Gregg Sauder could be on a beach sipping a Mai Tai right now after selling Precision Planting for $250 million in 2012. But that’s just not in his DNA. An unrelenting drive and passion to help farmers succeed pushes him to keep grinding.
“We’re probably working harder now than we’ve ever worked in our lives, and I felt like we were pretty busy before,” says Sauder, who founded Precision Planting with his wife, Cindy, in 1993. “It was never a question of whether we’re going to take this income and just relax. The question was how can we change ag?
“It’s not easy to start over and we had a great team of individuals at Precision Planting. You quickly learn in business it’s never about yourself. It’s about the team that surrounds you. We built Precision Planting one step at a time from the ground up. When we started 360, I realized I don’t have all that much more time, so we did the opposite and started from the top down. I enjoy the challenge of getting the company where it needs to be. We’ve brought in the right talent, and it’s working out for us.”
Sauder is a farmer who became an inventor out of necessity. Before his Precision Planting days, he spent many sleepless nights worrying about a five-figure financial hole and inaccurate planters costing him yield.