iSelect Monthly Update: January 2018

Seed Funds Are Finding the Midwest, But We’ve Been Here All Along

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg came to St. Louis recently, visiting with entrepreneurs, local leaders and small business owners at the Cortex Innovation Community, not far from the iSelect office. He was in town to launch a new small business development initiative called Facebook Community Boost which, according to them, is going to help business owners in flyover country finally reach their digital potential. That’s great, and the fact that St. Louis was his first stop on a planned 30-city tour was no accident.

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What iSelect Offers to Startup Entrepreneurs

There are a variety of reasons startups like to work with iSelect.

First of all, we are a very approachable team. We get along well with our startups. We usually develop strong, personal relationships. And we’re helpful, whether or not they eventually become a portfolio company of ours or not, we are invested in the startup ecosystem and we want to see people succeed. Secondly, we’re flexible capital, and that flexibility comes two ways. First of all, we can invest at literally any stage, from seed through a C round. And so there aren’t a whole lot of VCs out there investing at the seed level, and there aren’t a whole lot of VCs out there investing at a C stage with flexibility to be as small as $250,000 or as big as $2 million.

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We’re Challenging the Financial Services Industry to Think About Venture Investing

Venture capital investing remains one of the highest yielding investment classes available today and a large part of that outperformance is based on the illiquidity premium, which is the higher yield that investors can find by investing in products that are not easily traded. Venture, where the typical investment lasts at least five years, is a textbook example of the illiquidity premium in action, and presents upside that is uncorrelated to the ebbs and flows of the larger stock and bond markets.

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Portfolio Company News

Agrible named to the Thrive Top 50. Read More
Agrible Announces Leadership Changes, Positions for Next Phase of Growth. Read More
Agrible to Launch Retailer Services in 2018. Read More
Agrible Inc. and K Coe Isom Seek New Outcomes For Sustainable Food and Agriculture. Read More
Agrible and K-Coe Isom Announce Partnership. Read More
Agrible: Wired In: Brent Trenhaile. Read More
Agrible: Aerial Imaging Getting Easier. Read More
Agrilyst’s 2017 State of Indoor Farming Report. Read More
Benson Hill named to the Thrive Top 50. Read More
Benson Hill: St. Louis startup among world’s top A.I. companies. Read More
Benson Hill and Neuros Medical: Game Changing Startups 2018. Read More
Benson Hill: Enabling Genome Editing to be a Truly Enabling Technology. Read More
Benson Hill Biosystems Named to the 2018 AI 100, Highlighting Advancements in Empowering Crop Genomic Innovation to Improve our Food System. Read More
Benson Hill: How St. Louis Earned the Title of ‘Disruptor’ in Agtech in 2017. Read More
Better Weekdays: Inc Magazine: 4 Keys Towards Making a Successful Pivot. Read More
Better Weekdays: Entrepreneur Magazine: 7 Red Flags Warning You to Turn Down That Job Offer. Read More
Better Weekdays: Competencies Are the Rosetta Stone for Recruiters and Students. Read More
Cofactor Genomics to Present Immune Profiling Results of Sarcoma Study with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Read More
Understanding Tumor Microenvironments With Cofactor Genomics. Read More
Cofactor Genomics: How Low Can You Go? Advantages of Low-Input RNA-SEQ Over Single-Cell RNA-SEQ. Read More
Cofactor Genomics: RNA: A New Dimension in Molecular Diagnostics. Read More
Compassus COO Corina Tracy and Epharmix CEO Blake Marggraff Discuss the Importance of End-of-Life Conversations with Business of Healthcare. Read More
Top Accelerator Dreamit Health Selects Epharmix to Join Its Latest Cohort. Read More
Epharmix: Pulse@MassChallenge Launches Second Class of 32 Healthcare Startups. Read More
Hatchbuck: 3 Ways Artificial Intelligence Can Boost CRM Initiatives. Read More
Holganix: 5 Types of Soil Microbes to Nurture Plant and Soil Health. Read More
Holganix: 5 Facts About the Organic Fertilizer Market. Read More
Holganix: 3 Ways Roots Enhance Turf Health. Read More
Integer Holdings Corp Secures Long-Term Supply Agreement with Neuros Medical. Read More
Popbookings: 3 Examples of Automation That Every Event Staffing Agency Needs. Read More
Proteosense: Romaine lettuce is likely behind a spate of illnesses—but the FDA won’t say so yet. Read More
StreamLink Software: New Report Presents Opportunity to Fix Federal Grant Reporting. Read More

Upcoming Events

Webinar – January 25, 3pm CT – Holganix: Optimizing Soils With Plant Probiotics to Grow Healthier, More Sustainable Plants. Register

iSelect Fund was developed by active venture investors for advisors and their investors.

We welcome the opportunity to update you on our portfolio companies and to consider the iSelect Fund for your investment portfolio.

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.