Venture Capital Association of Alberta (VCAA)’s Post

Are you ready to make a real impact on the Australian agriculture sector? 🌾 Farmers2Founders is excited to announce that they have launched a new agtech program pathway 🎉   Working directly with QLD agtech and foodtech start-ups, F2F will deliver their flagship pre-accelerator program for early-stage founders, their accelerator program designed for Pre-seed or Series A Australian agtech businesses with high potential for scalability and global expansion 🚀   The F2F pathway, designed to meet each founder's individual needs at any stage, will benefit 40 QLD start-ups in total! 👉The pre-accelerator program will focus on the fundamentals of growing and scaling a business, supporting early-stage start-ups from prototype to MVP. 👉The later-stage accelerator will cover content such as business model design and go-to-market strategy. Matching the founders with expert mentors, advisors, customers, and partners to prepare them to pitch to the VCDF Partner Venture Capitalists.   To learn more about eligibility and the application process 👉 More about the Accelerator > https://bit.ly/3yvR0MZ More about the Pre-accelerator > https://bit.ly/44UqJnD  

Tomas Turner- You accomplished what many claim is impossible. Raise money in 2024 for a Deep Tech Food Tech solution. Thanks for sharing your playbook. Key facts about Cultivated Biosciences: Mission: Cultivated Biosciences develops a creamy fat ingredient to improve the mouthfeel of dairy alternatives using fermentation. Raise: Total $6.5M. 5M closed in Jan 2024 Investors: Navus Ventures B.V., Big Idea Ventures ,  Founderful, HackCapital, Lukas Böni (founder of plant-based meat co Planted) @Joyful VC, Mandi Ventures, and Zürcher Kantonalbank 💎 I learned from the conversation: 💎 Focus on family offices that get your space by owning deep tech hardware innovation in your category. They know that food businesses follow a different timeline. 💎 Your investors from the previous round are allies. Ask them for templates on the Data Room and initial investor lists. Have them go over the data room before starting the round to give you additional perspective. 💎 Set your process from the beginning: General Non-Confidential Deck; after the first meeting, follow up with a nonconfidential data room, afterward NDA, and confidential data room. Have a process that moves prospects forward. 💎 Often, investors in your space already carry great exposure so that they won't make another bet. Your challenge is identifying those willing to take a position in your space. 💎 Samples are very valuable. Don't waste them on nonrelevant prospects. Make sure that samples are shared as the last part of the process. The impact it has on the RD team is immense. Every sample created could push off the RD team's milestones. Tomas- Thank you- This was awesome. The link to the episode is in the comments below.

Check out the recent article from Essence Communications Inc. which shares some of the gems our founder Casey Ariel Thobias dropped at #ESSENCEFest!

My heart was pounding all morning knowing this news would go live. But I was struggling to figure out why. Was I nervous that the angle would be somehow negative?  Was I afraid that our transparency in sharing our fundraising "out loud" would be twisted against us?  Was I just excited? I tried to meditate. To journal. But I couldn't figure it out. Then it hit me. I didn't want to celebrate. Sure, hitting first close, especially in current conditions, is huge.  I'm proud of this milestone.  I'm thrilled to be welcoming so many new and returning investors to Fund II.  And I'm super excited about what it means for our mission at Tenacious. My hands were shaking because celebrating feels inauthentic when we have so much more work to do. Not just more money to raise ("always be raising!" is just a fact) or more to prove. More IMPACT to be had. More companies solving climate challenges in agri-food to fund and support. With this framing clear in my head, and the mission front and center, I could ask myself: well, what would feel authentic? That's easy! It feels good, fantastic even, to celebrate the impact we've already helped to catalyze. RapidAIM Pty Ltd launching game-changing products to optimize pesticide use, and deploying on farms in several countries with some of the biggest players in their space. GOTERRA proving out their first-in-the-world model and vision - again and again - with new partners like the City of Sydney and Skretting. SwarmFarm Robotics bots farming over 4 million acres fully autonomously and sending their first robot to the US. Cutting input costs and improving farmer's lives. Jupiter Ionics announcing world-leading scientific breakthroughs in green ammonia, championing a new future for green fertilizer. We don't just back software companies. We don't just back men. We never compromise on impact or commercial ambition. The sacrifices these teams have made to bring their visions to life - not just on paper where valuations are calculated but in the lab, on the field, in the shed... in the real world! - is what I want to celebrate. Systems-change is never linear, never easy, never without cost. But it's what we urgently need to combat the multi-billion dollar realities facing our agri-food system. And more challenges are coming. It's going to get harder, more complex. We couldn't back these companies without the support of our investors. So, here's to first close. Here's to being Tenacious and backing Tenacious founders. And let's keep building. https://lnkd.in/gmWsJR_H Tenacious Ventures J. Matthew Pryor Vela Georgiev Simon Uzcilas

Great to see Agricarbon in this list 🌱 🌿 Our mission is crucial: to ensure soil carbon stocks and sequestration can be quantified at scale. Our ground-truth measurement service removes the cost and scalability barrier to measuring soil carbon. 📐If we want to ensure carbon removals will be implemented at scale, and at the same time making agriculture more sustainable, we need to measure it: You can’t manage what you don’t measure. #soilcarbon #carbonremoval #scope3 #sustainability #soilhealth #regenerativeagriculture

🌱 Up Next: Meet Tom McQuillen of ReGen Ventures! Straight out of Byron Bay, Australia, Tom McQuillen is a partner at ReGen Ventures—a fund that’s all about backing #regenerative tech startups and betting on bold, game-changing teams on a mission to reshape our world for the better. ReGen’s philosophy? It’s as natural as it gets, zeroing in on three key areas: 🌾 Food & Agriculture  🌍Materials & Products  🌬️Decarbonization 💡 Fun Fact: Their portfolio includes cutting-edge players like Clean Crop Technologies, Inc., Aigen, Banyu Carbon, BurnBot, Inc., meati™, Pachama, Asterix Foods, and more! Yep, these folks are reshaping the future as we speak. A quick look at Tom’s Journey: 👉 BA in Business Info Systems, Monash University 👉 MBA from University of Oxford 👉 Former Consultant at PwC & Senior Consultant at Grant Thornton Australia 👉 Business Director at SONATI Nicaragua 👉 Head of Product at Yume Food Australia 👉 Growth Manager at Prolific 👉 Managing Director at Oxford Seed Fund 👉 First Believer & Hive Leader at Startmate 👉 Lifesaver with Surf Life Saving Australia 🏊 In his own words: “What really drives it is the chance just to work with incredible people. I can't think of anything more interesting, motivating, or fulfilling than getting to spend my days surrounded by people much smarter than me who are dedicating their lives to changing the world. They're ambitious, brave and courageous enough to try and do something that most people don't think is possible.” 🚀 Dive into Tom’s story and see how he’s leveling up regenerative tech. From his consulting days in Australia to running an environmental nonprofit in Nicaragua, he's been on a wild ride that led him right to the climate sector. He’s pumped about all the fresh talent flooding into this space—and let’s be real, we are too! 🔗 Newsletter: https://lnkd.in/g2A9uNFY

"Go big or go home!" There are other ways of building good, profitable businesses. Venture capital is not a one size fits all. Especially not in food. 🦄 🦓 🐪 Christian von Essen asked about my thoughts on Smallhold's Post Mortem for Impact Loop. (I told him to watch the "WeCrashed" series, it's hilarious and totally cringe for everyone who ever worked in VC/startups) 🤑 We need capital going towards sustainability, agrifood system change, regeneration, circularity, etc.. But what type of capital? What timing? Seems like crash is imminent if we apply the old models of building the new, in the same unsustainable way... How do we scale better, without burning out founders on the way? I'm interested to have this conversation. Who else? 🙋♀️

On this windy day, I've had a fantastic conversation with Georgi Iliev, and his team, at CBIT, of Nottingham Trent University, who exude innovation mindset, and are utterly venture-centric. Reflecting on my time with Georgi and Conner, I'm thinking about the importance of, like them, keeping close to our clients, both in our roles within their support system, and by operating like startup in our own organisations. I'm sure this is a challenge for large organisations, and I'm keen to explore it further. KPMG seem to be doing a good job. This is the start of research, mapping the innovation and enterprise ecosystem, mining for insights, and asking - What are the best things we can do, to catalyse game changing innovation? I agree with Brianne West, 'business, but better' is our best opportunity to, frankly, save the world. Back home in New Zealand, there are deep veins of entrepreneurialism and innovation, but founders face massive obstacles getting into the light of international markets. Is this the same in other places? Some of the IP from home could absolutely change the world for the better - whether it's big stuff, like Geobind delivering Net Zero to the construction sector, or small stuff, like Moka Fibre's non-toxic eyelash glue. If these products become globally successful, people and planet would be better off. So, I've begun an international investigation, what's happening in the world? What's the best we can do? Next stop, this meetup of Midlands Entrepreneurs and Startups ⬇ https://lnkd.in/dXEZhW-E

Sector specific knowledge and validation is crucial in early-stage investments. 🤓 Patient capital is also very useful when you are building in the agricultural space, which has other return timelines than tech. 🌳 Great to see Impact Loop cover the Agrifood space! 🙌

Simplest impact ventures make the biggest dent! My tryst with the dairy industry started early - I had the good fortune of studying at IRMA followed by a job at NDDB. I worked in its finance team that used to promote oil cooperatives and the dairies (set up under various phases of Operation Flood). I got introduced to dairy and learned what creating real impact means. A small operating dairy unit like a household Goshala can have a profound impact on the life and livelihood of a dairy farmer - possibly the most basic impact venture. We often talk about impact and make fancy excels and presentations to show it, but sometimes, the simplest initiatives make the biggest difference. You can create impact on a small scale with a simple pilot. Once you validate it, both impact investors and mainstream investors can come onboard. Don't let the absence of capital stop you from starting up! #ImpactInvesting #Dairy #Amul #NDDB #Entrepreneurship #Sagacia