Pakistani start-up Cowlar among ventures invested in by Ashton Kutcher

Kutcher backed “Fitbit for cows” that helped dairy farmers increase milk yield by 15 per cent

Investing in a start-up can be tricky as there is no established blueprint on what to look for in a start-up that is bound to be successful. Most high profile investors do a great degree of research and cost benefit analysis before making the final decision.

But there is one man who seems to have figured out what attracts him in a startup.

"I want to know that the idea is audacious, that something has a gigantic, total addressable market... but I like it when it doesn’t at first land in your ear right. It needs to almost seem nonsensical," Ashton Kutcher said while speaking to Stephen Colbert on The Late Show.

Kutcher previously backed Pakistani start-up Cowlar, which is known as the “Fitbit for cows” and claims to have helped dairy farmers increase milk yield by 15 per cent.

They focus on creating a waterproof smart collar for cows that helps keep track of temperatures, heat cycles and other symptoms.




While talking on Thursday, the actor stated that he’s interested in startups when they’re little more than “two guys, a dog and a Power Point.”

Kutcher also backed Hooked, an app that has snared reportedly millions of millennials with six-minute horror stories told entirely in text-message format.

Kutcher's latest investment

Kutcher recent investment sees him taking a stride towards an investment startup called Acorns, which is essentially a digital change jar meant to add up to substantial investing, which completes all the risk/reward that comes with stocks and bonds.

Users connect the cards and accounts they routinely use to their Acorns account and when they make a purchase, say for example they spent $12.45 at the pharmacy, the micro investing site rounds up to the nearest dollar, with the extra $0.55 in this case — the acorns — shuttled to designated portfolios.



Being the first Twitter user to hit one million followers, Kutcher said the days of tweeting whatever enters your mind without facing the consequences are gone given the sheer size of the twitter universe and the news media’s constant hovering over tweets, giving a warning to frequent tweeters such as President Trump.

He told Colbert he was too late to invest in the social media giant by his “early in” standards, but he did get a shot at Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s Square mobile payment technology.


 

This article originally appeared on MarketWatch.