Join our food and agtech investor roundtable today at 9am PT/5PM London/6pm CET
Marc Vartabedian, reporter at Wall Street Journal’s article on the venture industry picks up on the increased level of activity from corporations.
One sector to watch is the agriculture and food space with today‘s pitch sessions from startup stars courtesy of Ken Gatz at Proseeder.
From modifying seeds to cellular biology and through robotics and indoor farming, agriculture is being transformed just as consumer trends around wellness and what they want to eat are changing.
All in a world where the logistics and sustainability have become strategic and geopolitical issues. This creates opportunities for strategic as well as financial gains with one insider describing their deals over the past five years as having been “wildly successful”.
The issues still revolve around how to get close to both production of food and consumers of it. But there are exciting overlaps with carbon captured from industry and feedstock to alternative proteins along with the use of artificial intelligence to uncover opportunities just as they have in the medical world. Substantially unchanged for tens of thousands of years, traditional food and ag could be facing its Minsky Moment.
The roundtable moderated by Kaloyan Andonov features:
- Pieter Wolters, Managing Director at DSM Venturing
- Max Clegg, Head of Louis Dreyfrus’ LDC Innovations
- Frank Lampen, CEO at Diageo’s Distill Ventures
- Julia Reichelstein, [climate] Investor at PIVA Capital
- Derek Norman, VP for Venture Investments at Leaps by Bayer
- Darren Streiler, Archer Daniels Midland’s ADM Ventures
- Javier Garcia, head of Femsa Ventures
- Niccolo Manzoni, Founding Partner at Five Seasons Ventures
- Rosie Wardle, Founding Partner at Synthesis Capital
- Caesar Layton, Founder of Cultivate Ventures
- Kris Kemeny, Managing Director at Tekfen Ventures
- Steve Meller, CEO at CH4 Global, ex-Chief Innovation Catalyst at P&G
- David Huggins, Nutrition Portfolio Manager, Active Equities at BlackRock
- Kim Kovacs, CEO at Arcview Group
