CHOOSING TECHNOLOGY FOR
AN INNOVATIVE STARTUP
Optimizing Design and Costs to Make
Farm-to-Table Proximity A Reality

Featured:

The Challenge
Making farm-to-table produce 100 feet or less. Verdical is a startup “letting freshnessand flavor rule” by eliminating the need for delivery and logistics for produce. In orderto provide immediate and efficient access to living food to anyone, anywhere, throughinnovative growing platforms, Verdical needed sensors, lighting, and connectivity. They
were faced with many differing technologies to choose from to design maximum efficiency. TE Connectivity (TE) supports Verdical in many interconnected design choices,
lowering the price point of their products, while increasing reliability and profitability.

Aligning of Mission
TE’s relationship with Verdical began with a chance meeting on a shuttle bus at theSmart Kitchen Summit in Seattle. Verdical CEO Andrew Deitz overheard TE’s Terrence
Murphy and Matt Marciniak talking about startups and how they make decisions on
their initial bill of materials on first-generation products. Deitz jumped in and asked
about TE and why Terry and Matt were at the summit, and that started a working relationship that benefits both parties.

Country:
USA
Industry:
A Berkeley, California based company
developing a platform for growing
food and connections
Challenges:
Identifying and designing in technology including sensors, lighting andconnectivity for maximum efficiency
Solutions:“WE WOULD’VE PROBABLY SPENT TWICE AS MUCH ON A LESS RELIABLE
SOLUTION IF WE WEREN’T WORKING WITH TE.”
– ANDREW DEITZ, CEO VERDICAL• HTU21 temperature and humidity
sensor• Parts of intelligent BUS system• Contactless power• IP67 rated lighting connectors• Power connectors• 2-pin connectors for sensors

Verdical’s Deitz explained: “Mission alignment is important to us. We see food as thecenter of community and environment. That really resonated with Terry and Matt,
especially around TE’s purpose of creating a safer, sustainable, productive and connected future. Once you have values aligned, it accelerates partnership and trust.”
TE’s interest and shared purpose led the conversation to more specifics around what
Verdical wanted to do. Deitz explained: “We had real decisions to make on what sensors we needed—what do we need to do and how do we need to do it? In a startup,

APPLIANCES /// CHOOSING TECHNOLOGY FOR AN INNOVATIVE STARTUP

Customer Advantage:
Leveraging TE’s engineeringexpertise and product knowledge
to optimize the design of their first
product as well as limit costs andaccelerate speed to market

CHOOSING TECHNOLOGY FOR AN INNOVATIVE STARTUP
Optimizing Design and Costs to Make Farm-to-Table Proximity A Reality
you need to be a great generalist and don’t always have deep domain
expertise. TE knows every sensor in the market; we don’t.”Murphy, who is director of business development for TE’s Appliances business unit, commented: “Right off the bat, based upon what their productwas and its purpose being around connecting people directly with theirfood and where it comes from, we knew that Verdical’s mission aligned with
TE’s. Listening to their story, we were intrigued by the problem they wereaiming to solve—increasing access to quality, variety and taste of produce—
and we knew we could help Verdical achieve their goals and build a better
connected, smarter device.”

Verdical’s ProductVerdical empowers food service providers to own flavor, freshness andoptimize nutrition. Verdical’s sustainable and space-efficient platforms
for growth use multiple sensors and horticultural LEDs to make growing
on-site year round as easy as inserting seed pods and pushing a button. The
space-efficient modular design scales up or down, meeting the needs of any
size of space.

TE’s Approach
Mohammad Ahmed, a senior manager for R&D/product development
engineering at TE, joined the team consulting with Verdical to help optimize their design as well as their bill of materials. His goal was to help themachieve the “first-time right” design to keep costs down and accelerate
their time to market. Ahmed explained: “Many times, startup companies donot have the experience or expertise to optimize their designs. It’s a competitive market out there, so we worked with Verdical to optimize their billof materials to potentially generate maximum profit.”“BEING ABLE TO RUN EVERYTHING WITH NO WIRING INVOLVED IS
REALLY AN ELEGANT SOLUTION.”– ANDREW DEITZ, CEO VERDICAL

By choosing the right components early in the design process, less time is required
later on for verification and testing. Ahmed coached Verdical’s design team and helpedwith the system design, electrical design and determining specifications for parts suchas connectors, sensors, actuators, pumps and the microcontroller. He helped educate
them about requirements for safety regulations, like UL and IEC, so their design would
be more likely to pass certifications and go to market quickly.
Ahmed asked Verdical what the essential pieces of the product were they wanted toensure to include first. In collaboration, he sat with the Verdical team to review andoptimize system engineering design. With the idea that Verdical would get all the basic
features right in phase one, Ahmed refined what features were “must have” and what is“nice to have” in order to plan the release of a more advanced model next.

Verdical towers use horticultural
LEDs and various sensors tomake growing year-round aseasy as inserting seed pods andpushing a button.

As a result, Ahmed helped them with the power supply, sensing, algorithm and software. He also gave them information on lighting and how they can use TE’s existing
portfolio of sensors and connectivity solutions to make the product all come together.

APPLIANCES /// CHOOSING TECHNOLOGY FOR AN INNOVATIVE STARTUP

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CHOOSING TECHNOLOGY FOR AN INNOVATIVE STARTUP
Optimizing Design and Costs to Make Farm-to-Table Proximity A Reality

Optimizing Performanceand Cost
A key part of Verdical’s product revolves
around sensing technology—to monitor
light, heat, and water levels to maximize
yield in a small space. Ahmed said: “Theyasked for recommendations on whattypes of technology or sensors to putinto place to monitor soil, light, heat andplant health.
I examined their system, electrical andmechanical design and helped themfigure out how many and what type ofsensors were needed, where each sensor
should be deployed for maximum efficiency,
and how to properly power those sensors.”
Deitz said: “A number of times, TE wasable to help us figure out solutions that
we had little knowledge of. For example,
at the bottom of our growing column is atank that holds water that the user will

“OUR SYSTEM WILL BE AT OR BELOW THE COST OF COMPETITORS’WITH SIGNIFICANTLY MORE FUNCTIONALITY—ALL DUE TO UTILIZINGTHESE TECHNOLOGIES THAT ALSO ARE USED IN OTHER INDUSTRIES.”– ANDREW DEITZ, CEO VERDICAL

need to refill. We thought we needed to measure how much water is in the tank, andcompletely overengineered a solution. Meeting with Mohammed, he said we actuallydidn’t need to know how much water is in it, we just needed to know whether it’s empty or full. That’s an important difference.”

Verdical allows food service
providers to grow all of theirgreens and herbs onsite byoffering them an easy to operate,
highly efficient food growing
platform. The space efficientmodular design scales to meetthe needs of any size restaurant,
hotel, school or cafeteria.

The pump that moves the water around the tank changes sound when there’s a low
level of water. Mohammad suggested they measure sound instead of water—a solutionthat was more reliable and required fewer sensors, less cost and less power.
“We would’ve probably spent twice as much on a less reliable solution if we weren’t
working with TE,” Deitz added. “Yes, we would’ve known how much water was in thetank down to the milliliter, but the point is we didn’t need to know that.”
TE helped the startup team gain a deep understanding of how certain technology isused in other industries and how that technology can be applied to Verdical’s growing
column. Because Ahmed works across different industries, he gave Verdical a better
perspective from which to, as Deitz says, “bring out our best 1.0 product. It’s kind oflike having a personal shopper to bring out your best self.”
Verdical’s product leverages technology often used in refrigerators, washing machines
and autonomous cars. For example, Deitz and his team could better understand how tomeasure moisture levels for soil health by learning how sensors in a washing machine ordryer work that measure moisture in clothing and what kinds of conditions the sensors
are built to endure.

APPLIANCES /// CHOOSING TECHNOLOGY FOR AN INNOVATIVE STARTUP

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CHOOSING TECHNOLOGY FOR AN INNOVATIVE STARTUP
Optimizing Design and Costs to Make Farm-to-Table Proximity A Reality
In addition, being able to learn how wireless power products can be used with moving
parts in other products made it easy to deal with movable parts on their own product.
Verdical’s growing platform is designed to be easily maintained. There is one moving
part for users to open a drawer and pour water in to refill the tank. They wanted to be
sure that when the drawer is open, there is no risk to their customers because of theproximity of power and water. Ahmed suggested TE’s ARISO contactless connectivity
solution, which gave Verdical more design flexibility and confidence in the durability oftheir design.
“Being able to run everything with no wiring involved is really an elegant solution,” said
Deitz. “When you go back to other systems out there, our system will be at or below
the cost of competitors’ with significantly more functionality—all due to utilizing thesetechnologies that also are used in other industries. We’re just applying it to our multibillion dollar industry of food.”
Some TE products in the unit so far include:• HTU21 temperature and humidity sensor• Parts of intelligent BUS system• Contactless power• IP67 rated lighting connectors• Power connectors• 2-pin connectors for sensors

Outcomes for Verdical and TE
The relationship between Verdical and TE has been beneficial for both parties. First,for Verdical, they have been able to leverage TE’s engineering expertise and productknowledge to optimize the design of their first product, as well as limit costs andaccelerate speed to market.
Deitz remarked: “As a startup, we tend to make decisions quickly and look for that rightmix of price and reliability. In development, we always talk about getting things thatare good, low cost and on-time. TE has been very useful in that regard. It’s nice to havea part catalog the size of TE’s and then have someone roll through it in their head andsay, ‘here’s what you need,’ rather than us trying to figure it all out and find it on ourown. I think that’s been very helpful for us, plus it’s helping accelerate us to market.”In turn, TE has benefited from Verdical’s feedback regarding our strengths and thegaps we need to fill to serve more startups in an even better way. Plus, by implementing our contactless power connectors and parts of our intelligent BUS system into
Verdical’s design, TE is able to demonstrate our technology leadership through theseadvanced development platforms in an innovative product that completely aligns withour purpose.

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APPLIANCES /// CHOOSING TECHNOLOGY FOR AN INNOVATIVE STARTUP