Halter has been one of the country’s most notable startup success stories over the past decade. 

Chief executive Craig Piggott was just 21 when he founded the company in 2016, but he demonstrates a maturity beyond his years when discussing leadership and how he runs his Auckland-based operation, which now sells his cow trackers worldwide.

Piggott grew up on a Waikato dairy farm and, with a first-class honours degree in engineering from the University of Auckland, was a Rocket Lab engineer before striking out on his own.

International growth  

BusinessDesk columnist Peter Griffin describes the Icehouse Ventures alum as an innovative, award-winning leader who has focused on leveraging precision agri-tech. His solar-powered cow collars, with app integration, solve real on-farm pain points.

Over the past decade, Piggott and his Halter team – now comprising more than 100 members – have raised over $165 million and scaled the business to become a global leader in agri-tech.

According to Griffin, Halter has achieved international growth and demonstrated a positive impact on productivity and sustainability on farms.

Despite his success, Piggott stresses that nothing has come easily to him. 

“It took four years and $50 million before we even truly knew if the product would work,” he says.

Piggott is shortlisted in the startup category of the inaugural BusinessDesk CEO Index, and our independent panel of judges say they “love the resilience” of his company in a crowded space. 

“Craig Piggott is an incredibly powerful role model for where and how New Zealand’s primary sector should be world famous. He's come and done all the right things in terms of startups.”

Billion-dollar valuation

The judges add, and you won’t see this quote very often: “Getting to the unicorn status [a billion-dollar valuation] exemplifies the whole thing. He deeply cares about cows.”

And it’s true, he does. Piggott has built his team and products by closely engaging with end-users (farmers), and targeting major expansion into international markets, especially the United States, says Griffin.

BusinessDesk asked Piggott for his experience in dealing with the five criteria in the CEO Index: vision, impact, innovation, resilience, and influence.

Vision: Piggott is a leader who understands the power of storytelling and has a clear idea of Halter’s raison d'être. “Our vision is to be the operating system for farms and ranches across the world,” he says.

And his customers are a huge factor in how he communicates and achieves that vision. “We speak to our farmers and ranchers constantly, and it’s their experiences, their opinions, their dreams and goals for their own businesses that drive our stories and how we communicate publicly,” he says.

The founder ties annual, quarterly, and monthly goals back to that vision, which sounds very conscientious, but there’s more to it than that. “We work hard, but what we do is also enormous fun. Everyone at Halter is here because we want to be, and we have a blast doing it.”

Impact: Piggott is not driven by what he can do alone. “A leader’s impact is measured by the collective results or outcomes of the team,” he says.

“This is a truth you can’t hide from. There will be ups and downs – everyone expects that in a startup – but on average, you are winning if the team is winning.”

Innovation: Piggott likes to think he has led the way in understanding, exemplifying, and accepting failure at his company, which has made it something that is openly embraced and discussed.

“In the early days of Halter, I lost count of the number of times I fell flat on my face. But we kept trying, we kept innovating, and eventually we made something that worked.”

Failure has triggered some of his company’s best breakthroughs, says Piggott. He says he loves seeing ambitious people take on hard things.

Resilience: For the first few years of a startup, you are “dead by default” and every day is a fight to exist, Piggott says.

“Everything from making the collars light and comfortable while still being tough enough to withstand the rigours of constant exposure to the elements, or making the solar panels and battery small and powerful enough – everything took longer and was harder than we thought, but that’s life at a startup,” he says.

 “You learn you can do hard things, you learn grit, and that the most important skill is to just never quit,” he adds.

Influence: There’s not a lot at Halter that he tells others to do that he wouldn’t do himself, Piggott says.

He tries to be both demanding and supportive, wanting people to believe they can do their life’s work at the company.

“We don’t really do hierarchy or strict rules at Halter. We do agency – the power for everyone to make decisions that are best for our farmers and for our company."

A good book: The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers – Straight Talk on the Challenges of Entrepreneurship by Ben Horowitz.

“Startups are no walk in the park. Too many books offer advice in a vacuum,” says Piggott. “This is a raw story about the struggles and tough decisions of leading a company, not just the highs of success.”

Sliding doors: Piggott loves to build things. “Outside of tech, I’d have to say I’d be an architect," he says. "I love how designed spaces make you feel.”

Craig Piggott is a finalist in the startup category of the inaugural BusinessDesk CEO Index. The category winner will be announced on Nov 18. BusinessDesk will publish a profile of the overall winner on Nov 19. 

Read more of the BusinessDesk CEO Index here.