GrainBridge recently got a new CEO: Mark Johnson, formerly of Descartes Labs. Mark was hired in April 2020 by the GrainBridge board of directors (made up of 3 Cargill execs and 3 ADM execs). He's a Stanford grad, as he'll tell you within 5 minutes of meeting him, who loves nothing more than talking about himself, from his vast array of accomplishments within other companies and all of his connections, to his coveted blue checkmark on Twitter. About every other sentence starts with, “At Descartes Labs we did such and such”, with the implication being that we need to do the same thing at GrainBridge.
Within a time span of 2 months, Mark single-handedly destroyed GrainBridge. After he was hired, it quickly became apparent to all of us that he does not care about farmers we’re building apps for or our team. Mark cares about one thing - himself.
After repeatedly praising the team and culture at our company, Mark spontaneously decided to let 1/3 of the company go - during COVID19. And with that, went the heart and soul of the company. And it’s sad, because we were well on our way to achieving our mission of “changing farming forever”. The reasons were not financial as we receive more than enough funding from Cargill and ADM. To make matters worse, these employees were let go on a mass virtual call by the snake COO, Terry Chvatal, 3 days before the end of the month, and lost their health insurance during a pandemic!
Mark lacks the empathy, experience and basic leadership skills to be a CEO. It's incomprehensible that the board chose him.
FARMERS, know that the GrainBridge you’ve known for the past decade no longer exists. All employees with real farm knowledge and experience, including the founders, are gone. Mark DOES NOT CARE about farmers. He cares about getting himself in the press and destroying our competitors (he’s obsessed with Indigo Ag and Farmers Business Network or FBN). GrainBridge is a stepping stone to advance his career. We predict that he’ll sell the company to one of our competitors as soon as he can and be on to whatever doomed company he takes over next.
If you’re considering taking a job at GrainBridge, do yourself a favor and go elsewhere. Reach out to any current or former employee on LinkedIn to verify for yourself - this is not a place you want to work.
