To say Jeff and Forough Haskel love to travel would be an understatement – collectively, they have visited more than 50 countries. However, they recently found it challenging to find and book a ranch vacation in Wyoming. Although they eventually found an ideal location, they believe there needs to be a central hub for farm and ranch vacation spots. To that end, the Haskels are developing a startup, Agrivoy, which they call the Airbnb of agritourism, and entered it into the Cozad New Venture Competition.
While Cozad provides a great experience for remote learners, Jeff and Forough decided to travel north from their Fort Worth, Texas, home to participate in the finals in person on April 16-17. Agrivoy was rewarded with the $3,000 Larry F. Voitik Prize, presented to teams led by students enrolled in Gies Business’ fully online MBA program – known as the iMBA ®.
Jeff and Forough are both enrolled in the iMBA program, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2026, and hope to complete their degrees in May 2027.
“We chose Illinois for our MBA because of its great reputation and the fact that the program is online, flexible, and relatively affordable,” Jeff said.
The Wyoming experience provided the motivation, and Cozad the spark for Agrivoy.
“Jeff wanted to experience staying on a ranch and maybe go horseback riding,” Forough said. “He started looking for a place to stay, but he found it a little bit challenging to find some of these ranches. There were some online, but there weren’t a lot of listings easily available. He had to go to several websites, and sometimes the information was slow. We thought, why not have a place where operators can list their farms, ranches, etc., and customers can easily book?”
“In a lot of ways, it’s a very opaque industry,” Jeff added. “It seemed very haphazard, not standardized. There’s no easy way to compare, and it’s not really discoverable.”
Although the idea was percolating, Cozad provided the perfect motivation to bring it to life.
“Frankly, Cozad itself was probably the primary motivator for getting started,” Jeff said. “If nothing else came out of it, it forced us to put it into action. I started making some calls to different farms to make sure there was a demand. I talked to operators of everything from an aviary to a ranch, all kinds of agricultural operators. They aren’t necessarily having a positive experience on other platforms, so they are open to trying something new.”
Jeff estimates that about 90 percent of the operators he spoke to were interested. They decided to focus first on the Central Texas Hill Country, then the entire state of Texas – the top state for agritourism – before expanding nationwide. They aren’t charging operators to list, but will collect a 10 percent commission for each booking, a much lower rate than most other booking platforms.
In addition to each listing, Agrivoy is building other resources on the site, such as a “trail builder,” where travelers can bundle activities in a single booking and build a multi-day itinerary. They are also exploring advertising for businesses and restaurants along the trail. They hope to have their website live for a soft launch in the coming weeks to begin onboarding hosts and marketing it to consumers. They are targeting October for a full launch.
Jeff and Forough worked late nights for two months, getting Agrivoy into a position where it is nearly ready to go live. Through Cozad, they took feedback from judges and learned how important not only the product, but also storytelling was in the pitch. They also discovered the importance of market research. making sure there are viable customers before engineering the product
“The Cozad online track provided a lot of opportunities to practice the pitch,” Forough said. “We decided to come to Champaign because we thought we had taken the product from zero to someplace, and it was time to show it to other people and see what they thought.”
Agrivoy wasn’t hard to miss among the 100 startups at the demo portion of the Cozad competition at the Illinois Conference Center on campus. To honor their Texas home and the theme of their idea, they donned matching cowboy hats and boots for the finals.
“We wanted to not only represent our state, but also the farmers and ranchers we want to support,” Forough said.
“It was really competitive in Champaign,” Jeff said. “We were really pleased and proud to win this award because we have put a lot of effort into this since Cozad started.”
“We have affirmed the model for Agrivoy,” Forough said. “With Airbnb and VRBO, you can list farm stays, but it’s not really designed for that. For instance, we talked to a woman who has an Alpaca farm with a yurt on the property. She said there is not even a category for that on VRBO, so she couldn’t list her facility for rent.”
“Agritourism is a multi-billion-dollar industry, but until now has been underserved,” Jeff said. “I do think there is a real opportunity here if we can jump on it and upscale it quickly.”
The Haskels are thankful for Cozad’s role in jumpstarting Agrivoy and said that the prize money will likely go to consumer marketing. Jeff has one piece of advice for other Illinois students considering launching a startup and entering it in future Cozad competitions: “Whatever your crazy idea is, just give it a shot.”