A veteran agtech founder I spoke with the other day shared some scar tissue around fundraising and innovating in agri-food systems. 

“A lot of the money that's gone into these really big agtech companies that raised hundreds of millions of dollars came from people who had a lot of exposure to tech as well. The expectation was: ‘if you build it fast, make a lot of mistakes, but claim your space, you'll win’. The other point was that if you spend more money, things can happen more quickly. And in tech, that's often the case. You hire more coders, your programs get written more quickly. While this approach works to some extent in terms of risk mitigation in biotech and agtech, you can also spend a lot of money trying to speed up things that cannot be done quicker. You can take more shots on goal, but you're still going to have to run the race, right?”

This gets to a fundamental question I’ve been asking myself: where are traditional, software-based VC paradigms a fit for agrifood startups, and where are they a mismatch?

Living systems are complex and variable. You can’t iterate your way around the impacts of weather, or plant and animal reproduction cycles. Regulatory frameworks have evolved to protect human health and environmental safety, and navigating them takes time. These aren't bugs to be hacked around; they're fundamental to the reality of building within biological systems.

Yet we’ve seen the same unfortunate pattern play out repeatedly: promising agrifood companies that raised significant equity rounds only to find themselves trapped between growth expectations and biological reality.

The productive middle between incremental change & disruption

Beyond expectations around speed, another mismatch centers on disruption. Innovations that raise the ceiling by building infrastructure or unlocking conditions to transform tomorrow often attract attention and funding. While technologies that lift the floor by solving immediate problems to make existing systems work better are overlooked despite their potential to create value today.

We believe that the most interesting companies are doing both. They are simultaneously solving pressing problems (lifting the floor) and building toward system change (raising the ceiling). I’m calling this the "productive middle.”

Some might see companies with this dual focus as lacking ambition or a clear vision. To me, it isn’t hedging or indecision. It’s strategy.

Smart founders understand that geography and biology are features, not bugs. Software can scale quickly by copying code. Agrifood scales by adapting to context; to regulatory complexity, biological timescales, geographic variability, and behavioral adoption curves.

This is why clever companies stage and sequence innovation for progressive derisking. Shorter-term problem-solving drives adoption, revenue, and the ability to raise capital. This keeps the companies alive long enough to refine their solutions and prove their models. Once they've derisked their technologies and built traction with customers, the next phase of growth is unlocked and transformation becomes possible (sometimes without the need for further equity raises).

I wanted to test this "productive middle" theory with our portfolio. Here are three examples where it's working well.

Case Study: Goterra

Goterra builds modular, autonomous units that use insects to consume food waste. For supermarkets, councils, and food service businesses, it solves pressing problems of cost, logistics, and emissions reduction. The modular units adapt to local context, using on-site processing or centralized facilities, depending on what makes sense.

Beyond the practicalities of cost-effective and flexible waste management (the floor), we’re seeing the beginnings of circular economy infrastructure (the ceiling). Goterra is serving immediate customer needs while building an entirely new biology-based system that can outperform centralized industrial processes.

Food waste that would otherwise generate methane in landfill gets upcycled into sustainable protein and fertilizer. The complexity of biology - the thing that makes agrifood "harder" than software - delivers the key advantage.

Case Study: Nbryo

Nbryo's integrated IVF platform for cattle is another example of where the complexity of biology becomes a competitive advantage.

The immediate value proposition is clear: Nbryo’s technology compresses breeding cycles from seven years to seven days. For cattle producers, this solves real problems in today's commercial operations by providing faster access to elite genetics and more rapid herd improvement.

Over time, the platform drives more fundamental industry change. Each successful embryo transfer generates data that improves the system, unlocking novel breeding strategies. Producers can respond to climate adaptation needs, market demands for specific traits, or disease pressures in timeframes that were previously impossible. 

Nbryo isn't disrupting cattle reproduction; it's working with reproductive biology more precisely and skillfully. The floor and ceiling aren't separate strategies; they're the same technology at different scales of adoption.

Case Study: SwarmFarm Robotics

SwarmFarm makes autonomous vehicles (SwarmBots) that carry out field tasks. Alongside this is SwarmConnect, an open ecosystem for attachments and applications.

The immediate value for growers is solving labor scarcity and making subeconomic tasks economically viable. Precision weeding and targeted spraying are technically possible with conventional equipment, but the logistics and costs don't make sense. SwarmBots change that equation right now for growers.

The transformational potential comes as the open ecosystem grows, making the platform more valuable as more tools plug in. And as the ecosystem grows, farmers gain new tools, precision agriculture techniques become viable, and eventually paths open up to more advanced practices that farmers hadn’t considered before.

These are all examples of solving urgent problems today while building infrastructure that compounds in value tomorrow.

A pragmatic view of agrifood system transformation 

We have a long-term vision of agrifood system transformation. We're also deeply pragmatic about the steps required to get there.

The productive middle isn't a compromise; it's the mechanism. Companies that solve today's problems while building tomorrow's infrastructure are the ones that will still be here in ten years, reshaping how food gets produced.

My hypothesis is that these companies will generate revenue earlier, be more capital efficient, and have clear options when it comes to exit.

Transformation through technologies and companies that respect the pace and complexity of the systems they're trying to improve - not disruption for disruption's sake - will drive real change. 

‍We're always looking for companies operating in this productive middle. If you're building one, let's talk.