How University of Iowa dropouts built a global ag tech company

Matthew Rooda began working in the swine industry at a young age. First, he helped his grandfather on a family farm, and later he worked with his father, who managed a commercial farm in Iowa.

When it was time for college, he enrolled at the University of Iowa with plans to study genetics and biotechnology, and eventually planned to go to medical school to become an obstetrician.

When Rooda met with the medical school admissions committee at the University of Iowa, he was told that he had to be different to stand out. He thought back to the experiences he had working on farms.

Rooda told the committee he had experience with vaccinations, birthing assistance and management on farms.

“They said, ‘That's exactly what we're looking for,’” he said.

His junior and senior years of college, Rooda worked at nursing homes and he noticed more connections between farming and health care.

He saw how nursing homes used technology and management practices to weed out inefficiencies in their care operations. Things started to click.

“There were a lot of technologies in the nursing home, specifically that help nurses and nurses’ aides be more efficient and provide more timely care,” Rooda said. “It was all driven by just standard day-to-day expectations, but also alerts that would come up from somebody falling or clicking a button asking for help, and you had medication administration all baked into the system. I thought that if we brought that over to the swine industry, that can be really helpful.”