Benson Hill: Changing the Face of Ag Tech

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The agriculture industry faces unprecedented challenges driven by the growing global population, shifting diets, and increasing urbanization. To meet the needs of society, agriculture must evolve and innovate like never before. However, external risks, such as climate change, limited natural resources, concerns over chemical inputs, GMO protests, industry consolidation, and reduced choice in the marketplace, make innovation in agriculture even more crucial.

One innovation that has the potential to revolutionize the industry is cloud biology, which combines plant biology, Big Data analytics, and cloud computing. This powerful combination drives new developments throughout the agriculture value chain, from precision farming and breeding to supply chain management and sustainability. By leveraging the vast amounts of data generated by modern agriculture, cloud biology enables farmers, researchers, and industry leaders to make more informed decisions and achieve better outcomes.

What Exactly Is Cloud Biology?

It isn’t a new field. It has existed in the broader life sciences community for several years and is centered around the convergence of cloud computing with biology. Think about the cloud services offered by Amazon Web Services and what that really represents, both from an analytics perspective and a computational scale perspective. Combine that with tools like machine learning, artificial intelligence, and more, and you suddenly are able to take very, very large data sets and extract value from them that humans might not be able to see. Then you can take that information and insights and develop biological solutions or recommendations from them.

This transcends many industries, not just the life sciences, but agriculture is quickly becoming fertile ground for cloud biology.

Cloud Biology in Agriculture

The resulting products from all this, of what the computational engine tells you to do, are in the crop. Sometimes that means higher productivity. Sometimes that means better nutritional profiles. Sometimes that means a different leaf architecture so that you can plant at a higher density in a field and get effectively more outputs for no additional inputs. Whatever it is, it results from cloud biology and analytics informing those decisions.

Cloud biology can help farmers optimize their crop yields and reduce waste by providing real-time data on weather, soil moisture, and other environmental factors. It can also enable plant breeders to develop more resilient and productive crop varieties by analyzing genetic data on a massive scale. Additionally, cloud biology can improve supply chain efficiency and sustainability by providing greater transparency and traceability throughout the production process.

According to a report by MarketsandMarkets, the global market for agricultural biotechnology is expected to grow at a CAGR of 10.5% from 2021 to 2026, reaching a value of $58.4 billion. This growth is being driven in part by innovations in cloud biology, which are helping to address the many challenges facing the agriculture industry today.

On this podcast, we feature Matt Crisp, founder, and CEO of Benson Hill Biosystems. This iSelect portfolio company is pioneering cloud biology for agriculture, leveraging technology to solve some of the world’s greatest agricultural challenges.

Click above to listen to the full episode.

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.

Benson Hill Biosystems and the Changing Face of Agriculture Technology