Friesen makes mark with FarmerTitan

WINNIPEG — Katie Friesen is used to playing games.

The Manitoban’s prowess on the volleyball court led to a scholarship to Florida International University in Miami, where she competed on the Division 1 school’s beach and indoor volleyball teams.

But seven years after graduation, Friesen is playing a different game.

The 29-year-old, who divides her time between Manitoba and Austin, Texas, is the founder of FarmerTitan. The platform allows farmers to manage their equipment and employees using QR codes and a mobile app.

Friesen said instead of putting a down payment on a house, she used her savings to start a business instead.

“It’s way more fun to have an app than a house,” she said with a chuckle during a video call from the co-working space she uses in Austin. “It’s about the joy of playing the ‘game,’ right? And the ‘game’ that I’m playing right now is the game of business.”

Raised on a farm in Niverville, Friesen first experimented with entrepreneurship in high school when she started a summer volleyball camp for children.

“I loved the fact that it was up to me and my initiative to push the business forward,” she said.

After earning a degree in accounting, Friesen worked for Miami-based venture capital firm Minerva Capital Group. That led to working on the customer relations and global finance teams at Chiper, a Colombian tech company that helps digitize convenience stores in Latin America.

During her time at Minerva and Chiper, Friesen says she gained a better understanding of using entrepreneurship to solve problems.

When she returned to Niverville to help with the administrative aspects of her family’s farm, she experienced the challenges the farm faced — especially when it came to keeping track of equipment maintenance.

That led her to create FarmerTitan, which she incorporated in June 2025.

The company’s app allows farmers to make a record of their equipment and record any repairs or maintenance that are needed. Users can assign an urgency level to the task, add checklists and cost data, and assign the job to a specific employee.

The goal, according to the company’s website, is to help agricultural operations reduce preventable repairs, decrease downtime and ensure work machines are taken care of.

Users pay a one-time set-up cost and then an annual subscription fee that’s determined by how many pieces of equipment they are tracking.

Friesen said while there are similar products on the market, FarmerTitan’s ease of use sets it apart.

While developing the app, she recorded her 65-year-old father using it and sent the videos to her developers so they could adjust the product to suit customers who may not be tech-savvy.

“I think part of our secret sauce is that we really, really understand the user who’s using it,” Friesen said.

Chris Renwick can attest to that. He’s the manager at Spud Plains Farms, which plants 20,000 acres of crop per season. The Carberry-based operation has 50 full-time employees year-round and at least 100 seasonal workers during peak season.

Spud Plains Farms started using FarmerTitan at the end of January. Before that, keeping track of the operation’s 800 pieces of equipment was difficult, Renwick said.

“We were always behind, trying to remember to write down what got cleaned, what date it got done on and who did it,” he said. “Now if there’s any issues throughout the season or in the wintertime when we’re maintaining our equipment, it’s all there at our fingertips.”

FarmerTitan is “a really interesting solution,” said Jacqueline Keena, chief executive officer at Enterprise Machine Intelligence and Learning Initiative (EMILI).

The Manitoba-based non-profit recently co-founded the Agriculture Innovation, Validation and Adoption Network (AIVA), which pairs ag tech developers with farmers.

AIVA is using FarmerTitan on three different farms across Canada this growing season, Keena said.

“We’re excited to see how it performs,” she said.

For Friesen, the last few years have been the opening moves in a game she hopes lasts for a long time.

“I think it’s the most epic feeling in the world when you’ve created something and someone buys it, because it’s an admission that you solved their problem and you’ve created value for them,” she said.

» Winnipeg Free Press