Dan Peel

A former scientist turned product developer and CEO with a passion for developing tech for people and the planet. A passionate advocate for using diverse, cross-disciplinary teams of incredible people to tackle global problems. Equally comfortable pitching on a stage to being deep in a lab, as a serial start-up operator with a technical background in soil science my career focus has been building, managing and commercialising the next generation of tools to shape the future of agriculture.

I'm on the hunt for the next opportunity to work with incredible teams to help people and the planet.

CEO and co-founder at Ostara Technologies (2023-09 – 2025-10)

Co-founder and leader of a hardware-enabled SaaS platform enabling growers to improve yield, reduce labour and mitigate the impact of climate spun out from LettUs Grow

• Created and delivered a commercial model and go-to-market strategy selling B2B across the UK and using channel partners to land international projects generating £150k in first 18 months and building a CRM pipeline >£1 million
• Founded and built a customer success model that Developed and maintained long-term, trusted relationships with key clients including farmers, agronomists and technology developers in the sector built on translating highly technical data to audiences of growers to succeed in the land-and-expand model resulting in zero churn from paid-for projects
• Raised ~£1m in dilutive and non-dilutive funding across two investment rounds from angel investors, early stage VCs and Innovate UK after negotiating exit of technology, IP and team from previous company.
• Built and managed distributed, technical team capable of delivering a product and service into one of the most difficult tech markets to challenging target customer groups responsible for everything from finances, HR and internal operations
• Regular speaker, panelist and presenter across the world having represented Ostara and UK Ag-Tech globally including during UK/USA trade negotiations at UK Embassy (Washington) and residence of the Governor of South Australia

Product Manager and Software Lead at LettUs Grow (2018-05 – 2023-12)

Second hire at one of the UK's leading Ag-Tech companies playing a significant role in taking multiple hardware and software products from ideation to market working across product, project management, business development and data science.

• Product manager responsible for delivering 5+ world-first, IP-backed, deep tech aeroponic container farms from ideation to deployment. Bringing together a diverse team of skillsets including academic researchers, hardware engineers, software developers and growers we saw performance improvements of +30% on existing best in class systems through
• Built an in-house software team to deliver a product that supported internal that focussed on to reduce labour costs, improve insights and empower users. Product rolled out across all commercial deployments as standard
• Lead, contributor and manager on multiple innovation grants securing and running projects worth in excess of £500k
• Delivered financial models for the business and built out financial farm models delivering ROI and sensitivity analysis including working with growers on integration of technology through NbS implementation

Operations Lead at Grow Bristol (2017-03 – 2018-05)

running growing operations at one of the UK's first commercial indoor hydroponics commercial farms, managing a team of volunteers delivering fresh produce harvested daily to leading restaurant and retail across Bristol

• Managing team of 10+ volunteers per week working in high-care environments growing and delivery ~15 varieties of herbs and leafy greens to high-restaurants and retail across Bristol and Bath
• Working with local chefs to optimise crops for taste, freshness and environmental impact
• Managed community and business engagement events running campaigns, speaking events education sessions

MSci in Environmental Geoscience – University of Bristol (2017)