Global Corporate Venturing Rising Stars Awards 2017: Kiersten Stead

Timing is not everything in venture investing but it is a major factor.

Ahead of its own agreed $66bn sale to chemical and pharmaceutical company Bayer, therefore, crop company Monsanto’s first corporate venturing exit is useful and another feather in the cap for Kiersten Stead, investment director at Monsanto Growth Ventures (MGV).

Climate Corporation, a Monsanto subsidiary, acquired MGV portfolio company VitalFields, an Estonia-based developer of a digital tool available in seven European countries that collects field data to help farmers plan, manage and analyse their work in order to improve productivity, in November.

Stead’s colleague, John Hamer, managing director at MGV, said the VitalFields exit was “an important one in validating our strategy”.

Founded in 2011 and previously known as WeatherMe, VitalFields was revealed as a portfolio company of Monsanto Growth Ventures, the corporate venturing arm of Monsanto, in January last year. It raised $1.2m in a May 2015 round backed by SmartCap, part of the state-backed Estonian Development Fund.

Stead, Hamer and Ryan Rakestraw, the third member of the investment team, by last month had 13 portfolio companies, one exit, and deployed more than $100m in committed capital in just under four years since 2013. Rakestraw closed one of MGV’s latest deals when the corporate venturing unit led the $11m series B round in Resson Aerospace, a Canada-based machine learning company.

Stead sits on the board of four private technology companies, including Understory after leading its $7.5m A round in February last year, Plant Response following MGV leading its $6.6m A round, and Blue River Technology which MGV joined as part of its $17m B round, both at the end of 2015, with other deals still in stealth, she said.

And she was hopeful of more exits to come – “we have a couple more in the queue”.

Stead added: “We are perhaps too new to measure metrics in internal rate of return or return on investment, but this looks good so far, however, we are doing well on the strategic piece and have enthusiastic support from the company executives. “This strategic benefit takes constant effort, and my team members do a good job of communicating and maintaining credibility.”

However, she said balancing the deals and responsibilities they brought with the relatively small team was a challenge. Stead added: “We have a hard time retaining supporting roles we require, or growing the team to a size that is appropriate.”

But if they could expand their team, she was knew who they would like: “Hire more professional permanent, venture investors into the team from institutional venture capital: people are the most important factor in building CVC teams with longevity.”

Stead is also on the Keystone Science Advisory Board, the selection board of Genome Canada’s Genomic Applications Partnership Program, and on the board of a not-for –profit sport association.

Stead has been a keen sportswoman and had close ties to Canada.

Born in Harare, Zimbabwe, Stead then lived in South Africa and Ireland before her family migrated to Toronto, Canada, where she studied biology at the universities of Calgary and Alberta, completing her PhD at the latter in 2006.

She stayed on for post-doctoral research and her MBA and helped Alberta win the Queen’s Cup at the MBA Games in 2011.

Alberta also won the Sprit Award, selected by their peers, that year, with Stead receiving accolades in newspaper Financial Post for leading “a top-notch Ultimate frisbee win,” after previously representing Canada in the world championships the year before.

She said: “I spent almost all of my spare time up until 2011 playing ultimate [a team game using a frisbee], playing on the Canadian national team from 1998 until my retirement in 2011. I came out of retirement briefly to play with the US team in 2014. Previously, I was an internationally ranked alpine ski racer in Canada, eventually retiring to attend university. I still play both sports recreationally.

For last year’s GCV Rising Stars 2016 awards, she said there were three main reasons for joining Monsanto. There was the team and the surrounding people in the rest of the organisation and the opportunity to help found and shape a new CVC to be successful. The ability to focus on a vertical such as agriculture was an excellent fit with her expertise and, to her, it was an area of investment neglect for many years. Finally, there was the kudos of Monsanto: “If you are going to build a venture capital portfolio in agriculture, there is no better company to do it with.”

Stead had previously worked for two years until 2013 on the merchant bank Burrill & Company’s venture capital team, which invested broadly in life sciences and industrial biotechnology with $1.2bn under management from limited partners, including Monsanto.

Stead added she was briefly a management consultant specialised in early stage company development in nanotechnology, agriculture, and materials engineering and, earlier, was a member of an agriculture startup that was acquired by Seaphire/ Arcadia Biosciences in 2002.