What nature did naturally, we’re making a real botch job of. 

Composting our organic waste requires a perfect storm of temperature, gas, water, and oxygen. 

It’s a problem for people at home trying to do their bit at home, especially since we found out home-growing could be 6x more carbon intensive than industrial agriculture.

And it’s a problem for the composting and biogas plants - hamstrung by compliance and manual data collection - trying to transform precious waste product back into a form we can actually use.

Meet the problem

“Compared to existing solutions, no one has really brought the affordability and accessibility of consumer electronics to environmental monitoring of any kind. It’s all super expensive, not-fit-for-purpose equipment built with terrible UIs, which is why the adoption and dissemination has been so slow.”

Composting is ripe for disruption, but it’s not your typical Silicon Valley glamour.

It’s literally - in Monty founder Ash’s words - a “big stinking pile of food waste”. 

It’s also set to be a big stinking problem for humanity in future decades. Nutrients and carbon are extracted from natural systems to feed the world. And they’re not being restored.

Recycling all organic waste back into our food systems would cut over 14% of global emissions. But it’s cheaper and easier to ship it to landfill - and bury our heads in the sand along with it.

Meet the product

Monty straddles B2C and B2B. 

At-home composters can download the app and install the mushroom-like sensor in seconds, and off it goes monitoring moisture, temperature, air pressure, air quality, and carbon to nitrogen ratio.

It’s a relatively cheap set up – a $139 one-time cost for the sensor – which will naturally reduce further as Monty scales.

But an even richer opportunity lies with mass-scale composting.

Huge industrial facilities typically process anywhere from 10,000 to over 1 million tonnes of organic waste per year, transforming it into products for predominantly agricultural buyers.

Here, Monty can monitor and analyse organic processes, helping sites reduce manual monitoring and consultant reliance. This reduces costs by up to 20%, and increases end product saleability (like organic fertilisers) by up to 8x. 

And it doesn’t stop with compost. Water utilities, animal agriculture, and horticultural producers all manage huge amounts of organic waste, and all can benefit from similar treatment.

Meet the team

A series of serendipitous events led founder and CEO Ash Baxter to found Monty.

Ash was doing the book-a-week challenge when she came upon The Coming Famine - a ‘vivid picture of impending planetary crisis’. 

“This was my intro to the global problem of organic waste and why we desperately need to solve recycling 100% of it back into our natural systems. Serendipitously, I had gotten into the entrepreneurship space around the same time. There was a business proposal competition running and I channelled all my problem research into that.”

She won, was encouraged to apply for UQ's ilab Accelerator, and Monty was planted.  

Ash is joined by CTO Junior Joyce, who built and curated Monty, and has serial founding and advising experience. He previously helped scale the software for another Aussie startup, which successfully grew from a Kickstarter campaign to an eventual IPO.

Bringing the AgTech expertise is Kellie Walters, an agricultural scientist turned biotech exec, and 10-year head of VRM Biologik Group.

Rounding out the quartet is Andy Hill, co-founder of Oniqua, a global analytics powerhouse that was acquired by IBM. The angel investor, advisor and director has been a driving force for Monty since day one.

Progress so far 

The consumer market has provided fertile ground for product validation. 

And Monty is an absolute case study in sustainable, resourceful growth - almost the antithesis to Zuck’s infamous “move fast and break things” ethos.

We don’t constantly bang the ‘steady and sustainable’ drum to our founders for fun, but because it can yield almost unheard of results - like straightforward fundraising(!).

“In previous years every investment has had to be ‘pie in the sky’ and really out there, but this has been very straightforward for us because we’ve spent the past 5 years proving what we’re doing. Everyone says it’s such a hard time, but I think the reason it was so much easier to get amazing investors (new and existing) on board is because what we're doing is so practical and real, while still being a major commercial opportunity.”

Five years, 20 MVP iterations, and 100 MLP (minimum lovable product) iterations away from the first, 100%-failure-rate prototype, the team launched 1000 units in early 2023.

They sold half of them, and secured national distribution from retailers like Bunnings. 

After a few months in-market, Monty began 2 industrial pilots with a commercial composting facility and a biogas facility.

Their dedicated industrial product will be going live in October, but remote monitoring is already providing huge value to sites like these. It:

• Saves time and operating costs (up to 20% due to reduced data collection burden)
• Increases data coverage (sites have historically performed only 1 reading per week, while Monty provides real-time readings every minute)
• Helps identify batch issues early (like asbestos contamination)
• Increases regulatory compliance with real-time and historic data, and;
• Reduces reliance on consultants to meet quality control and compliance requirements, and opens up new revenue streams (e.g. carbon credits).

As with all things we like to invest in, the devil is in the data. Skalata Venture Partner Shahirah Gardner says:

“​​The result of the team’s hard work so far is a robust supply chain with the potential for strong economies of scale, and vast amounts of data harnessing. Ash is an outstanding founder who has sprinted to commercialisation, raised significant capital, and expanded into enterprise with a lean team. Exciting for us, and exciting for humanity as it learns there’s no such thing as waste.”

And we’re excited to work with Ash, Junior, Kellie, and Andy on generating some explosive growth.

“I have so much respect for Skalata and their role in the startup investment space. Since our first conversation, Shah and the rest of the team were so obviously driven, active and empathetic investors.” 

“Pretty much every other investor I’ve spoken to has needed to follow other people or companies to build conviction, but Shah and the team clearly considered Monty from a business fundamentals perspective. The whole team and support have been awesome and it feels like such perfect timing in terms of our next steps as a company.”