Yard Stick PBC

Hey there! We’re proud to announce our $10.6M Series A led by Toyota Ventures Climate Fund with participation from the Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund, The Nature Conservancy, Lowercarbon Capital, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Pillar VC, and an extended group of climate-committed founders, angels, and family offices: https://lnkd.in/eF4nd9tC We’re biased, but we think measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) in soil carbon is kinda the most important thing to get right. To that end, we’ve spent nearly 3 years in R&D to ensure our spectral soil carbon measurement technology can go the distance. TLDR: It can! 🎉 This round represents our transition from a primary focus on R&D to deploy, deploy, deploy. While we will always have awesome new tech on our roadmap (look out for a 1 m probe, inorganic carbon MRV, and forestry work before long!), the core of our VisNIR spectroscopy platform is ready to go the distance. Critically, we’re not alone in this assessment. Recent consensus on the readiness of soil spectroscopy for carbon has been super-encouraging. For one example, see Verra’s just-published revision to their flagship soil carbon protocol, VM0042, which for the first time now allows spectroscopy for soil C MRV instead of laboratory analysis. We’ve known for some time that we’re working on the right problem, but to see others agree that we’re working with the right technology is massively encouraging. Please reach out if you need soil carbon measured! We’d love to show you what we’ve got, and we’re likely already in your neighborhood. 👋

Agricultural communities of the US are essential to our long-term ability feed, clothe, and fuel our economy in the future. Yard Stick is proud to partner with The Breakthrough Institute, Carbon180, Environmental Defense Fund, and so many other leading organizations to advocate for increases to agricultural research and innovation funding in the upcoming Farm Bill. As our comment letter states, “Bolstering US investment in agricultural research has never been more important.” Please join us in ensuring lawmakers preserve and expand these essential programs!

We need a SF Bay-based Senior Hardware Engineer with a track record of shipping hardware that works, designing reliable systems, integrating weird sensors, writing firmware, and diving into field data: https://lnkd.in/erKqaxV9 Expected salary is $140-190k. Please apply!

Grant partnership opportunity! 💰 USDA has dramatically expanded funding for the next cycle of RCPP grants to $1.5B (yes, billion): https://lnkd.in/dYUzCxAY The award ceiling is $25M and the program explicitly notes “climate-smart agriculture" as a priority interest. Yard Stick has previously won nearly a half-dozen awards across USDA Climate Smart Commodities, NSF, DOE, and CDFA efforts at the intersection of soil and climate. If you intend to pursue an RCPP proposal and measuring soil carbon is part of your plan, we’d love to join the team. If you intend to apply to RCPP as the prime and are looking for soil sampling support, please email our team member Maya ASAP at maya@useyardstick.com with details of your proposal. Considering our past wins and high visibility among USDA and other key organizations, we're confident we'd improve the competitiveness of your proposal. Please reach out if we can help!

Thanks to our investor MCJ Collective for highlighting Yard Stick's international expansion! As noted below we'll be in Australia in a few weeks with many other projects in the works for later this year. Please reach out if you're keen on our soil C measurement offering outside the US - we'd love to say hello. 👋

Pleased to announce that Yard Stick has been selected to join the Unreasonable Food program! Find more details on our 14 illustrious co-participants, including our friends Regrow Ag, LandScan, and Nitricity, here: https://lnkd.in/gTm7bJUd The Unreasonable Food program is a collaboration between Unreasonable and Mars exploring how food can be more sustainable, inclusive, and equitable. Thank you to both organizations for including us, and very excited to see where the program leads! 🌍

Yard Stick is hiring! 💼 We're looking for a Data Scientist to work with our product teams (software, hardware, soil science) designing experiments, gathering and analyzing data, and helping shape the direction of our soil carbon measurement toolkit. Learn more and apply here: https://lnkd.in/eArVbzjV

Thank you to Carbon Herald and Violet George for featuring our work to improve soil C MRV rigor and reduce cost!

Yard Stick's technology will be featured as part of a working group on proximal soil MRV data in Valencia in March at Project Credible's inaugural Carbon Farming Summit. We'll be represented by our CEO Chris Tolles who will have our spectral technology on-hand. Please reach out if you'll be attending as well!

Thanks Leaps by Bayer/Juergen Eckhardt for the shoutout! Grateful to be tacking the meaningful problem of soil C MRV alongside your portfolio company ChrysaLabs and so many others! 🙏 Trustworthy carbon credits are possible... *if* markets choose to value rigorous MRV. That's the only kind of carbon market that Yard Stick gets excited about, and it's one we're proud to be building in partnership. 💪