind of spearheading the democratization of it. So talk about how it's changed since 2018.
Carter Malloy: Yeah, we've, we've seen And we can look at Google Trends and just see like general consumer and public interest in farmland. It's grown a ton. The number of institutional funds have grown, I don't know, by like an order of magnitude almost.
So there is a real increase in attention to farmland. Bill Gates bought a bunch of farmland and the world saw that. You know, Omar Gurner, he's going to come take our land, uh, like, he owns, first of all, he is the largest farmland owner in the United States. He owns eight basis points, roughly. So, 0. 08 percent of U.
S. farmland. Uh, but when you see the numbers, it's staggering because it's a lot of farmland. We're like, you know, we're getting into the billions of dollars here. Uh, but on a relative basis, we have so, we're so fortunate in the U. S. to have so much farmland. Uh, so, so that trend is still very, very early. And in our opinion, you know, we are one or 2 percent maybe institutional ownership, um, and investors owning farmland and compare that to just about any other asset class, like whether it's malls or commercial buildings or office buildings or, you know, the, uh, uh, rentals across the street and, you know, you're 20, 40, 80 percent institutionally owned.
So, so that's, that's a trend, certainly that's. We feel still very early.
Nick Beyer: And as you're kind of diagnosing the problem of farmland, like farmland, you used, did you use the word beta earlier, right? Which is, you were talking about volatility, which is beta. The beta is lower in farmland investments. So, in general, it's a more safe or secure investment for listeners to kind of understand.
Carter Malloy: Yeah, so generally speaking, that's right. We, we historically have seen farmland swing in values less so than other asset classes, and also not show any real correlation. So often when one asset class moves, it moves in other ones. Your correlation between the two, it's just a, uh, fairly obvious and common thing.
And that does not Really occur that we can find with major asset classes relative to to farmland, but I also want to want to tap on this theme of and I think the immediate question is like when you said the problem statement, like, well, why, why is this good for for the farmers? Why is this good for America to have?
more capital coming into farmland, first of all. Investment going into rural America is a thing that we are a big fan of. A lot of folks would consider us rural here in northwest Arkansas, not having seen the region. We love the idea of capital flows into rural America. And what we do as a company is work with farmers.
So where most of the farms that we originate come from is the farmers themselves. So to back up a little bit, like Oh, this money is coming in and buying farmland. How is that a good thing? Uh, first of all, that has always occurred, farm, about not quite half of farmland in the U. S. is rented out already.
Think about this from the farmer's perspective, right? Like, I have a business called farming, I have employees, I have, uh, equipment, very expensive equipment, and I have all of my money tied up in this asset that is the land. Uh, that farmer has economies of scale, right? If you have that combine, you can use it across more and more acreage.
Most good farmers, uh, are in growth mode or want to be in growth mode. They want to go grow their acreage, but like, it would be absurd to say most farmers can buy the, the tract that comes up for sale for 2 million. And so what we do is go in and partner with that farmer and say, hey, we'll put up some cash.
Sometimes they put cash in as well. And we'll go buy that farm and we'll work on this together and get an agreement up front that allows that farmer to expand their business.
Nick Beyer: And prior to y'all, farmers would really just expand through leasing more ground, right?
Carter Malloy: Correct. So, the way often is the farmer would have to find a rich person, you know, and that's not always available, to say the least.
But the lucky farmer would find a rich person who would go and buy farmland alongside them. And so, what we have done is sort of professionalize that, if you will, alongside that farmer where It's a far more equitable, far more repeatable process throughout the United States to help a farmer grow their business.
It's awesome. I
Nick Beyer: mean, it, it's clear in hindsight, looking back, it was a problem, but it's even, it's even clearer now that like y'all have made strong progress accomplishing that. So kind of going back to inception, I think we've really talked through the asset class, talked through the problem that acre trader solving from inception in 2018.
You talked about self funding it for a year and you kind of get to the end of that year and you're like, okay, there's, there's a business here. There's money flowing in. I can see, I can see the problem solved and the market rewarding it for us. I need to raise money or just walk us through. Okay, you're, you're, you're at the kind of year of self funding.
What happens next?
Carter Malloy: So. It was apparent from the beginning that if we want to scale this business quickly, outside growth capital is going to really help us, right? To go and build the technology we truly need to have a scalable business, to go do the marketing and build out the operations to run the company.
So in 2019, so yeah, I'd gotten the dates wrong earlier a little bit. 18 was the transition year, so 17 and a lot of 18. 2019 we raised a pre seed round of investment. And the, the general approach to, to the market. Like what, what investors wanna see. I, if I'm, if I'm to like overly simplify and bastardize mm-hmm
Mm-hmm . Their, their view. Right. One is they wanna see, uh, a big market, right? So they wanna see a large market opportunity, like check. Yep. Two is they wanna see product market fit, meaning that they wanna see that you've built a product. That has some demand, right? Some that people will actually become customers of.
So we've got the addressable market, we've got a product that, that goes into that market. And then the third, and especially in the early stages, perhaps most important thing is team, they wanna see that you, that, uh, your team, the folks working around you are really good. And if there is one thing that we have gotten right since day one.
If we've, we've gotten a lot wrong. I'm sure we'll have plenty of opportunities to talk about that today. Uh, the one thing we have consistently gotten right is team. We've been very, very intentional about our, what we would refer to as talent density. And the idea of working with incredibly, incredibly talented people has been something that's driven me since day one, and it's the reason that I still come to work.
Uh, every day, and the reason I come to work excited, because I get to work with absolutely brilliant, driven, curious, creative, interesting, frankly, like, often really weird people that I love. And it is, it is a lot of fun. How did you do that? By being really, really careful in hiring, right? Like, I think that, That's the first part of the second is by being very aggressive in firing as well and and that part really sucks and it's something that I we do well, it's something we we find to be really important I'm starting backwards.
I'll start from the negative right?
Yeah
Carter Malloy: in letting people go if we fire somebody usually we've made a mistake We didn't appropriately underwrite the position or the person, but it's usually that combination, right? This person's great, like, they've been through the interview process, we like them, but we put them in the wrong role.
Or we set them up in the wrong way, or we didn't give them the appropriate training. So I feel incredibly strongly that any time you let somebody go, you let them go with their dignity. Because you've made a mistake. And so we take that very seriously. Uh, I, I, I won't go deep in the tactical details, but I think that's a really important thing for us.
But, but really, really try to avoid that. And, and by the way, we do that very quickly. We don't have performance improvement plans. We don't spend a lot of time. It's like, hey, this isn't working right now today. I'd rather give you a lump sum of cash and allow you to spend this time finding an appropriate job.
But we really try to avoid that. By hiring on the front end, very, very, very cautiously. So we have like a really annoyingly long interview process. I find that most companies are like, hi, nice to meet you. A few hours later, let's get married. And this is like, this is not the cast system, or this is not the 1930s.
It's like, let's take our time here. And let's make sure that there's real love here. And so we want to, and I can talk about that process, We want to underwrite them, and importantly, we have to give them the opportunity to like, make sure they're, this is what they want. This is, you know, we would, we would, uh, hope to say this is not a normal place to work.
And, and in mostly positive ways, but in some negative ways also. So we gotta make sure, they've gotta make sure, sorry, uh, that they, they want to be part of this because if they don't then get, again, we've made a mistake and they're not gonna wanna be here and we'll have attrition.
Nick Beyer: That's so good. And I know you, you won't dive into the tactical kind of piece here, but I'll highlight it because that's, that's what we want to do.
I'm happy to, I
Carter Malloy: was just trying to No, no,
Nick Beyer: but you're just highlighting things and, and founders here locally that we admire. And, and I know someone who exited the organization and now it was more kind of timing 2022, 2023, when the business is just a, is a tough market. And, uh, they told me that, that y'all connected them with, um, Kind of mentors in the area, helping them transition into the next job.
And I was like, I've never heard of that. And someone exiting a company like that. So thanks for doing that in the area that we live. We appreciate that.
Carter Malloy: Thanks for saying that. I have to make sure that I'm not taking all the credit for this stuff, right? Our head of HR here, Morgan, is an incredible, incredible human being, a force of nature at work, and a person who I just I can't say enough good about, and in this moment, and we can talk about this as much as we want, like, 2023 was a bad year for us.
Uh, we made lots of classic venture backed mistakes, we raised too much money, we went out and tried to do too many things at one time. I had everybody in the world tell me, Why are you doing so much at once? And like, oh, 'cause we can do it. We're smart. And that didn't work and interest rates moved against us in the business and so we had to correct.
And what that means is like riff, which is like a, a nice corporate word for layoff, like a reduction in force, a riff. And, and that means like, hey, we got ahead of ourselves, we're spending too much money. And the, the biggest experience we have is people. So of course you cut everything else first. And then we had to reduce our head count some.
And in that moment, again, we made a mistake. I made a terrible mistake. I owe these people more than just like, goodbye, have a nice day. So we did a cool thing that you're referring to, which is we inverted our HR organization from being a recruiting organization to a placement organization to work with those folks to go try to find them jobs and to make introductions.
They weren't being let go because they were bad at their jobs. They were being let go because the world turned against us and because I made mistakes. Like, we owe them that.
Nick Beyer: Yeah, we'll get into that. I think there's cycles to every business. I think us talking through that, and you have a very unique perspective being venture backed.
There's not many companies, especially your size, venture backed who've raised as much money as y'all have in the state of Arkansas. Um, that list is extremely short and I believe you're at the top. And so lots to learn from our listeners, for us, I mean, for anyone. And so we'll get to that kind of going back to the beginning.
So you said there's the TAM, the total addressable market that, that markets are looking at, or investors are looking at there's demand for the product and there's team, um. As you're early on in this, is the product that you're building, AcreTrader, you're releasing a farm, you're partnering with, kind of walk us through, for someone who hasn't used AcreTrader, hasn't invested with you, what the product is that you, you started and what it is now.
Carter Malloy: The product from the investor standpoint is very straightforward, right? Hey, you have the opportunity to invest in a farm, and rather than going and buying a million dollar farm, You have the opportunity to go and invest 000, which is still a lot of money, but it is a lot less than you would otherwise investing in a farm.
So, that investor is coming in and investing in an LLC and then owning a portion of that LLC, which owns the farm itself. So, that means that they get to participate in any income that may come off of that farm as well as any appreciation that may occur from that farm growing in value.
Nick Beyer: And is that accredited investors only at the time and is it still to this day?
Carter Malloy: That is correct. We have We've always had this dream of non accredited investors. The reality is, as a business, is it's really, really expensive to do. The regulations there are difficult, in some ways appropriately, in some ways not. I think we are excited that the accredited definitions are evolving. So accredited investor means that you either have a certain amount of money or a certain amount of income, or have taken some tests.
And the SEC is expanding the definition of those to encompass more folks. That, that should be able to, in my opinion, be able to invest in these assets, what the SEC is trying to protect. is that the reality is non liquid assets are very different. Alternative assets are very different. They tend to come with higher risk.
They tend to come with lockups in liquidity. So you put money in there, you're probably not going to get it out for five or ten years. And so the intention of these rules is to limit and make sure that folks don't make mistakes. Now, the reality is Unfortunately, or fortunately, uh, depending on your views is that that same consumer that we're protecting against investing in things like farmland can go put it all on black and, you know, triple levered ETS, which are some of the worst things in the world to invest in, um, or they can go play and play around in crypto and go gamble.
Alright. Or actually, go gamble now, right? Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so, there's something a little off here, but, but the reality is we have to work within the constraints that we have, uh, from a regulatory standpoint. So, today is accredited investors only.
Nick Beyer: Okay. So, investors can invest in, we'll call it fractional shares of farmland with you.
That was the product from inception, and called farmland is, is an extremely vague term. So, are we talking farmland where Uh, you know, wheat, soybeans, like kind of middle America. Are we talking like vineyards, almond orchards? How is the business segmented from the beginning? How's Timberland? What can investors invest in with y'all?
Carter Malloy: So you've actually nailed the three primary types of the asset there. Uh, first is what we call row crops or annual crops. That's things you're growing every year. That's the stuff when you're driving by in the car and it's, you know, it's, it's clicking by really quickly and it's really pretty and symmetrical.
Uh, so things we grow here in Arkansas in particular. Cotton, rice, sorghum, soybeans, uh, wheat, corn, right? Soybeans and corn are the majority of row crops in the United States. And there are permanent crops, so that's things that grow on trees or vines, right? So exactly, almonds, avocados, oranges, lemons, uh, uh, pistachios, grapes, whatever that may be.
And then the third type is a little bit different and walks and talks a little bit differently than those two, is timberland. And each of those three have, Slightly different performance characteristics, different risks and rewards. We tend to focus our efforts pretty intensely on the first, on the most boring of the three, frankly.
Very simple row crops.
Nick Beyer: Why?
Carter Malloy: Historical risk adjusted returns there are intriguing to us. Uh, frankly, it's just a muscle we have that we've built that we're, our teams are really good at evaluating and understanding that. And it's the large majority of the actual land. So most portfolios in the world of farmland are mostly row crop.
Nick Beyer: Okay. And you said risk adjusted returns. I mean, historically have been what for row crops? 3 to 6 percent, 5 to 10 percent, 10 percent?
Carter Malloy: 11, 10 to 12, 11 or 12 So, and that's split roughly, you know, you have appreciation that you can get from the value going up and you have rent you can attain or, you know, through either a direct rent or revenue shares with the farmer there.
Nick Beyer: And so for someone who's not in the farm world, right? You're, they're investing in a farm. We'll call it South Arkansas. It's growing, it's growing corn. We'll just be easy. It's growing corn. Everyone can understand this. Growing corn. Terrible year. Terrible year for corn. They invested 50 grand with y'all.
Um, obviously farmers have insurance, stuff like that. What is that, what does that year look like for an investor?
Carter Malloy: So, the farmer, let's, let's use the analog of a restaurant, right? Restaurants have good years and bad years. Uh, they usually pay their rent the same to the building owner. That, that can, that can roughly hold the world of farmland, so.
Commodity cycles, right, if corn is depressed for several years, that can put pressure on rental rates. Those tend to be annual contracts, unlike the restaurant that's signing a five year deal usually. So those can move around, but the rental rates tend to be far more stable than the actual net income coming off of that farm each year.
Which, which can have, you know, true boom and bust cycles. Uh, but that, that's the business of farming versus the business of land ownership. And those are not the same thing. And they, they sometimes overlap. Like, quite often the farmer also owns their land. Uh, but, but again, very often they do not.
Cameron Clark: And so coming from the commercial real estate world, the, sometimes on, on, using the analogy of a restaurant, sometimes you'll see those leases structured with a percentage of sales.
Is that, do you ever see those structures on the farm side as well? Absolutely so. Is that more common than just a straight lease?
Carter Malloy: There's, there's three types. There's cash rent, so I'm going to pay you a flat fee no matter what. Uh, there is a, a split, uh, or a revenue split basically. So, uh, let's say the farmer, you know, says 20 percent of revenue goes to the landowner.
And then there is something in between called a flex lease. Um, but yeah, it, it, there, there's various types. But again, like. The restaurant's actually a really good, uh, uh, point to make that the restaurateur, it would, it's almost weird if they own the building they're in, right? Like, almost never do they own the building.
And so. Uh, in, in, in the world of farmland, again, it's more like half half that, that they do.
Nick Beyer: Yeah. So as I'm, and I'm kind of going back to your intro here 'cause you're, you're really, it's inception, you're building the product. You've got the tam, I mean, you talked about 3 trillion. Is is the farmland kind of valuation of that sector in the, in the us.
You've got the team. I think the demand for the products there. But if I'm an investor looking at acre trader early days, I'm like, how many farms have they exited and what were their IRRs on those farms? So I imagine that was an objection, whether, whether it was in the capital and venture capital world, or as you're starting to kind of put some wins on the board and expand, can you talk about.
Exited, exited farms and the success or, or lack of those as you're trying to scale something really quickly.
Carter Malloy: Yeah, we, we have exited some farms and post it, post that on our website. But, um, generally speaking, like, like those first couple of years, it's a leap of faith, right? At the day, like the investor investing in farmland is underwriting the asset class.
They're underwriting the farm itself, and then they're underwriting us, right? Like at the end of the day, do I trust these yokels in Arkansas with my capital? So all three of those are difficult hoops, quite frankly, for any investor. So it was not easy finding early adopters. We had lots of people who said, I love this, and I want to come invest in farmland.
And then it comes down to it, and it's like, you know, actually remind me how long you've been in business? And we're like, one year. How many farms have you guys, uh, run through the platform? Two. You know, it's like, like, uh, it's, it's, uh, it's, it's difficult to, to, uh, build that trust. And, and ultimately As it is in any business, and especially early, like, trust is the thing that matters.
Yeah. Arguably more than anything else is, does your customer trust you to do right by them?
Nick Beyer: And so you didn't have that many, kind of, run through the platform early on, but could you pull on, I know you said you invested in farms on the side, or it was at the hedge fund, or while you were at Stevens, like, could you pull on any of those examples for investors to kind of showcase?
Carter Malloy: No, I think what what we would do instead is point to, and we still do point, point to the asset class as a whole and say, look, this is the historical returns of the asset class. And we as a team, uh, and more, more so the other folks that work here have experience in underwriting and, and, and buying and selling and, and understanding this asset class.
Cameron Clark: Well, it's super impressive now, and we'll, we'll get there, but like, if you look at your website now and seeing all those, um, farms that you've exited and, uh, and just seeing, I, I mean, I was looking there last night. I was like, you have a, you have a deal right now, like. 23. 3 percent IRR that like you Exeter's like, really?
It's like, it's like, that's, that's, that's crazy. Yeah. Uh, but I, obviously they're not all like, you know, not, not, not, not, not, not, not all like that, but you know, most of them were kind of in the window. You said the 10 to 12 percent range, but it was just, uh, but you know, you know, the more stories you have, then it starts to stand out.
But, uh, Yeah, that's just
Nick Beyer: cool to see.
Carter Malloy: Thank you.
Nick Beyer: Yeah. So we're in that kind of 2019 timeframe. You're, you're growing, there's a market, you're raising capital. What is it like building a novel idea? I mean, we've talked to seven founders now, all of them operating in businesses that exist, right? Coffees existed, barbecues existed, and restaurants have existed, you know, different businesses have existed.
You're trying this for not for better or worse for any of the other founders, but like you're trying to build something that doesn't exist. There are inherent things that make that really challenging. Can you talk through like some of the
Carter Malloy: emotions you were feeling? Yeah. You know, I would be remiss to overlook the fact that like.
When you say barbecue and coffee, it's not just barbecue. These are the best. The best barbecue and the best coffee. Maybe even harder is going into an existing industry and succeeding to that level and becoming literally the number one player in brisket. That's pretty big. We have the unfair advantage of competing against things that don't exist.
It's just a very different approach. It's daunting, but it's super rewarding, right? Like when you see that actually succeed, something go from, uh, from concept into fruition and like actually employing folks and then providing returns to, to investors, like, and you see this begin to work, it's incredibly, incredibly exciting.
Uh, it's, it's hard. It's just hard in different ways. And like, I can't imagine even have the, having the gumption to say, I'm going to go try to be the best barbecue chef, right? Like I'm going to go try to just truly outclass. What is an incredibly competitive field of coffee? Uh, so I got a ton of respect for those folks as well.
Nick Beyer: No, and we do too. I think what we're trying to highlight is like, there's just inherent, there's differences in trying to build something new versus what they're doing. I think you captured it really well. Like, they have had to compete. Tooth and nail with businesses who've probably been, I mean, you talk about rides starting in 2018.
They've, they're competing against people who've been doing barbecue for 40 years. Yeah. And in seven years, they're the best in Northwest Arkansas. That's unbelievable. Um, so I think what we're trying to highlight is like a new idea. What are the, like, how is that different? What, what different challenges are you, are you up against?
Carter Malloy: Yeah, it's, uh, one is, I'll go to the negative side, others copying it. Uh, we, we had competitors stand up the same business model, uh, go and literally copy and paste things from our website, including our, like, mission and vision, and put them on their websites. And then go tell people, like, this is a get rich quick scheme, basically.
Like, you are going to get rich quick. And we've seen a lot of that die down, which is great over time. But that actually became really, really difficult for us to have other folks, you know, so when you're in this world of novel businesses, if you will, other folks can tell a different story. And, uh, if you're willing, and many people are, to tell stories, stories, uh, that's hard to compete against, right?
I, I'm, I, going up against somebody that's willing to, to over promise and under deliver when, when we're trying to do the opposite, uh, becomes really difficult in that moment to compete effectively. Compete, yeah.
Nick Beyer: That's Yeah, that's a great learning for someone who's out there trying to come up with a new idea or run hard against something that isn't in the market, that's a great watch out.
So,
Carter Malloy: yeah, it was, um, we were invested at the fund in, in tractor supply and, uh, uh, it was a position I maintained and loved working on and they had this like. An incredible, uh, president, a divisional president there, and ultimately the president of the company. And he would always say, he's like, they've won, right?
They've just crushed it, the whole farm supply store concept. But they never, ever slowed down. It's just like had this intensity about how they ran their business. And his quote was always, run like you're being chased. And that for us early on was really important because it was amazing how quickly we were being chased.
And that is Uh, very true in the world of AcreTrader. That is very true in the world of Acres. com.
Uh,
Carter Malloy: is that, you know, we may have a success one week, but like, you can be assured that somebody else is gonna come, uh, come compete against you effectively. And they're not bad, like, our competitors are not, uh, the, I'll, I'll point to Acres.
com. The competitors there are, are effective. They're, they're, they're good and, and we see, we'll go build something novel and then we, we know that that's gonna come out.
Nick Beyer: And kind of closing out the early on piece of your business, raising capital. That's, that's been, like you said, from the beginning, you knew to scale quickly, you would need capital.
Arkansas, historically, people have been like, Oh, it's, you know, really hard to raise capital. And I think since maybe the Acumen guys, y'all have raised the most capital in the state. Can you talk through those challenges, maybe the tailwinds, headwinds with, with doing that?
Carter Malloy: Yeah. So like the, the world of venture is an, is an odd one, right?
And, and it's not something that comes by naturally. Hmm. Uh, generally speaking to, to folks that aren't in inside of it. Like, and, and there's lots of criticism and there's lots of appreciation and optimism, but most people have some sort of opinion about venture capital, right? Like if good, good or bad. Uh, but one of the misnomers and, and one that I think we've.
We've seen not be true is like companies in Arkansas can't get founded. Companies in the middle of the United States can't, can't, can't get funded. Sorry, not founded. And we actually found the opposite to be true, especially now in the last five and eight years, is that we've seen lots of funds created that only invest in the middle of the country.
Because there's so much money chasing ideas on the coast, the best example of that in the earliest is Rise of the Rest.
incredibly nice person and, uh, ultimately made it his thesis of, I'm going to ignore the coastal investing trends, because there's like a lot of brilliant people, a lot of really great businesses being built in the middle of the country. And so we've seen that thesis grow to lots of dedicated funds that do the same.
Not, not paying attention to us, right? So we, we've had funds from New York, Chicago, uh, the West Coast, um, Europe, look at our business, like, there's, there's lots of interest in wherever you are. And I think COVID really helped to further, it may have been a little bit weird in 2019. It's not weird today, I don't believe at all.
Nick Beyer: So you think that's kind of a myth, like it, the Raising money in Arkansas is really challenging. Is that, would you say that's kind of a myth? Or maybe an old school methodology to, to venture in Arkansas?
Carter Malloy: I, I think it's a, uh, I'm not going to say excuse. That's too, that's too rude of a term. Uh, I think raising money is a challenge.
You don't have to like assign a geography. Raising money in X industry or as, as X type of company or an X type of locale, X type of person. Like, uh, there's money out there. It's just, it's, it's really, really hard to do.
Um,
Carter Malloy: uh, you know, you, there is this concept in the world of startups. So like, you know, the field of dreams things, right?
Like if you, if you, if you dream it and you build it, they will come. And it's like, that is, we've learned that multiple times. Like we launched acre trader and it's like everyone I talked to is like, Oh my gosh, I can't wait to invest on there. And we launched it and quite, quite literally no one invested for months.
Uh, it just, it's a, it's a grind, uh, going and getting customers, going and getting investors are both, uh, far, far harder than I ever expected them to be.
Nick Beyer: It's good. Kind of transitioning here to, you know, as we, we talked through some of the other businesses, we've interviewed hyper growth businesses in Northwest Arkansas is what we're focused on.
So growing at 25 percent annual a year for at least three years, business is doubling every, every, every three years. There's some amazing businesses here, including yours, as you start to experience that growth, we'll call it the middle of your life cycle so far at AcreTrader. So we'll say like 2021, 2022, ton of growth happening.
What was driving that growth?
Carter Malloy: Um, at the day, like there's two ways to look at it, right? There's pull and there's push, um, or inbound and outbound marketing, if you will. Uh, so one is we've, We've had some really great marketing and design and brand teams, uh, here, throughout, throughout our lifecycle as a business.
And so the ability to, to let people know we exist in the first place is, is really hard. Something we still struggle with today with the extreme majority of people in the United States don't know we exist. Uh, so, so one is getting out there and letting people know. And then two is trying to create inbound, which is like the ultimately the, the best kind of.
The, the best customer archetype is folks that hear about you from somebody else, usually the way that that works and come, come seeking your business. And so we've, we've been incredibly intentional about that ladder trying to go and frankly, just give the existing customers a really great experience. So they tell their friends.
Mm-hmm .
Nick Beyer: That's good. And so through that, those kind of years, I mean, you're going from, I don't, I don't know how many employees you were at early 2021 at one of the articles I read was maybe 15, 20. To like in 2022, end of 2022, you're at like 150 ish employees. That's an insane amount of people to hire and they're, they're totally new to your business.
How are you doing? I think you already kind of hit on some of those hiring practices, but like how are you doing that? Well, what did you learn from that?
Carter Malloy: Um, a few things. So one is being, like I mentioned earlier, uh, being incredibly process oriented around hiring, having really great. Uh, HR and, and talent, uh, uh, acquisition folks in the, inside of the business, recruiters.
It, it's something that we, again, I mentioned earlier, like people, and this is thematic, right? You're going to hear this in every entrepreneur, every business person you speak to. It's like people define the business. Uh, we can say that, but we have to like really mean that. And uh, the example is the HR function is one that in many places is looked at as like, ah, that's where you do your benefits and you know, your onboarding and boo.
Uh, I think we, we really celebrate HR here. It's like that is the people function is the thing that we should take the most seriously. We can't build a great business without really great people. And so, uh, that's something we leaned into and invested in. Uh, whether that is the hiring processes, the onboarding processes, the training process, the career growth process.
So making sure that folks, uh, are feeling their own personal and professional growth each each week, each month, each year inside of the bi, the bi, the business so that we can retain them.
Mm-hmm . It
Carter Malloy: is hard to retain really bright people 'cause they want to go do lots of cool things. So, uh, it's, it's. It's maybe say differently.
It, it's being incredibly intentional about hr. Uh, the lesson learned is that you should not define your success based on the headcount of your business. Right. There, there are, uh, far more accurate metrics to measure your success than the total headcount. Uh, when, when, uh, when you're venture backed in particular, what are they?
Um, revenue, right? Yeah. There you go. Like, uh, absolutely. Uh, revenue growth. Things like NPS, like your customer reviews of your business and the customer service you're providing. The growth in your bottom line as well is an important one. But generally speaking, I and many naturally gravitate to headcount as your success metric because it is the most rewarding part of the job to a leader, to the management team.
We're helping, you know, helping folks, uh, with employment, we're helping families, we're helping folks grow their careers. And we like to say within our, our walls, like, we want people here to skip a rung or two in their career ladder. And, and absolutely use me, like, come, come use this place to, to get ahead.
This is not a, uh, an old school, you know, you know, you need to be three years for this position, then two years for this position. Like, Merit, like, we don't care about your background or your degrees or who you are or what you do outside of these walls. We care you come in here and kick ass every day. And if you do, then we give people a lot of opportunity for growth.
On a tangent to say like, that is so rewarding, that often many, many folks gravitate to the headcount number as the definition of success. But in our case, we were building something that was not sustainable. In particular, we were building a brokerage business inside of AcreTrader.
Nick Beyer: Those are separate,
Carter Malloy: or both?
Nick Beyer: No, they were together.
Carter Malloy: was not a, a highly sustainable business. And, and so, uh, yeah, we, we had to, we had to retrench in, in 23, as we talked about earlier, which was the worst year of my career. And I often, because I hurt people because I overemphasized that metric.
Cameron Clark: Well, and before we get to that, that, uh, when it's been some time in 2023, let me say brokerage business, real estate brokerage business.
That's what you're talking about. That's correct. Um, where you are, I guess that was kind of one of the big things running through my head as. The, the hands on approach of having to buy the farms, talk to the farmers, all the, just, that's a lot of work. That's a lot of work. It is. It is. So how did you, so maybe what were you doing at the time to, To, to get that done.
And then like, maybe what do you, how'd you switch? What are you in now?
Carter Malloy: So, uh, we have always been okay with certain things that do not scale, right? Technology scales, uh, diligence does not scale very well, and that's okay. Like, like we need to invest very heavily in having, uh, great people and great teams out there actually doing the underwriting and mm-hmm
And, and putting together the, the, the, the deals. What, what came out of that and, and, you know, maybe the interesting next chapter in our conversation is acres. And we were very frustrated with the total lack of transparency in the world of farmland. And I mean, like neighboring parcels selling for 20 or 30 percent difference in price.
Like, and even today, like still an insane price disparity. Uh, now there's idiosyncrasies, but even when like the. There's two almost identical tracks selling for hugely different prices. And that's a function, in my opinion, or a large part of that is a function of the lack of information. And so we were hopping between all these various tools and datasets and assessor's offices and GIS, and it was this sort of miserable experience to go try to find information about land.
Acres initially for us and for our problem to solve our own problem with the hope of commercially of launching that and maybe that'll be a commercial success someday
Nick Beyer: in that technology that I mean that acres as my understanding of it is just a ton of data. That's right. And kind of in that 2022 2023 time timeframe 2022 I mean benchmark right you you raise 60 million series be around is that.
Is a lot of that capital flowing towards building this out or at that point y'all hadn't even Started to really put, put an emphasis on acres.
Carter Malloy: We, we had actually. So at that point we had built, uh, what we would call like the, the information substrate of our business. Like we, we had this, uh, gathering of information.
We, we began to like build real databases and real early stage geospatial tools to interact with that information. So we had this semblance of what we were calling it acre maps at the time, but we had the semblance of acres inside of the company. And we showed that to investors, and yes, a large part of the investment that we received in that Series B was pointed at, hey, that is super interesting.
We love data business. I think data businesses are some of the best in the world. It's what I spent a lot of my career working on. And so like, wow, we may actually get an opportunity to go put together this data business. So we were building it quietly at that point in time in hopes of launching it and getting some real attention.
Cameron Clark: So before Acres exists, whether it be quietly or publicly, how long did it take you to analyze a deal to know, you know, this is, we're buying this farm or we're not, and that's clearly a big part of the process, just knowing the investments you're actually going to present to investors or clients or customers, whatever you call them there.
Carter Malloy: So the amount of time spent analyzing a successful deal, Has changed, but, but not hugely. What has, what has changed is the amount of time wasted on all the deals you say no to. Mm. And you know, the, the reality is we should be saying no to the extreme majority of things we look at. You know, like, I dunno if it's 94 or 97%, but like most of the stuff is a no.
And, uh, we spent almost all of our time on the nose, right? And, and so you're just trying to find that no faster and faster and information allows you to do that sometimes instantaneously. And, and that was didn't, was. It was not a thing that existed for us, uh, three, four years ago. Yeah, revolutionary for you, yeah.
Nick Beyer: So now the data is kind of filtering out your nose before you're having a team member really, like, dig into that data. Is that kind of the summary of it? That's correct, that's correct.
Cameron Clark: Well, and on the, just, you know, I got an account and just was looking around on the app and just, it's so fascinating to see, like, All the things that, you know, obviously y'all can do from your perspective, but just thinking through, you really are a pro farmer on the end of the data's out there.
Like, go, go look at it. Go use it for your benefit too. Um, I was just looking through some farms in Jonesboro. I would just be able to see like, The, this farm was coined and, uh, corn, then soybean and, and, and then three years before that it was corn again. And just, just data can speak for itself.
Carter Malloy: Yeah. Our, a a core theme of our business is transparency in internally and externally, both.
Right. And so the, the mission of, of Acres is transparency for America's largest asset land. And internally we feel the same. Like I, I am, I'm intensely interested in the truth and I, and I think that the, within our business. Transparency between us as individuals here builds incredible trust and allows us to move much faster as a business.
And then I believe, maybe said differently, self awareness is the only sustainable competitive advantage. As a business, you have to constantly be introspective and understand what the market is looking for and are you participating in that market appropriately as a person and as an individual contributor within that business.
We all must do the same about ourselves very, very intensely. And so we love the idea and, and not everyone does. To be clear, we love the idea of all this information being available to everyone to level the playing field between my dad and the institution. Um, and, and you know, the, the, like the information typically sets, like levels, the playing for field for the underdog.
Yeah. And,
Carter Malloy: and I, I'm a huge fan of that, that idea. It's also the same thing for it levels, the playing field internally for. us to hire amazing interns. Some of the most unbelievable members of our team started here as interns. But we treat them the same. I have absolutely no care in the world what their age is or what their background is.
Again, I go back to that thing earlier. Like, are they going to really kick ass?
Yeah, let
Carter Malloy: them show up and see what they
Nick Beyer: do. It's amazing. I think before we keep, keep diving, we want to hear all about acres. And I mean, both of us have spent some time on the platform. It's, it's fascinating. Kind of ending that chapter of, we'll call it hyper growth.
And then just some kind of right sizing of the business. I don't know if that's how you would describe it or overextension in some segments. You talked about specifically the broker. Should, did y'all wind that down?
Carter Malloy: Gone. That's correct. Uh, so we, we ultimately, uh, discontinued and sold the brokerage.
Okay.
Carter Malloy: The, uh, acre trader side of the business is still, has, has been healthy throughout that. Uh, we just got ahead of ourselves. We, we got ahead of ourselves in, in hiring and in particular. So the acre trader business today is growing. Uh, is, is profitable and has an amazing team running that business. So, uh, so, so the core AnchorTrader.
com investing platform is, is a platform we're very proud of. We're not proud of all the ways that we got here, um, the mistakes we've made along the way, but we are very proud of what we have delivered at the end of the day, uh, to the market and to our customers. Mm hmm.
Nick Beyer: And so AcreTrader, kind of key metrics you're looking at, you're looking at top line revenue growth, you're looking at profitable, and sounds like it's a profitable business for y'all.
And then are you looking at volume of deals? Like, hey, you know, in 2024 we had, we had 30 farms that we listed. The year before we had 25 farms. Like, are those some of the key metrics you're looking at?
Carter Malloy: Yeah, I think, I think, um, volume certainly matters. What we are unwilling to do is growth for the sake of growth, volume for the sake of volume.
And you can see this manifest itself in most of the time when you go on AcreTrader. com, there is not a farm actively funding on the website. Or if there is, there's one. And what that is saying, you know, what that is saying to the world, and we don't explicitly say this, is like, we are willing to forego revenue in trade for good quality products.
Of, of offerings on our website. And that has always been the case. Uh, if we, we've spent most of our lives as a business without any inventory. Uh, because yes, we, we, so yes, we measure, uh, the, the equity throughput of the platform, uh, but we are far more interested in the quality. of the equity throughput, because that's the thing that enables us to continue growing for the years to come.
Nick Beyer: And how are y'all making money from that platform, from those deals? Can you talk a little bit about that?
Carter Malloy: Yeah, we, we get paid a, uh, a diligence fee effectively, uh, on, on, on an offering. And then we get paid management fees. So throughout the life of that, that farm, we're typically paid 0. 75 percent or 1 percent of the value of that farm annually.
Uh, that is much lower than you will find in, in most. of the asset management world when you think about annual management fees. Uh, but it is, it is strong enough for us to build a business and we're, we're big believers here in northwest Arkansas on everyday low prices. Yeah,
Cameron Clark: well, what is that standard asset management fee?
Just if you're looking at, um, you know, just different, different asset classes.
Carter Malloy: Yeah, the, the, the classic old school is two and twenty. Right. So 2% asset management fee, 20% carry or carried interest as to, uh, receiving some of the upside you create. Um, there are certainly lower fee funds out there, right? Uh, when you go to these, these zero work funds, the Vanguards of the world, their whole stick, their whole shtick is eliminating al almost every single basis.
Point of cost you can, uh, but most alternative asset funds are in that one to 2% management fee range, uh, with a carry on top.
Nick Beyer: So you got the due diligence fee, you got the asset management fee, and then if the farm ever sells. Is there, do y'all get a percentage of that upside, or what is that?
Carter Malloy: So, we participate in a disposition fee there as well.
Uh, what we, what we typically don't do is have a larger carry, uh, structure inside of the deal. We would, we would, again, like, if we let more returns accrue to the investor, then they'll come back and invest more with us. And so that, that's, that's the way we've, it seems like overly simplistic, amazed how many people go for the immediate money and, and not the long term, uh, gains there.
So there, there is the, the. The unofficial old school motto of Goldman Sachs was long term greedy. And I appreciate businesses that think that way. It is worth building a long term business, not a flash in the pan. It's really good.
Nick Beyer: And so I think you talked about volume. Volume is not your most important metric, which we respect, right?
Quality is, and that's going to keep your investors coming back. That's going to give them returns. But from a business perspective You've got to be finding ways to drive volume in it. And I assume that that just really means you're finding the best deal, the best land deals. And so how are y'all, was that the genesis of acres was like, we built this to identify, you know, the best land deals.
Carter Malloy: Yeah. Yeah. Like, like it's just a funnel.
Nick Beyer: Yeah.
Carter Malloy: Right. At the day, like The demand side of any business. Most businesses, if, if you're acquiring customers, you have a, a conversion funnel, right? Like, how many people can I get to come into the front door of my shop? How many of them can I get to go actually, uh, try on address?
And how many of those can I convert to actually paying at the register? And um, the same thing is true in the world of diligence. It's like we need more and more people and more and more tools and, and this is where acres really helps, is it expands the top of that funnel pretty dramatically. So we can have.
Uh, way, way more throughput and get more shots on goal and get more looks on farms.
Nick Beyer: And so that was late 2022, early 2023 was kind of the launch of acres.
Carter Malloy: Yeah, we were, we were using it internally and, uh, gosh, 21, 22. And then we launched it, uh, October of 22. Uh, we, we put it on the internet primarily as a consumer tool.
And then the business evolved in, uh, so throughout 23 it evolved to becoming more of an enterprise tool. Uh, and then 24 is where we officially formalized that. And what I mean is, we have a free version of it. We have a thing that's a hundred bucks a year or less for a consumer, for most of the people we know, to go interact with information about land.
Who owns the property next to me? What are the property lines? Some of that basic historical information, satellite imagery, that kind of data. Uh, then we have a product that is a thousand dollars a year for the professional. So I'm an individual land broker. I'm an individual who's, uh, buying and selling land.
I need, I need comparable sales. I need real deep data. And so we have a product, uh, for, for that market. And then we have a, a true enterprise SaaS product, and that is, uh, much more expensive. But it is for big companies where they may have 20 or 50 or hundreds of people, uh, sharing an account, right? Uh, going, going in there and working different aspects of the land.
Acquisition and management disposition processes and being able to do so as a team all in one place.
Nick Beyer: That's great. So early on, there was a monetization structure, um, of charging per month or per year across those kind of three different buckets that you just highlighted.
Carter Malloy: Yeah, so early on, there was not.
We just put it out there for free and just said, Hey, come use this. And it was a way for us to. Find more farmers and so we put it out there for free. And then like we said, all right, now we'll, we'll charge 10 bucks a month or whatever for this sort of baseline version. And as the product got better and better, we then rolled out the, the higher tiers.
Nick Beyer: And for people like us who have no idea how much it costs to, um, build a product like that, to upkeep a product like that in the tech space. Is 10 a month, I mean, is that a profitable venture for y'all? Or is that like, hey, we're, we're, we're keeping this venture going? Uh,
Carter Malloy: it, it is at scale, right? Like 10 a month is not a business, right?
10 a month times 10, 000 customers, uh, or 100, 000 customers, like that's a business. And so, and that's a big part of, of venture capital, right? Is like, uh, technology solutions usually are, are, have some inherent scalability to them. Uh, so it doesn't cost us a lot. to go from customer number 7, 000 to 70, 000.
Um, but it costs us a lot to build the underlying fixed infrastructure and all the fixed cost of, I mean, just our cloud compute bills monthly are pretty insane. Our data science team, uh, they're doing some work back there.
Nick Beyer: It's crazy. Um, and so I think, When you talked with Roby a couple weeks ago, a month ago, was it
500, 000 users is what y'all have, roughly?
We are approaching that mark.
Nick Beyer: And I assume all of those are, yeah, that's unbelievable. And that's in a year time frame?
Carter Malloy: Two, yeah, but most of the revenue growth that business, I guess two and a half years now. But it's, you know, you'd mentioned earlier, like top line growth, Uh, so it's growing very, very rapidly, uh, and, and a lot of that is our team just doing a great job of putting forth more tools and importantly, putting forth lots of high quality data.
Cameron Clark: Well, the software is easy and it's good. It's like, that was the first thing I noticed when I got on, it was just, you can tell immediately if it's, if you're going to want to stay on there, if it's easy to use or it's not, and it's easy to use.
Nick Beyer: For, for that tool specifically, what? So, a lot of the people come in in the free version and then kind of upgrade, or do you see, you know, a high percentage of them start with just the paid plan?
What does that look like?
Carter Malloy: Um, it is, again, going back to that funnel, like, yes, we have quite a few people that come through and start at a low tier and move their way up to the appropriate tier for whatever they are trying to accomplish. And we have lots of people who just stay free forever, and we're fine with that.
Like, we give them some tools to create maps, to find some basic data, and to share maps with other people as well, so they help us market our product. Uh, to other folks, so our goals are to make this really simple and easy to go and discover the information you're looking for. It's good.
Nick Beyer: And then kind of competitors in that space, is that Onyx, is that LandID, is it all like what?
Who are your competitors in that space and maybe what is different for someone who hasn't used all of those different products?
Carter Malloy: Yeah, so I think that there are some really great point solutions out there that you've named for if you want to go create maps, if you want to go find some basic assessor data at the county level to understand when this thing was sold.
There are some Uh, great tools for, uh, creating high powered maps. Like, um, Esri is a GIS tool, and it's, it's massive, massive global business. Uh, what we are trying, no, not trying, what we have built, and are continuing to improve upon, is an all in one platform. Like, I go back to all those tools, your names existed for us.
at, at AcreTrader, uh, five years ago. But we needed a, a simple, single place to go and to find additional data. So, uh, the, the information that's out there is very, very scattered. And there's no one place where you can go and find deep data. And so we, we, today we feel pretty strong that we've solved a lot of the data quality issues that persist in some of those tools.
Um, and we are continuing to add. More and more types of data, more and more layers of information, if you will, uh, to be able to go discover even more about a particular property or, or area.
Nick Beyer: So in any, is any of the data that you're compiling novel or is it 90 percent of that data, Nick was already out there and we're just.
Bringing it together,
Carter Malloy: all of the above. Right. So we, we purchased data. We go and put together all kinds of public data and clean it and make it usable. Right. The greatest example is satellite imagery. Like there's some free data that exists out there, but if you want to stitch together historical satellite imagery, you're talking about spending.
Uh, there is then data that our team is assembling manually. So we've got a team of folks who are, who are going out and manually, they're right here in the office we're in today, going out and manually putting data in the system every day, so that we can be, On the, the bleeding edge of, of, uh, data quality and data recency,
Nick Beyer: and that kind of goes into the layers library.
Which, which y'all did you, did y'all launch that this month? We did. Okay. We're really excited about it. And that's like deep, deep, deep data. Is that, yeah.
Carter Malloy: Okay. So, so what, what that particular part of our product does is, uh, we are consistently putting in more and more information. We're adding more and more layers for you to explore, but it allows you to do the same thing.
So, uh, I'll give you the example of zoning, right? So, zoning maps are a thing that are really hard. And this isn't, we're not talking about just agriculture now, right? We're talking about anyone in the world of any type of land or development. Uh, the ability to see things like sewer maps or zoning, if I'm, if I'm going to go try to build a new building, it's really hard information to come by.
And what you end up having is folks going and getting, you know, PDFs from the county and going and using these really difficult public use websites and having six tabs open. And so we created the ability to drag and drop that data into acres and it lives there forever. So you just heard something that changed the county, like we're out of sewer capacity and Fayetteville is a great example.
Tragic, you know, uh, for, for us wanting to, to grow as a region. But, uh, you can now come and drag and drop that information into acres and now it lives in your account forever. So you're going to have access to that and to be able to easily, easily visualize and analyze that data. So it's the equivalent of, um.
How am I trying to say this?
And we've made it so that business people and, and you know, Luddites like my, myself and I, I, despite being part of a technology company, I'm not necessarily great at it , right? Uh, this is, this was the reason we built Acres. 'cause we couldn't interact with this information. We knew it existed in certain places.
So we've now made it where, uh, the, the analyst, the vp, the business owner, any, anyone, uh, my, my, my 90-year-old dad, anyone can interact with this information in a really easy to use format.
Nick Beyer: So that's a lot of where kind of you've got acre trader and you've got acres. So let's talk about those together. The business just kind of bring us up to current it's 2025, whether it's revenue or growth categories, you kind of highlighted some of that or employee count, that doesn't sound like that's a great metric, like what, what are.
As people think through the scale and what this business is, can you talk a little bit about that?
Carter Malloy: Sure, so Acres has surpassed AcreTrader in size.
Nick Beyer: That's revenue size or is that, okay.
Carter Malloy: Yeah, revenue team, so pretty rapidly. And again, that's not a negative statement about AcreTrader. AcreTrader is a business we are really proud of.
An incredible team building that and continuing to grow it. It's that Ben Maddox, one of the folks I've worked with for a long time, like to say, like, we've just gotten lucky and we found lightning in a bottle again. And it is terrifying some days, right?
Uh, machine for customer service and, and feedback, uh, and continue to, to push our boundaries ourselves, like we think we can keep, keep compounding it pretty, pretty rapidly here.
Nick Beyer: And so what does the growth look like? Future forward looking for acres, and I don't mean I think it, you have a tam, right? For, for acre trade.
What is the addressable market for Acres? I mean, you're at half a million users right now, roughly. What do you think, I mean, is there like, hey, we think we can get to five million by X date? Or what do the kind of growth metrics look like in the TAM for that market?
Carter Malloy: Yeah, there's billions of dollars being spent on these problems today.
Uh, I mean, I, one of the companies I named earlier is a billion and a half in revenue alone. Uh, so there, there's a huge opportunity there and, and I would, uh, feel silly to think that we, this year is gonna define us, right? We, we still feel like we're just getting started. Like, it's cool. We have a business, it's sustainable, and we're here and we're not going away, right?
This is a officially default alive business, is what we would call in the world of venture capital. Like we're not gonna. We're not going to die, uh, God, God willing, you know, we don't want to do something terribly stupid. So it's, it's, uh, it's too early to say, but we, our ambitions are certainly, uh, at a pretty grand scale.
Cameron Clark: Well, and how crazy to say that to just 18 months or ish after, you know, the, or I guess really two years after that high interest rate hike and just everything that was happening on a macro scale. Um, I know we kind of, we addressed that a little bit, but like, I mean, maybe talk a little bit about like, maybe what you were feeling then versus like what you're feeling now.
And I don't know if there's anything you'd go back and tell yourself maybe in that 2023 moment. Um.
Carter Malloy: Yeah, there's a lot. How much time you got? I think first is the gentle reminder that from the outside, a startup or a fast growth business, it looks like this really great line. And on the inside, it is constantly like this.
And so we've had some real low lows outside of 2023 as well. 23 was, was certainly appropriately, uh, the, the hardest we we've faced as a, as a season in business. You know, there was a Churchill quote of like, if you find yourself going through, hell keep going. And that, that resonated quite a bit that year.
If this is, this is really hard, but again, if we, if we look at what we're after and we're, we're mission aligned here as a, as a people and, uh, we, we, we know we can have a real impact and we can build something. Uh, build a lasting impression, uh, just keep pressing. And so, what, one of the, the values we have on the wall here is like you've, you've got to work really hard to get lucky.
And let's be clear here, we have been very, very lucky. Uh, but the folks here, we've all been working really hard the whole time, through good and through bad. And you've just got to keep pressing and keep pressing. And, uh, be hopeful that you can, you can find those streaks of luck. And when, when you do, press.
Nick Beyer: It's really cool to hear you say that. I mean, a lot of the founders that we've talked to have said the same thing, just how from the outside looking in it, all you see is that line. But from the inside looking out, it is brutal. It's brutal. So it's great to hear you kind of highlight that in your own unique way.
Carter Malloy: There's uh, uh, yeah, and there's all kinds of brutal, right? There's um, the people brutal, then there's doing stupid things. I crashed our website. On a Friday night for 12 hours, uh, is, is this certificate you have to have to get the S on your HTTP. I was responsible for renewing that and I didn't , I didn't know if this, that I'd done this thing.
And so our whole team is up working all night long. Like the tech team is just in a total frenzy trying to find out what in our architecture has taken down Acre Trader and, uh, come to find out is me. And, and, you know, that, that moment of like no one is sleeping and everyone's working so hard and, and I'm frustrated, right?
I'm like, why can't you figure this out? What's going on? What's wrong here? And looking back on that, being like that, that was 100 percent my fault. And, uh, I caused so much stress for So many folks on our team, and we had customers like, Hey, is everything okay? It's just a white screen or a 404 error. So, uh, you know, there's lots of different kinds of mistakes and errors you make throughout.
And that wasn't a high point of the business otherwise, but in the moment, you're like, I think I might have killed it. There are some really scary moments in building a business, but the lows make the highs that much better.
Cameron Clark: The amount of ownership you take over everything is, is so like inspirational here to hear where, Hey, I, you know, it's our fault if we, if we fired you, you know, we, we made a mistake. Hey, you know, I, I, I made a whoopsie, like that website's down. Hey, we grew too fast. That's really on me. What like, People want to follow that leader.
People want to, like, the people that were up all night and working, like, that's, yeah, it's, people want to say, hell yeah, man, I'll take that, I'll follow that guy anywhere. Like, it's just, it's inspirational.
Carter Malloy: Well, I, I appreciate you saying that. I, I often don't feel very inspirational because, like, look, I, I, my goal is simply to be honest with myself.
And, and it's actually really hard to do that, right? We, we all cover that up and we all tell ourselves that, We make excuses to ourselves quite often. We make excuses to the people around us. And what I mentioned earlier about that self awareness being a really great competitive advantage, we feel that way, all of us here as a team.
I have no doubt that if you go ask the folks out there, everyone else will take ownership in our successes and our failures both.
Nick Beyer: What is it like being venture backed? What are the expectations? How does that impact your role here?
Carter Malloy: So I have lots of bosses, is the first thing to say, right? Uh, the folks that work here, uh, they, they are my, my real bosses, but I also have a board of directors and a board of observers and board of advisors.
And so we've got lots of folks, uh, that I need to make sure to deliver to every, every day when I come to work. That, that can be really challenging at times and put a lot of pressure on. Um, being venture backed in general. It's a very positive thing and, and like, I don't mind having bosses. I don't mind having these folks in my life.
And I'll give you some live examples at our board meeting yesterday. Like several of these folks, business partners, right? They're, they don't just say, here's money, get it right, or I'm going to come beat you with a stick, right? Like when things are bad, they're flying down here and spending a week in the office and digging in and being helpful to, to get through those times when things are good.
They're coming here and spending that, we had one of our board of directors here all week this week, spending time and being a mentor to the folks that work here and helping them. And this is a person who had 400 people on his team at Google, like, you know, was responsible for Google. com's
homepage.
Carter Malloy: And he's taken time out of his day to come dig in and show some love to the folks that work here.
So having a board, having bosses, having venture investors has been really positive for us in that they have provided guidance. Almost every day. I don't really know what I'm doing, right? Like, we're all figuring this out as we go. Being surrounded by experts that have seen this movie time and time again is incredibly helpful.
Cameron Clark: Well, you know, we're back at present day. We kind of talked about what's going on here in the company. What's next?
Carter Malloy: I hope that the journey continues to be as fun and interesting as it has been. So, what's next for me? I hope to continue to grow. I have a lot of growth I feel like I need to get done. I have a lot to learn.
And I think most of the folks I work with feel the same. So, you know, it's really about enjoying that path, about growing personally and professionally, and growing the business alongside that. So, I don't know that there is a It's a finite period in time that we're looking to identify in terms of what's next, other than like, we're having a good time.
Let's keep pushing and keep building and growing together.
Cameron Clark: It's fun. We just have a couple minutes left here. How do you define success?
Carter Malloy: I'll go back to what I just said a moment ago. Success is not a point in time.
Enjoying the journey success to me is ultimately if I if I am, you know, looking late in life like it's being my my 90 year old dad who wakes up and works and reads and Travels and enjoys his life. Like I I that that'll be success to me is like if I can look back and Be proud of my life and proud of the risks I took.
Uh, one of my dear friends, a guy named Will Slaybaugh, worked on my, my team at Stevens. And when I was, uh, considering going and taking this big risk and moving to San Francisco, I was, I was having some moments of remorse or regret. Like I, this is maybe a bad idea. And he reminded me, he said, look, make all your most important decisions as your 80 year old self.
And when I do that, it becomes so much clearer. Like, like, look, I want to look back. I And I hope I live that long, who knows, but I want to look back and be proud. And have, have lived a fulfilled life and had been a good dad and a good partner to folks and have helped people along the way and learned and grown a lot.
So, so a long winded answer. Uh, success is about having a great journey and helping others along the way. And then
Cameron Clark: kind of, you know, the, the title of this podcast is Northwest Arkansas Founders. Um, your, your office is here in Fayetteville. Um, which, you know, I would say in itself is probably unique here in Northwest Arkansas alone.
Um, you're one of the kind of the, probably a few of the much larger businesses that are headquartered downtown here, but, uh, what's your vision is for Northwest Arkansas, um, in the next coming years?
Carter Malloy: The thing that I love, I love a lot about this place. It's, it gives me a sense of place and a sense of pride that I, that I get.
But when I, when I try to blow that down there, there's a thing that this is somebody else told me this when they moved here to join AcreTrader, uh, my friend Garrett McClinic, when he moved here, he's like, this place has a small town feel with big city amenities. And I hope that we can maintain that. I, I, I love the revitalization of.
The square in the United States, right? This isn't just a thing happening in Fayetteville. It's happening all around the U. S. where there's a, a move back, uh, you know, growth, growth and urban density, folks spending their time on the square downtown. And I've seen it here in the, the seven years I've been working here in and around the square, it's like just the foot traffic, the amount of people spending time here and the, the growth in restaurants.
And so that feels really special. We have to maintain that as a region. And, uh, uh, continue to be a great place to live, continue to be a place full of people that care about one another. So, small town, big city amenities, I hope we have that.
Nick Beyer: Well, as we kind of wrap up here, I think one of the things we love to do is reflect on kind of what we learned, um, through the conversation.
I think one of the, the most fascinating things to me, um, and things that you, you clearly do well is move fast. And the quote I wrote down is run like you're being chased. And it's, sounds like it's a mantra for, for you as a founder, for your team here. And what y'all are building and, um, just really, really neat to learn that move, move fast.
And I think the next thing that we've loved about almost all of our founders that we've interviewed so far in Northwest Arkansas, and I think you, you, this, you really illuminated, this was your love for your team. And you talked about some of the hard times. You talked about the good times, but you, you said quote people, function is the one that we take the most seriously.
And I think if you're a founder and you hear nothing else, please hear that. Please take people seriously and thank you for doing that in our community. And then the last thing, um, that I think you were unique to was just your ability to get tactical. That was the word you used. And I love this idea of rolling up your sleeves and getting into the business, getting into the details.
You know, when we walked through earlier with Morgan, we walked past your office and she was like, yeah, he's never in there. And I think that speaks to your character and you're, you're buzzing around the office. You're rolling up your sleeves, you're getting in the data, you're building with your employees.
And like you just said, they're your boss and how admirable is that? Um, and I think you, you kind of talk, talk about luck and you talk about some of the outcomes, lightning in a bottle. I think those things go hand in hand. Um, your ability to roll up your sleeves and get in the details with your team. And so.
I think you, you talked about how that sets a foundation for what you're gonna build and just really, really cool to learn that. So Carter, um, thank you so much for the time. How can people learn more about you or learn more about Acre Trader or Acres?
Carter Malloy: Yeah, learn, learn more about our business. You, you've heard way too much about me already.
It's, it's uncomfortable , uh, the, the acre trader.com and acres.com and so Acre Traders is for farmland investing. acres.com is maps and data for land people. Amazing.
Nick Beyer: Well, thanks for your time. Thank you both. Thanks, Carter.