Farmland 'matchmakers' win on Dragons' Den

Friday, June 6, 2014

Shannon, Kevin, Brittany and Andrew Veurink of Hagersville, Ont., got a major boost for their fledgling company, RentThisLand.com, when they appeared on a March episode of CBC's Dragons' Den and won their $40,000 pitch.

Three out of the five investors on the Dragons' Den panel made offers, but in the end a deal was struck with Bruce Croxon, co-owner of the online dating service Lavalife. The pairing is appropriate, since RentThisLand.com is a sort of matchmaking site for Canadian farm operators and landowners.

During the pitch, Shannon Veurink called the high value of farmland "a burden" on the younger generation of prospective farmers. RentThisLand.com hopes to match these frustrated would-be farmers with aging property owners who want to downsize their operations or retire, but don't want to sell.

Both landowners and farm operators can create a free profile. Farmers pay $20 for each bid they make, and a "low service fee" if the bid is accepted. Bidding is blind. RentThisLand.com claims to be a vast improvement over the current system of "costly" classified ads, which require "time-consuming" follow-up.

One possible catch is that landowners are not allowed to pursue other listing options while registered with the site. However, the listing is only up for a finite amount of time.

The attention and investment seems to be working. One month after the show aired, RentThisLand.com's number of registered farm operators had increased from 300 to over 1,740, and their landowners had increased from 31 to over 320. BF