Ben O’Connor, aged just 16, is already a serial entrepreneur, whose latest creation is a piece of farm management software he is making available for free.
O’Connor is from a dairy farming family in Co. Down and, like many farmers, has always had an entrepreneurial spirit.
He told Agriland: “I set up my first business when I was 11, which was a firewood business.”
His first “major” business was Giftery, a mail-order gift basket venture.
Giftery was set up when Ben was 13, and it went on to sell 200,000 units within three years.
“It can be hard to get respect when you’re a lot younger than the people you’re going into meetings with,” O’Connor said.
But, he added, the Giftery experience did teach him to “not give up”.
“This year I set up FarmFlow.”
FarmFlow
The FarmFlow product aims to manage tasks for farmers, or as O’Connor put it, “to try to solve problems with a farm”.
He mentioned issues as wide-ranging as relief milkers, feed rations, and livestock weight tracking, saying “there’s no real thing that brings them together”.
He said that FarmFlow “learns over time” and is “intended to adapt towards the farm”.
The product is in its early stages, but is useable at the moment, and farmers are invited to take part in the “long soft launch”.
O’Connor said: “The system can hold only so many, so we’re sort of trying to keep numbers limited while we further test it.
“But once it’s really launched, anyone who wants it, we would be more than happy to have them.”
One planned feature of FarmFlow is for it to be useable offline.
O’Connor said: “At the minute it’s like on the web-based app for demos, but it’ll also relaunch in August.
“It’ll work for the offline and all that data of store locally within the phone, so it never goes down or to servers or anything like that.
“Operational data is encrypted, and never leaves end-to-end encryption. We’re figuring out how to make it better.”
Plans
O’Connor said that he plans for FarmFlow to be “completely free”, though there will be “revenue models in it”.
He added: “There’ll always be a free tier available because I understand the problems that many farms have with cashflow and we don’t want to add another pressure on to the already difficult farming environment.”
So, while his intention is to “try to help farmers”, there are plans to add paid-for features when it fully launches.
As for himself, O’Connor has his GCSEs ahead of him, an apprenticeship starting in September, though he says FarmFlow remains “a priority”.
He said: “I’m just trying to balance those things at the moment.”
However, he added that he is keen to “stay busy”.
“I’ll always be entrepreneurial,” he added.