Agrilyst Closes Strategic Funding Round

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 31, 2018

Contact: Tim Sprinkle
iSelect Fund
(720) 278-8036
tsprinkle@iselectfund.com

Agrilyst Closes Strategic Funding Round

Capital Will Support Growth, Product Development and New Business Lines

BROOKLYN, NY – 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.

“Agrilyst has been growing by leaps and bounds over the last few years,” says founder and CEO Allison Kopf, “and this capital raise is going to help us bring even more products and services to our customers. But, for me, it’s about even more than that. Farms are not just businesses; they’re a livelihood. A farmer won’t invest in something that takes them a significant amount of time to learn or use, isn’t reliable, or costs more than its clear value. We are committed to building software that our farmers don’t only need, but also love to use. That’s our vision, and we’re very excited about what’s ahead for us and our customers.”

“Agrilyst has proven that is has the best product on the market for this industry and is solving a growing problem in a new, exciting way,” says Carter Williams, iSelect CEO. “It’s helping farmers run their businesses more profitably and we’re excited about the potential for indoor farming. Agrilyst is well positioned to help the industry succeed.”

In 2017, Agrilyst made two key leadership hires, bringing Jon Dayton on board as Chief Technology Officer and Mikhail Hutton as Vice President of Customer Success. This capital raise will also be used to support Agrilyst’s strategic growth efforts and further expansion into new markets and product lines.

“We see a world where computation cost is driven to zero and we now have the resources to monitor the growth, health, and biology of every single seed,” says Phil Chen, Advisor at Horizons Lab. “I see Allison and her team at Agrilyst as the interpreters of this data to secure future food sources.”

The Agrilyst platform helps indoor farm operators run their operations more efficiently by managing workflow, tracking crops from seed to harvest, and aggregating data from sensors for for operational optimization. The company added more than 100 new customers in 2017 and has seen 500% growth in terms of both revenue and customers since 2016. Currently available in 10 countries, Agrilyst is now supporting growers that are producing more than 50 different different types of vegetables and 800 different crop varieties, including new categories: cannabis, floriculture and insect production.

Empire State Development President, CEO and Commissioner Howard Zemsky said, “Agribusiness is a critical part of New York State’s economic development strategy and providing high-tech companies with state funding helps spur job creation and industry growth. New York Ventures is proud to support Agrilyst, a company at the intersection of agriculture and technology, as it seeks to modernize and expand the farming industry.”

“We’re thrilled to continue working with Agrilyst,” says David Hirsch, Compound Co-Founder and Managing Partner. “Everyday, more and more farmers are becoming profitable because of Agrilyst and new farmers are using the platform to scale their businesses around the world. We can’t wait for what comes next.”

For more information visit agrilyst.com or contact the company at (646) 878-6840 or info@agrilyst.com.

About Agrilyst: Founded in 2015 and based in Brooklyn, NY, Agrilyst is the virtual agronomist powering the horticulture industry. Its subscription-based software helps indoor growers and vertical farmers automate labor-intensive processes like production planning, crop scheduling and task management in order to drive higher revenues on the farm and leverage the power of Big Data analytics. Available in 10 countries and covering dozens of different crops, Agrilyst is committed to helping every indoor farmer reach profitability. Learn more and request a demo at agrilyst.com.

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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.

Agrilyst Closes Strategic Funding Round