LEADERBOARD What is your background? I grew up on my family’s corn and soybean farm in southern Minnesota. As a kid, I always had a wide range of interests and activities: I was the pitcher for my softball team, played the drums and piano, and thrived in math and science classes, as well as in art. When it came time to head to college, where I planned to play Division I softball, I chose studio art as my major, with a concentration in ceramics. I ultimately earned my bachelor’s degree in environmental science, with minors in studio art and economics from Gustavus, then went on to graduate school. I earned my MBA in finance from the Columbia Business School. My professional career started in renewable energy development and finance before shifting into technology development in the ag sector with Croptomize.
Janie Hanson Co-Founder/CEO of Hanson Lahre Entrepreneurship is to business as a spark is to a flame. It requires a combination of vision, skill, and boldness — plus a healthy dose of serendipity. To the rest of us mere mortals, the successful entrepreneur can appear almost magical, conjuring the perfect product out of thin air at just the right moment in time. Which leads me to Janie Hanson. Hanson is what used to be described as a real “go-getter.” She’s worn many hats in her life — farm girl, musician, softball player, artist, business leader, financial wiz, and most recently, serial entrepreneur. Hanson’s dreams have taken her far from the cornfields of Frost and out into the global marketplace, only to eventually bring her back full circle to Minnesota soil. Her career started with stops at Fortune 500 companies like Deere & Company and General Electric, where she built her leadership chops and filled her business toolkit with indispensable experience. Since she returned, Hanson has made 28
May | June 2021
a series of bold, entrepreneurial moves, weaving together the creative and the pragmatic to supply innovative solutions for farmers everywhere. Hanson’s first entrepreneurial endeavor was Connect the Grey, a platform for creating, developing, and investing in early-stage creative ventures, which she founded in 2014. That led to the formation of Hanson Lahre Inc. in 2019, which Hanson leads as CEO. Hanson Lahre is a technology development company dedicated to producing software, artificial intelligence, and blockchain technology solutions. Its first product, Croptomize, is an Apple iOS software application that launched in 2019. A second software product, Farm CFO, is scheduled to be released in May 2021. You can also find Hanson working behind the scenes at area nonprofits. She serves on the boards of the Minnesota Makers and Artists Guild and the Rural Renaissance Project. She is also a volunteer on GreenSeam’s branding and promotions committee. When she’s not in the office or the boardroom, Hanson pours her energy into her artistic side (she’s a photographer and a sculptor) and manages her share of her fifth-generation family farming operation. Wondering how she does it all? So am I!
How long have you been an entrepreneur? My whole life. Growing up on the farm, entrepreneurship was a natural fit … though my first attempt at a lemonade stand was unsuccessful. The gravel road location might’ve had something to do with the lack of customers. I really “cut my teeth” on managing a portfolio of projects while I was working at John Deere, leading wind farm developments across the U.S. The Renewables division was like working at a startup, but with the stability of the Deere & Co enterprise to back us up. Each project that eventually got built was its own company, so learning to balance a number of initiatives in the development pipeline was a critical skill that I continue to leverage today. I took my first steps away from the corporate world in 2013 when I became a partner in a New York City art gallery (energy finance at GE by day, gallery events on weekends). Tell us a little about why you started your business. When I moved back to Minnesota from New York, I was looking for a reliable source of intel on the grain markets like what I had access to when working in the energy markets. I struggled to find this. Luckily, I met Deanna Lahre, my Croptomize co-founder, at a conference in Chicago. We started working together, coupling her 40 years of experience in the markets as a
