After a diverse career in technical business development, Martyn started supporting Happy Cow Milk as an Advisor just before our first equity crowdfund in 2019.

“I was fortunate to be in the office with Glen on evening the crowdfund launched and we were all blown away when the round shot past minimum and sold out in under 24 hours. I suggested a drink to celebrate and Glen said no, as he needed to get to work – that’s when I knew I was betting on a good horse and that Glen feels this mission in his soul.”

Martyn says this intense focus is important: “Because what he’s doing is hard – It’s really hard. It’s a tremendous achievement to have created a functional platform with the broad range of capabilities that are now working and to be achieving certification – and even more that he’s delivered it all on $400k in such a challenging period.”

Martyn’s role is focussed on the commercials and how to make the business work.

“There are a huge raft of decisions that need to be made now to turn the platform into a business that meets the needs of farmers, retailers and consumers and I try to shine a light on those questions and help Glen steer the commercial course for a successful outcome.”

Martyn is enthusiastic about the strategy that will see the first system tested in house before scaling up.

“That is an important shift and one that I think increases the chance of success. In any enterprise, you don’t know what you don’t know, so it makes a huge amount of sense to eat your own dog food and really prove the system before you move to scale it – this may take a bit longer, but will save all kinds of problems long term.”

Martyn says Happy Cow Milk is a genuinely transformative solution to very real problems. “If we can make this work, we can ship a few pieces of equipment to anywhere in the world and enable community milk production. That’s revolutionary and will enable a new kind of community business that can underpin healthy communities, local accountability, care for the land and stewardship of the environment. Technology is opening up so many new ways of doing things that we need to think about the world we are making. When I choose what to spend my time on, value alignment is important now. That gives you a view of why I spend my time on Happy Cow – because it means something.”

Martyn sees an investment in Happy Cow Milk as a way of supporting the direction that you would like to see the world move towards.

“It’s really obvious that we need to do things differently. It’s easy to spot a problem, but it’s much harder to develop great solutions. With Happy Cow, Glen is doing something no one else is doing. Other people are doing milk in tanks or vending machines but Happy Cow has created a complete supply chain system that can be applied to any farm in the world.”

“Warren Buffet said recently that picking winners is really hard – after all, most of the car companies which were around at the beginning of the 20th century are long gone today. In any investment decision you need to be aware that it may or may not come to the return that we are all working hard and hoping for, but either way, Happy Cow will show that these things are possible. The capabilities underpinning this product can’t be put back in the box. We can only bet on companies that have the right sort of values that we want to see grow in society.”