Maybe I Just Needed to Become a Farmer First

Back in 2020, I tried to start an app called Greenmarket.

The idea was pretty straightforward: create a marketplace where farmers could sell their produce directly to buyers, cutting out the middlemen in the process.

At the time, I thought I had a good idea.

The problem was, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

I had never had a job. I had never run a business. I had never farmed. I had no experience in tech, and I had never managed a team.

Yet somehow, I was trying to build a tech company for farmers.

Building Something I Didn’t Understand

Because I knew almost nothing about technology, I depended heavily on my tech team.

I basically told them what I wanted Greenmarket to be and trusted them to figure out how the platform should work—including many of the processes our users would eventually have to go through.

Looking back, that was one of my biggest mistakes.

I was the founder, but I didn’t understand my own product well enough.

Then the pandemic happened.

Greenmarket had originally been built around agriculture, but suddenly small businesses were popping up everywhere as people looked for ways to earn during lockdowns. We pivoted and tried turning Greenmarket into a marketplace for these local businesses instead.

We focused heavily on marketing.

We talked about the platform. We tried to build attention around it.

But we didn’t have a product that was ready to support what we were promising.

Eventually, Greenmarket failed.

There were failed promises from the tech side, problems with execution, and plenty of other things I could point to.

But ultimately, I was the founder.

The responsibility was mine.

What Failure Actually Felt Like

I can make Greenmarket sound like a nice entrepreneurial lesson now.

It definitely didn’t feel like one at the time.

I lost a lot of my parents’ money. I had publicly talked about something that I couldn’t push through. And worst of all, I felt like I had let down the people who believed in me.

It took a toll on me.

Then, in 2022, I was given something completely different to figure out:

A farm.

The farm was much smaller than it is today, and once again, I had no idea what I was doing.

I had never farmed before.

But this time, there wasn’t a tech team I could depend on to figure things out for me.

There were people on the farm waiting for me to tell them what to do.

And I was clueless.

Learning Agriculture the Hard Way

The first two years were a massive learning curve.

I went everywhere trying to learn.

I talked to farmers. I met suppliers. I asked questions. I tried different things. I built relationships with people in agriculture.

Some of those relationships were great.

Others weren’t.

I had people overprice things because they knew I didn’t know any better. I trusted people who introduced me to the wrong people. I made expensive mistakes simply because I didn’t have the experience—or the network—to know otherwise.

But along the way, I also met people who genuinely wanted to help.

Farmers, suppliers, consultants, and people in the industry shared what they knew with me. Some of those relationships continue to help me run the farm today.

After about two years, there were times when I genuinely wanted to quit.

But something kept me in agriculture.

I started seeing its potential.

What Changed

Today, I’m still learning.

I don’t think farming is something you ever completely figure out.

But I’m no longer the person who walked onto that farm in 2022 without knowing what to tell anyone.

I’ve learned how to manage the farm better. I’ve learned from mistakes. I’ve become more efficient. And most importantly, I’ve built a network of people I can call when I don’t know something.

That experience changed the way I looked at the problem I had tried to solve with Greenmarket years earlier.

Back then, I thought farmers simply needed a marketplace.

Now I know it’s much more complicated than that.

A farmer can have access to buyers and still struggle.

You need information. You need people you can trust. You need access to the right suppliers. You need logistics. You need knowledge. You need markets.

And sometimes, you simply need someone you can call and ask:

“What the hell am I supposed to do here?”

I know that because I’ve been that farmer.

Then I Met Gab

In 2025, I met Gab Enopia, who would eventually become our CEO.

At the time, I had no idea he was already cooking up something like Tabo.

I kept seeing his Instagram stories where he was meeting farmers and agricultural organizations. Naturally, that caught my attention, so one day I messaged him and basically asked:

“What are you doing?”

That’s when he started telling me about the platform he was building.

And immediately, it felt familiar.

I told him about Greenmarket. I told him what we had tried to build, why it failed, and what I had learned since then from actually becoming a farmer myself.

After a few meetings, Gab eventually asked me to work with him.

I said yes.

Getting a Second Chance

For me, joining Tabo wasn’t just another business opportunity.

It felt like getting a second chance at an idea I had believed in years ago—but this time, I wasn’t coming into it completely blind.

The first time I tried building a platform for farmers, I wasn’t even a farmer.

I didn’t understand the people I was trying to help. I didn’t understand technology. I didn’t understand operations. And I definitely didn’t understand how complicated agriculture really was.

Since then, I’ve spent years actually running a farm.

I’ve dealt with workers, suppliers, buyers, logistics, good harvests, bad decisions, bad connections, and good ones.

I even tried building a logistics and agricultural trading business between Negros and Cebu—which also failed, but taught me even more about the gaps between farmers and markets.

Somewhere along the way, I realized something:

The idea wasn’t necessarily wrong. My understanding of the problem was incomplete.

Becoming The Unexpected Farmer

While working on Tabo, something else started happening in my life.

I started a page called The Unexpected Farmer.

It wasn’t created for Tabo, and it wasn’t part of some bigger business plan.

I simply started sharing my life on the farm and the things I was learning along the way.

But the more I did it, the more I realized how connected it was to everything I had gone through.

When I first started farming, I was completely clueless. I didn’t know who to ask, where to find reliable information, who to trust, or sometimes even what questions I was supposed to be asking.

A lot of what I know today came from years of trial and error—making mistakes, getting screwed over, meeting the right people, visiting other farms, and asking a lot of questions.

So with The Unexpected Farmer, I wanted to share that process.

Not as an expert teaching everyone how to farm, but as someone still learning and letting people learn with me.

I visit farms. I meet people who know much more than I do. I ask questions. I try things. I share what works, what doesn’t, and what I learn from it.

Because if I had access to something like that when I first started farming, maybe I wouldn’t have had to learn everything the hard way.

And if someone can learn something from watching me figure it out, maybe they won’t have to go through everything I went through either.

The Unexpected Farmer wasn’t created because of Tabo.

But eventually, I realized that they came from a similar place.

One is a platform we’re building to help create a more connected agricultural ecosystem.

The other is simply me documenting my journey and sharing what I learn along the way.

Both reflect something those years in farming taught me:

Knowledge becomes more valuable when it’s shared, and agriculture becomes easier when you don’t have to figure everything out alone.

Greenmarket vs. Tabo

Greenmarket was built around one main idea:

Help farmers sell directly to buyers.

Tabo is being built around a much bigger one:

Help people in agriculture thrive.

Market access is part of that, but it isn’t everything.

Farmers need access to information, education, networks, opportunities, services, logistics, buyers, organizations, and other people who understand the problems they’re facing.

And I’ve experienced firsthand how much of a difference those connections can make.

Because after actually becoming a farmer, I realized that sometimes the most valuable thing isn’t finding someone who will buy from you.

Sometimes it’s simply knowing the right person to call.

That’s the kind of ecosystem we’re trying to build with Tabo.

Looking Back Six Years Later

It’s strange looking back at Greenmarket now.

For a long time, I saw it as one of my biggest failures.

Today, I look at it differently.

If Greenmarket hadn’t failed, maybe I wouldn’t have learned what I did.

If I hadn’t been thrown into farming without knowing anything, maybe I wouldn’t understand how difficult it can be to find reliable information and trustworthy people.

If I hadn’t made bad connections, maybe I wouldn’t appreciate the good ones as much as I do now.

If I hadn’t tried—and failed—to build a logistics business, maybe I wouldn’t have seen firsthand how disconnected farmers and markets can be.

Maybe The Unexpected Farmer wouldn’t exist.

And maybe I wouldn’t have understood what Gab was trying to build when he first told me about Tabo.

None of this was some six-year plan.

A lot of it was messy.

Some of it was expensive.

Some of it was embarrassing.

And there were definitely moments when I wished things had gone differently.

But six years later, I’m working on the same fundamental problem I wanted to solve when I started Greenmarket.

The difference is that I’m not the same person trying to solve it anymore.

So yes, Greenmarket failed.

But maybe the idea didn’t.

Maybe I just needed to become a farmer first.