kariOpen call · co-founder
Help build the herd tool Baltic beef farms are missing
Kari is herd records and decisions software for beef suckler farms. It already runs a real herd every day. I am looking for a co-founder to take it from one farm to the farms of Estonia, then Latvia and Lithuania.
What is built
A working web app and phone app, used daily on a working Estonian herd and in testing on other farms. Its method was refined over decades of suckler herd management; inside the app, Kari analyses each farm's own records together to support better decisions. In a closed test, by invitation.
Herd records
Animals with family lines from EPJ's Liisu, weighings, calvings, pregnancy checks, notes and cull marks with their reasons.
Field work on paper and phone
Printed crush and barn sheets read back from a photo, a phone card at the crush that works without signal.
Decisions from the farm's own data
Which cows stay and which go, every group set against itself, the herd season by season, notes read and turned into records by AI.
Compliance, ready to file
What EPJ and PRIA are owed, prepared from the records; PRIA's register list brought in and compared. No direct register connection yet.
The opportunity
Every farm has to report
Every cattle farm in Estonia reports its animals to PRIA, and farms in performance recording also to EPJ; every farm that works land also keeps PRIA's field book. The official tools are registers, not management tools, so the same events get written down two or three times. Kari prepares the animal records today, and grazing and manure records for the field book are next.
Better herds are the reason to stay
The same records answer which cows earn their place, which heifers to keep and whether the winter feed held condition. Each season the farm learns from what it recorded.
One brand for the Baltics
Estonia first, then Latvia and Lithuania, each with its own register rules and language. The farm work is the same; the filing differs.
The size of it
1,345 keepers of suckler cows in Estonia (mid-2025) with about 27,000 cows, and about 490,000 holdings with suckler cows across the EU.
Sources: Tõuloomakasvatus 2/2025 (animal register counts); PTA, animal data 01.04.2025; Eurostat ef_lsk_bovine, 2020. About two thirds of Estonian keepers run under 20 cows; the first farms Kari can serve are the 300 to 400 with 30 cows or more.
Who I am looking for
The commercial side first. The build is moving; the first paying farms, partnerships with farmer organisations and the registers, and Latvia and Lithuania are not, and that is the work one person cannot do beside the farm and the code. A technical co-founder is the second need, and if you are both, better.
The technical side
- Direct connections to EPJ and PRIA once they open access
- Reliability, data security and offline use in the field
- Keeping a growing product simple to use
The commercial side
- Bringing on the first paying farms in Estonia
- Partnerships with farmer organisations
- Preparing Latvia and Lithuania
Herdloop is bootstrapped. The terms are agreed together: equity with vesting, and pay when the company can carry it. The first six months: the winter test farms running, a written arrangement with a partner organisation on the table, a price set with the first farms, and a plan for Latvia with its register questions answered. You will work with a founder who knows the farm side from the crush up, and with a product that is already in use.
Founder
Stefan Gernert
Agronomist and Savory Institute accredited professional. I run my own Angus and Hereford suckler herd at Niiduveis in Estonia, and I design and build Kari myself, testing every screen and sheet on that herd first.
Get in touch
Write a few lines: which side you would take on, what you have built or sold before, and why beef farms. Every message is answered.