Before the Soil
How a school project became a company, and what got left behind along the way.
This photo was taken in 2023. I was 16. (Last one on the left.)
We were trying to make a hydroponic tower work. It was a school project, late afternoon, a group of friends who had no real idea what we were doing. The system never worked, ironically. When I look at this photo now, I feel a kind of homesickness that’s hard to explain, because that afternoon was the beginning of everything, and I didn’t know it yet.
My name is Gustavo Alves Ribeiro. I’m 19, from Franca, a city in São Paulo state, Brazil.
I founded Ecoponia alone. I made the logo, the visual identity, and the brand character by hand, with no agency, no team, no network. I built the first prototypes, sold the first towers through word of mouth, and only understood along the way that what I was building was a different way of thinking about growing, one that went beyond the product itself.
Aeroponics is real technology. Plants grow without soil, without pesticides, using a fraction of the water a regular pot would need. And almost nobody in Brazil was talking about it seriously, accessibly, and in Portuguese.
Ecoponia is a member of SUPERA Parque, the third-largest technology park in Latin America, based in Ribeirão Preto, Brazil. I got there through an event. International Day convinced me the right path was Ribeirão, not São Paulo. I got in through networking alone, no invitation, no formal pitch, nothing but the product and the idea.
In the first few months, we talked with researchers from IAC (Instituto Agronômico, Brazil’s agricultural research institute) and universities in Paraná, validated the system in barbershops and shopping malls, and received, then turned down, a partnership offer that would have given us a lab, a team, and full infrastructure. It was not the right path.
The next step is formal incubation at SUPERA, in 2027.
Beyond the Soil is where I document what I’m learning, about aeroponics, about hydroponics, about growing without depending on soil. No jargon, no fluff.
If you found this page searching for how to grow without soil, you’re in the right place.