The Small Robot Company
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
The Small Robot Company (SRC) was a Salisbury, UK agri-tech startup founded in 2017 by Ben Scott-Robinson, Sarra Mander and Sam Watson-Jones (a fourth-generation farmer). It pursued 'Per Plant Farming': treating a field as a million plants rather than a field, using a trio of small robots — Tom (crop monitoring and scanning), Dick (electric weed-zapping) and Harry — plus Wilma, an AI advice engine, to cut herbicide use by ~77% and fertilizer by 15%. It raised $13.18 million in six rounds (including ~£4M via CrowdCube) and grew to over 50 employees, launching Britain's first fully autonomous crop-scanning service to 50 farms for the 2022-23 season.
02 / The Small Robot Company FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
The company ran out of runway before its market matured: a signed term sheet for the next funding phase never materialized, and the capital chain broke. Investors judged the technology too far ahead of the rest of the market, leaving the business with no path to its next phase.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Founded
Ben Scott-Robinson, Sarra Mander and Sam Watson-Jones found the Small Robot Company in Salisbury, UK to reimagine farming with robotics and AI.
- Commercial launch
SRC launches Britain's first fully autonomous crop-scanning service, rolling out Per Plant Farming robot services to 50 farms for the 2022-23 season.
- Liquidation
In February 2024, with the next funding round failing to materialize, Small Robot Company Limited enters creditors' voluntary liquidation (Kroll appointed as joint liquidators).
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
On February 1, 2024, Small Robot Company Limited passed resolutions to wind up voluntarily; The Gazette published the notice on February 7.
- 02
Steven Muncaster and Stephen Clancy of Kroll Advisory Ltd were appointed joint liquidators.
- 03
Founder Sam Watson-Jones discussed the closure on the R2Kast podcast in February 2024, saying investors saw the company as too far ahead of the market.