CASE STUDY
Mineral
Helping a stealth-mode X project “graduate” into a stand-alone Alphabet company
Challenge
To discover more about the magic of Mineral, visit their website.
Mineral is developing artificial intelligence that can transform agricultural data into understanding to increase the resilience of the planet’s food production systems. Founded in 2017 as a bet within Alphabet’s X, the “moonshot factory,” Mineral had a planet-sized ambition and the technology and talent to get there. It also needed a partner to help them craft the market presence needed to launch—and grow—as a stand-alone company.
Mineral chose Prophet as its end-to-end partner to launch a brand to represent Alphabet’s commitment to sustainable agriculture. In January 2023, Mineral successfully “graduated” as a stand-alone company and is already making an impact on the food system humankind needs to survive.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. If humanity doesn’t change how we produce food, then, by 2050, feeding the population will clear most of the world’s remaining forests and push the earth’s temperature past its 1.5°C warming limit. But innovating farming practices to be more resilient and ensure our planet can provide for lifetimes to come is complex. The diversity of the ag value chain and its industry practices have not been data-rich nor shared across silos—let alone globally—for the last century. The agriculture industry is at a juncture where data-informed decision-making is required to innovate key efforts like traceability and demand forecasting.
Solutions
- Mineral is reimagining how food is produced more resiliently and sustainably by turning a world’s worth of agricultural data into new understanding.
They’re working relentlessly with partners across the ag value chain to enable every farmer, researcher, crop breeder, and advisor to overcome the challenges they face, and build a more productive food system—together.
“Mineral’s ambition is not about adding technology to agriculture. It’s about helping adapt the agriculture system to a changing climate and switch to a more sustainable path. We’re doing so by leveraging AI to deeply understand the plant world and unlock the possibilities of embracing complexity.”
Elliott Grant, Chief Executive Officer, Mineral
Mineral is unique: while within the Alphabet ecosystem, it has the freedom to navigate the realities of being an early-stage company. It has the permission to build boldly, from the ground-up.
In addition to a strong brand, to show up in the world as an independent Alphabet company, Mineral needed a modern marketing organization to drive momentum and, ultimately, commercial success. Prophet helped Mineral leadership drive a stake in the ground—navigating through the foundational commercial realities of launching a business.
“Prophet helped us lay the brand foundation to mature from experimentation to commercialization and share with the world who Mineral really is. Prophet quickly diagnosed our brand needs, our in-market ambition, and the road that would get us there. They not only asked the right questions about our go-to-market approach, they also weren’t afraid to iterate with us; Prophet felt like an extension of our team.”
Elliott Grant
Prophet kicked off in March 2022 with a “graduation” checklist, which included building the business, brand, and marketing foundations to define, position, and externalize themselves to partners across the ag value chain and the world:
- Developing a thoughtful business strategy and visual and verbal brand, rooted in research to uncover key industry and customer insights to determine how best to position Mineral in the AgTech space.
- Externalizing the brand, mission, and vision on internal and external channels, including Alphabet-internal announcements and spotlights at high-profile events.
- Identifying and integrating the tech stack required to stand-up, design, and operationalize owned digital channels as they scale.
“There are nuances of being an Alphabet company. Prophet took a true partnership approach to helping us navigate our launch strategy and execution, which required flexibility and a willingness to take feedback and adapt to our needs. After only a few weeks, the Prophet team had a firm grasp of who we were and who we aspired to be. They cleared the way for us and were patient every step of the way.”
Megan Fallon, Marketing Lead, Mineral
Throughout the partnership, Mineral realized they would need so much more to achieve their goals, which included:
1. Co-developing and co-authoring a rich pipeline of content with various business area leaders to continuously position Mineral as a reputable thought leader in ag.
2. Building muscles across the full commercial spectrum (e.g., developing multi-purpose sales materials for marketing teams and business development teams).
3. Supporting product teams with market-facing customer knowledge to inform portfolio strategy and feature development decisions.
“Prophet has shown aptitude not only for delivering brand and marketing assets, but also for helping our teams build the muscles required to grow and run the commercial side of our business.”
Megan Fallon
Results
Together, we crafted a business and brand identity that embraces the complexity of our agriculture ecosystems and showcases how Mineral’s breakthrough technology can create a more sustainable and productive food production system for our future.
“As our product portfolio matures, our Mineral x Prophet team continues to add value through sourcing customer insights that inform commercial and product decisions.”
Elliott Grant
Beyond graduation, Mineral continues to work with Prophet in its first year: prioritizing joint product-commercial goals, executing in-market activations, co-authoring content strategy (incl. thought leadership), conducting market-back research, and enhancing website features—all in close partnership with teams on the ground to reflect pivots as the company tests, learns, and grows.
Impact
+7k
impression in the first 24 hours
10
press articles published on graduation day alone
+7%
engagement rate on first post (vs. -2% benchmark)
Client Testimonial
“Our relationship with Prophet has continued to evolve alongside the progression and positioning of our business in market. The team deeply understands what we are trying to do—and are so passionate about it. We’ve been fortunate to have them.”
Megan Fallon
Marketing Lead, Mineral