Regenerating Land & Revenue: Building Valora Earth's AI-Powered Agricultural Platform
founder
Tobin Fulton (learn more)
Sector
Agricultural Technology
Duration
Dec 2024 - Ongoing
Services Provided
Branding, Design System, MVP UI/UX Design, Marketing Materials, Prototypes, Pitch Deck Design
Platform
Desktop-First Responsive Web + WhatsApp Business
About Valora Earth
Valora Earth is an AI-powered agricultural platform that helps farmers make better decisions faster and at a fraction of the cost of traditional alternatives. Through AI-driven farm planning, chat-based agronomic guidance, and resource tools, Valora makes high-quality agronomic support accessible to anyone, on any device.
Early Traction & Milestones
Valora launched its MVP in 2025 and has since been iterating toward V4, a significant product expansion that includes a comprehensive design system, expanded AI features, and a multi-tier pricing model spanning free to professional plans. The focus is on validating user engagement, willingness to upgrade, and building the foundation for scalable growth across global markets.
Core user flows for onboarding, property setup, project management fully designed and dev-ready
Delivered a scalable design system to support future feature expansion and ongoing design phases
Designed marketing collateral and the investor pitch deck to support Valora’s go-to-market strategy
Completed a full UI audit of the developer build to ensure accurate deployment of the design vision.
The Opportunity
Agriculture is one of the most complex decision environments in the world, yet high-quality agronomic guidance remains out of reach for hundreds of millions of farmers due to cost, complexity, and language barriers. Tobin set out to close that gap — building an AI-powered platform that delivers practical farm guidance to anyone, anywhere, on any device, with full support for multiple languages.
The Goal
The MVP focused on building an AI tool that answers complex agronomic questions and helps farmers create actionable land plans. It tested whether AI could deliver expert-level guidance at a fraction of the traditional cost, while gauging user engagement and setting the foundation for a model that improves with scale.
Unlike typical agricultural solutions that launch with complex feature sets, Valora started with a focused AI planning and chat tool. This approach allowed us to test fundamental hypotheses about user engagement and willingness to adopt digital tools before investing in more advanced features.
Building on large language models customized with regenerative agriculture expertise, we created a system that could deliver personalized recommendations without requiring extensive input from users. This balanced the need for accuracy with a streamlined user experience accessible to non-technical users.
By designing a modular product with clear upgrade paths, we established a foundation that could evolve from the initial free revenue estimation tool to a comprehensive paid SaaS offering. Each component was designed to stand alone while integrating seamlessly into the broader ecosystem.
The platform was designed from the ground up to support multiple languages, with an initial focus on English and Portuguese. The interface architecture separated content from presentation, enabling easy localization while maintaining consistent user experience across different markets.
About the Founder
Name: Tobin Fulton
Background: Founder and CEO of Valora Earth; 2x founding Product Manager; previous Fulbright Scholar
Why He Built Valora Earth: While at a Climate and Carbon Conference in São Paulo, Tobin identified a critical gap: most agricultural solutions targeted large landowners despite most land being held by small and medium-sized owners in emerging markets. He is building Valora Earth to democratize regenerative agriculture tools for these underserved landowners.
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Led all product aspects, creating comprehensive PRDs and documentation that clearly defined goals and expectations.
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Managed an international, remote development team of 3, and collaborated with growth, and product design specialists (me!).
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Conducted user research and tests with early adopters and field collaborators to validate product direction
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End-to-end product design for desktop + mobile web and WhatsApp MVP including prototypes for testing.
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Branding development from initial concepts and creation of a scalable design system.
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Design of additional collateral including email templates, Zendesk and Stripe templates, pitch deck, LinkedIn banner, and flyers.
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Leveraging AI to generate a unique, brand-consistent illustration library for use throughout the product
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Ongoing collaboration for future product phases and roadmap.
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Weekly video check-ins to review progress and define next steps.
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Async feedback and alignment over Slack.
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Organized task management through Trello boards.
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Maintained the PRD as the central documentation hub for all product decisions.
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“Sim has been instrumental in helping me bring Valora's company and product vision to life. She is really skilled in helping to put “pen to paper” and has improved on so many of my ideas. Sim is also very collaborative and easy to work with. I would recommend her to any founder looking to build their MVP!”
- Tobin Fulton, Founder and CEO
Process Overview
Each startup I work with has a unique pace and set of needs. Here’s how the process unfolded with Valora Earth:
📍v1
Discovery & Brand Foundation
Reviewed the PRD in detail, defined user personas, and developed a comprehensive brand system with logo variations, typography, color guidelines, and an AI-generated illustration library.
📍v2
Core Experience Design
Reviewed the PRD in detail, defined user personas, and developed a comprehensive brand system with logo variations, typography, color guidelines, and an AI-generated illustration library.
📍v3
Ecosystem Expansion
Developed desktop versions and designed integrations for support, payment, and email systems, including WhatsApp onboarding flows to enable sub-90-second user entry across global markets.
v4
Design System & Scale
Built out a full atomic design system with a two-tier token architecture, component library, and engineering handoff documentation. Transitioned from mobile-first to desktop-first to better serve Valora's core user base.
User Personas
Profile
Child of landowners, 25 hectare family farm in Brazil.
Current Situation
Recently returned to manage degraded family land.
Primary Goal
Modernize practices while increasing profitability.
Key Challenge
Balancing traditional methods with new approaches.
Motivation
Prove sustainable farming can be more profitable.
Success Metrics
Double farm revenue within 5 years.
"My parents worked this land for decades. I want to honor their legacy while bringing in modern, regenerative methods."
Design System
The Valora Earth design system is built on a two-tier token architecture, mapping primitive values to semantic tokens across color, typography, spacing, border radius, and icons. The system is structured in Figma using atomic design principles and built for handoff to a Django + Cotton codebase, with tokens and component specs organized so engineers can implement accurately without guesswork.
Final Designs Showcase
The final UI balances simplicity with functionality through a nature-inspired color palette and intuitive navigation.
