June 22, 2016

A new agtech accelerator was launched today at Global AgInvesting’s AgTech Week through the partnership of agtech venture capital firm, Finistere Ventures, Cloud Break Advisors and an alliance of industry leaders that includes Bayer, DuPont and leading Israeli venture capital firm Our Crowd. Radicle, named as such because of its unique approach, is a $15 million accelerator fund dedicated to growing early stage agricultural technology start-ups into proven industry leaders.

The fund already has $6 million in initial closing commitments and will focus investments on areas where growers face the greatest challenges to productivity, sustainability and quality. In particular, the fund will focus on fields like genomics and plant sciences, seed technology, biologicals for crop protection and regulation, digital ag and disruptive or novel farm systems. Radicle has already started actively screening potential deals based on technology, execution and market risks, and can rapidly vet and validate technologies based on its extensive farming base. The fund aims to make 12-30 deals in the next three years and although it has no set timeline expects the first investments to happen in 2016, according to Arama Kukutai, Partner at Finistere Ventures in a conversation with GAI News.

Kukutai, whose Finistere Ventures has years of experience in company building, explained that the idea for this fund really started three years ago with the realization that there is a large pipeline of untapped agtech. With $15-20 billion spent each year on agricultural R&D there remains a tremendous amount of publicly funded science, especially out of universities, that struggles to get commercialized. This served as the inspiration for Radicle. By taking the discovery out of the process, great opportunity exists in building those technologies that have already shown proof-of-concept into Series A worthy technology.

Radicle’s distinctive model will help accomplish this by providing:

• Expert advisory services and strategic mentorship from a wide network of Ag experts and proven entrepreneurs
• Access to key leaders and corporate relationships across a range of Ag focus areas
• Connections with top academic institutions including Texas A&M, University of California, University of Missouri, University of Queensland, and the University of Wisconsin Madison
• Strong industry collaboration with Ag leaders such as Bayer and DuPont Pioneer
• A network of participating public and private research institutes including Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy, Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics, BSES, CSIRO, the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center and Landcare Research
• Follow-on financing round options from the founding investors and their networks once companies ”graduate” from the accelerator
• A service platform with an intense focus on value creation initiatives and exit planning guidance from the start

“Turning brilliant ideas into viable farming industry businesses requires an intricate combination of industry experience, academic resources, in-field validation opportunities and a diverse collection of agricultural partners and investment advisors,” said Kirk Haney, CEO of Cloud Break Advisors. “Our entrepreneurial roots, deep-rooted Ag network, and proven ability to successfully select and develop game-changing Ag companies ensure that we can help agtech innovators reach their full potential. By better understanding and managing the global agtech opportunity, we provide a fertile environment for agtech visionaries to not just grow, but to flourish.”

Kukutai adds that the fund will also carefully vet and admit other investor partners into the group – and that these partners will likely not come from agriculture. With a core group that really understands venture capital and ag, additions to the investor group will need to bring additive technical market capabilities, such as IoT, big data or life science tools.

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Sarah Day Levesque