May 15–17 | Memphis, TN

News

Meet the iSelect Philanthropy Partner: St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

Discover St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, dedicated to finding cures and preventative measures for catastrophic pediatric diseases. Upholding founder Danny Thomas’ vision, all children receive treatment regardless of race, religion, or financial status. As iSelect 2018 Philanthropy Partner, St. Jude ensures families never pay for treatment, travel, housing, or food. Their innovative research has increased the childhood cancer survival rate from 20% to over 80%. By sharing findings globally, St. Jude’s impact extends to children worldwide, with 75% of funding from generous donors. Join the mission to save young lives.

What the ‘Rise of the Rest’ Is Still Missing

The headline of a recent post on Recode says it all: “A whopping 80% of all venture capital investment goes to just three states. That has to change.” Those three states would be California, New York and Massachusetts. The entirety of the Midwest -- all 12 states of...

Agrifood Conversations, a New Agriculture Innovation Webinar Series

iSelect Fund, The Van Trump Report and The Yield Lab Institute are pleased to announce the launch of a new weekly webinar series entitled Agrifood Conversations featuring the best in agricultural innovation. With in-depth presentations from some of the leading companies and entrepreneurs in the agtech space, Agrifood Conversations is all about driving agriculture innovation forward and sharing the stories, successes and developments in the industry.

Agrilyst: Developing New Tools to Help Indoor Farmers Thrive

Based in Brooklyn, NY, Agrilyst’s SaaS-based platform provides indoor farmers with data-driven insights to make more profitable production decisions, optimizing labor cost efficiency and improving crop yield. With Agrilyst, indoor growers create seeding plans, schedule harvests, assign tasks, manage climate and nutrient density, and forecast yield, sales, and varietal performance.

It’s Getting Cold in Here: Transforming Modern Refrigeration With Control and Efficiency

Based in Boulder, Colo., Rebound Technologies is commercializing a freeze point suppression cooling cycle technology that targets the most critical part of the cold chain: refrigeration.

HerdDogg: Bringing IoT to the Field

The small town of Marshall, Calif. probably isn’t the first place most people would expect to find the latest in precision agriculture, but don’t tell that to Josh and Albert Blake. That’s because Blake’s Landing Farms, a dairy operation located about an hour north of...

Ag Venture Capital: Here’s What Investors Are Watching in 2018

From AgDaily: Software, social media and the latest wearable gadgets might be getting all the attention, but its the technological changes that are shaking up the agriculture market that are really going to change lives over the next decade. And it’s coming not a moment too soon.

Agrilyst Closes Strategic Funding Round

Agrilyst, the intelligence platform for indoor farms, is pleased to announce the recent closure of its latest strategic fundraising round. New investors included iSelect Fund, Argonautic Ventures, Horizons Lab and Onlan Capital Ventures, with existing investors Compound and New York State Innovation Venture Capital Fund joining as a follow-on.

Bonumose: Creating Healthy, Affordable Sugars From Agriculture Waste Products

The modern world has a serious problem with sugar. As of 2015, the average American consumes more than 129 pounds of sugar each year, according to the USDA, more than double what we ate two generations ago. And, unlike in previous decades when most sweeteners came from cane and beet sugars, today the vast majority are derived from high-fructose corn syrup, which brings with it unique new health risks.

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Welcoming Dr. Charles Mully to Davos on the Delta

At Age 6 Charles Mully found himself on the streets of Kenya. No parents. No Home. Through diligence and hard work, by the 1980’s he had put that life behind him, now a successful businessman on top of the world. In spite of his tremendous achievements, the plight of the growing street children problem in his country remained strong in Charles’ heart. He was unable to shut out their cries, the cries he understands so well, and he realized he must respond. He then started a new life, building the Mully Children’s Family (MCF). Since 1989, MCF has become and remains a home to many less fortunate as it transmits them from a state of homelessness to homeowners, a state of hopelessness to one full of hope and dignity. Dr. Mully sees the opportunity to change the nature of agriculture in Kenya, creating opportunity, innovation, productivity. He is coming to Davos on the Delta to learn how to accelerate food system innovation in Kenya, integrating the best of the technology from Davos with the practical opportunities in Kenya.

‘Mully’ Documentary by Scott Haze

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Consideration

With 2021 well underway and with public markets still strong, we think it is an important time to highlight some of the key private market, venture investment themes that iSelect fund has identified for the year. We believe technologies transforming the Agriculture, Food and Wellness markets will flourish, with a focus on four areas: technologies that enable better food choices to drive better health outcomes, technologies that drive better, more profitable farm operations, technologies that drive the Consumerization of Healthcare, and biome-based treatment technologies. At iSelect, we invest for impact AND performance. We offer qualified investors access to emerging growth companies through our national venture capital strategy. Our unique structure allows our investors to continue to invest in these companies as they develop.

Timing

Why is now the right time for venture? The answer is that now is not explicitly the right time. Venture is something we need in our economy at all times. Now is not better than any other particular time. The question is, why ever stop? When we look at the challenges we’re facing in food and healthcare the reality is there is someone, somewhere who has an insight about how to build a product that will solve those problems. And if they put the right resources to it, they will succeed. As long as we need new technology to make life better or make our lives more enjoyable, we need venture capital to help fuel those entrepreneurs.

What is iSelect as a product?

iSelect is a very unique product, but when you break it into its parts it’s fairly easy to understand. On the front end we’re a traditional venture capital fund. We have a diligence process. We have an investment process. We have categories of industries where we have focus and real expertise, and we invest in companies in those areas that meet requirements for the fund. On the back end we’re unique in that we don’t raise a large amount of capital at one time and deploy it over the life of our fund. Each deal that we bring onto the fund, our investors have to prove and determine to invest in that deal. We have to constantly prove our diligence standards. It’s accessible, transparent and easy for investors to come in and see our comprehensive process.

What is the ideal iSelect company?

We are looking for founders that are passionate and we want the problem they’re trying to solve to be big, real, and painful. We want the solution to be revolutionary and we want our capital to be able to help them solve that problem. We want to know that they have customers involved and that the solution they’ve come up with actually meets those customers’ and market needs. And we want the team to be capital efficient with the money they’re spending.

What does the ideal iSelect company look like?

We’re looking for a company that has an opportunity to have a 10x return to our investment or greater in a period of three to seven years. What excites us at iSelect are companies that are solving big problems. We want companies that are going to be the Monsantos of the future. Not just in the size and the scope, but the impact they have on people’s lives. We want to create positive impacts on people’s lives, so we invest in areas like agricultural production and areas like producing healthy foods for our kids. They are problems that impact real people’s lives on a daily basis. That’s what we’re trying to do at iSelect. We’re trying to solve the big problems out there. Find ways to bring capital to the entrepreneurs who are the real heroes out there getting up every morning, beating away at these things that are problems that you and me and everyone else faces in their everyday lives.

What is iSelect?

iSelect is a venture capital firm. What that means is we look at hundreds and hundreds of different companies and we apply tough diligence standards to each of them, looking at whether the team has a good plan for growing the business, whether the team is qualified and credible, and more. We do that to resolve the few who provide the best opportunities for investors. And then iSelect takes that smaller set of investments and goes to investors who are interested in venture capital and provides a way for them to invest in these companies, either individually or all at once. We co-invest alongside other venture capitalists. We source transactions through to an exit where the company would become public or get bought. And we manage that whole investment process on behalf of our investors.