Hugh Plowman

A bit about me

I’m a city kid who started out as the s**t kicker (literally covered in the stuff). My first year out of school was spent getting up at 4am to milk 1,000 cows, and over the next three years I worked on farms and in agricultural businesses to pay my way through college.

Through college, work and internships, I’ve seen more than 50 farms, agribusinesses and agri-finance companies up close across Australia, the USA and New Zealand. They taught me commercial lessons that apply to any industry.

In 2026 I’ve had a crash course in startups: developing commercial strategy and business analytics, pitching institutional investors and high net worth individuals, co-leading a capital raise that built a $750,000 soft book in three months through personal approaches, writing grant applications and building a carbon scope three insetting programme.

The same year, I was lucky enough to be part of the Founders Factory Nature Tech Accelerator. I never imagined I’d be sitting in a Perth pub trading ideas with a NASA physicist and MIT, Stanford and Harvard graduates.

I’m passionate about technology, agriculture and the people trying to improve our industries and our economy.

My thoughts on Australia as an economy:

1. We’re incredibly good at producing raw products (grain and minerals).
2. We’re incredibly bad at value-adding those raw products (we export pretty much all of it).
3. We’re completely reliant on international markets for both inputs and outputs.
4. And we’re not doing enough to change it.

I want to be part of that change, by helping build the companies and technologies that will take us from being one of the least complex economies in the world to one of the most.