#024 - How to increase your own productivity and that of your garden’s, with Mattias Lepp of Click & Grow, Estonia

The Hardware Entrepreneur

I’ve had as guest Mattias Lepp, co-founder and CEO of Click and grow, a company from Estonia. His company is a green one that wants to create an even greener future: their vision is to change the way plants are grown around the world.

Mattias has a quite unique background, i.e. a long-term experience in plant cultivation, IT and design and educated as a choirmaster.

Today, besides being the CEO he’s also responsible for R&D and strategic management. We discussed many topics, such as their participation in two famous accelerator programs, Y Combinator and Hardware Club, but also when actually the seeds for the company started to grow, the companies they get help from, e.g. NASA, Google, Apple. He explained their technological innovations, how they financed their developments to come to the results and he elaborated on their business model, as well. I asked him also what mistakes they made along the way and he discussed each of the main ones.

Enjoy this episode. The highlights can be seen below.

Raw transcript is available at: https://www.thehardwareentrepreneur.com

• When sustainability has a prominent place in Harrods – [2:30]
• Earlier [ad]ventures before Click and Grow – [3:43]
• What is it about Estonia that stimulated Mattias' business idea? – [6:20]
• How did NASA fuel further Mattias' passion for gardening? - [7:30]
• The two essential components of Click and Grow that make it unique - [8:40]
• How did the company receive its initial investment? - [10:20]
• Adaptive lighting for growing plants – [12:30]
• What is the common thing between Nespresso, Keurig and Click and Grow? - [14:07]
• The importance of Hardware club accelerator in the development of Mattias’ company - [16:13]
• Why is the company based both in Estonia and USA? - [17:46]
• The toughest challenges they ran into during development – [19:30]
• Mistakes during the development of Click and Grow – [21:18]
• If you could go back in time to the time when you were in your 20s, what notes would you give yourself? – [24:22]
• Which book had the biggest impact on his career? – [24:56]
• Some interesting habits that Mattias has – [25:28]
• Some cultural differences that Mattias had to overcome in his work – [26:40]
• What is the best way to reach Mattias? – [28:42]