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Reroot founder Genevieve Priebe, a fourth-generation member of a Montana farm family. (Photos courtesy of Genevieve Priebe)<\/p>\nReroot founder Genevieve Priebe, a fourth-generation member of a Montana farm family. (Photos courtesy of Genevieve Priebe)<\/p>\n
Genevieve Priebe<\/a> took a business meeting this summer while bottle-feeding baby goats. A couple of years ago, she was advising executives at some of Seattle\u2019s largest tech companies.<\/p>\n \u201cBest decision I\u2019ve ever made,\u201d she said of her career change. <\/p>\n Priebe is the solo entrepreneur behind Reroot<\/a>, a bootstrapped Seattle startup trying to make local food as easy to find and buy as anything else online. <\/p>\n The company operates a marketplace<\/a> where independent farmers, ranchers, bakers and makers sell direct to customers, currently live with founding partners in the Pacific Northwest. In July it launched a free companion app<\/a>, Reroot: Find Local Food, that maps more than 50,000 producers across the U.S. and parts of Canada.<\/p>\n She has also built a patent-pending tool called Walk & Talk, which lets a farmer update an online store by voice while walking the field, with or without a cell signal. When they\u2019re back in range, it reconciles what they said against any sales that came in while they were offline.<\/p>\n A fourth-generation farm kid from Whitefish, Mont., Priebe grew up driving her dad\u2019s tractor before she could reach the pedals and counting change at farmers markets for her mom, a flower farmer. She left for college and spent two decades in Seattle consulting, starting at Accenture and working for clients including Microsoft, T-Mobile, Starbucks and Boeing. <\/p>\n After her parents passed away, she and her brother took over the family farm. Priebe ran the numbers on what it takes to make a living growing food, and found it \u201cclose to impossible.\u201d That\u2019s a big part of what she\u2019s now looking to solve as a startup founder. <\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t want to be a founder,\u201d she said, \u201cbut I couldn\u2019t walk away from the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n Continue reading for Priebe\u2019s answers to our Startup Spotlight questionnaire. <\/p>\n In 50 words or less, give us your startup\u2019s elevator pitch? <\/p>\n Local food is all around you, but finding it is hard. Buying it directly from the source is even harder. Reroot exists to fix that. We\u2019re a discovery app and marketplace that connects independent producers to the people who love what they grow, raise and make.<\/p>\n Startup Spotlight<\/p>\n Reroot<\/p>\n Funding raised Employees Favorite AI tool Coffee order What are you reading? What are you listening to? Entrepreneurial idol What problem are you obsessed with solving? <\/p>\n Something that perhaps most people wouldn\u2019t see as a problem. That is: why is it easier to buy a mango from Peru than a tomato from a farm 10 miles away?<\/p>\n What surprised you after talking to customers? <\/p>\n My biggest surprise was that most small farms pay to be farmers. They don\u2019t make money, they lose money. Less than 50% of the 1.9M farms in the US are profitable. Average median farm income is over a thousand dollars in the red. It\u2019s no surprise that 15,000 farms go out of business every year and unfortunately the story isn\u2019t much better for other independent food producers. Growing our food is one of the most important jobs, yet it\u2019s close to impossible to make a living doing it.<\/p>\n How has AI changed the way you build your company? <\/p>\n Dramatically. Two years ago, I\u2019d have needed a 5-person development team, 18 months, and $1.5M to do what I\u2019ve done solo in about four months. Traditional development cannot compare to the speed with which AI has enabled me to operate. <\/p>\n I do have a strong tech background, but haven\u2019t written a single line of code and yet I\u2019m live with a fully functioning marketplace that processes financial transactions, integrates with Square and Stripe, has sent over 100,000 marketing emails for our customers, manages inventory, fulfillment, and analytics. And, bonus \u2014 we just launched a free discovery app called Reroot: Find Local Food that maps 50,000+ local food producers in the US and parts of Canada.<\/p>\n What\u2019s one thing people misunderstand about your startup? <\/p>\n In a world of AI-powered, niche, technology businesses, people seem surprised at how simple the idea is. They assume it already exists. It doesn\u2019t. There is no single place to discover, follow, and buy from local producers. That gap is exactly why I built Reroot.<\/p>\n What\u2019s the toughest decision you\u2019ve made in the past year? <\/p>\n Every advisor and investor I\u2019ve talked to has told me to find a technical co-founder, and even better if he\u2019s younger and male. The decision to ignore that advice and bootstrap solo as a woman in my forties was simultaneously the hardest decision I\u2019ve made and the easiest. I\u2019m choosing a different path than raise-and-burn: heads-down building for real customers who need what I\u2019m making. It\u2019s working.<\/p>\n What\u2019s the one piece of advice you give to other entrepreneurs? <\/p>\n Don\u2019t overthink it. I spent decades in environments where every decision needed a PowerPoint deck and three rounds of approvals. The best thing I\u2019ve done as a founder is just move: build it, ship it, learn, repeat.<\/p>\n We\u2019ll know our company has made it when\u2026 <\/p>\n When the hardest part of farming is no longer the marketing. When farmers like my parents, grandparents, and great grandparents can actually afford to do the work that they love. And when I can conveniently replace most of my grocery store spend with local food purchased directly from my favorite producers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reroot founder Genevieve Priebe, a fourth-generation member of a Montana farm family. (Photos courtesy of Genevieve Priebe) Genevieve…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":743687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[84,4203,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-743686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entrepreneurship","tag-business","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=743686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/743687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=743686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=743686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=743686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/reroot-2-1-1260x1260.jpg\")
Genevieve Priebe, founder of Reroot.<\/p>\n
\n Bootstrapped<\/p>\n
\n 1 (plus a small advisory board)<\/p>\n
\n Our patent-pending tool called Walk & Talk, which is voice-controlled inventory management for the (literal) field.<\/p>\n
\n Black, heavy splash of cream<\/p>\n
\n Proud to say I\u2019ve been reading Proust\u2019s Swann\u2019s Way now for a decade (I predict another before I finish it), but otherwise anything farm, food, or cookbook flavored that I can get my hands on.<\/p>\n
\n 75% agriculture and food podcasts (faves include Future of Agriculture and The Market Gardener) and 25% any book Ray Porter narrates.<\/p>\n
\n Anyone who has the moxie to believe in themselves and do things a little bit differently has my respect.<\/p>\n