Investments

We partner with agrifood tech startups that are solving climate change

Our Portfolio

Our Mandate

We invest in early stage companies that are helping transform food and agriculture toward a carbon neutral and climate change resilient future. Does this sound like you? 

>>Yes! Great, we’d love to hear from you. Please reach out using the form below and our team will get back to you as quickly as we can. 

>>I’m not sure. No problem! We’ve pulled together some FAQs below to help you determine whether you might be a fit for our investment mandate. These are rough guidelines, not hard and fast rules, so if you are still unsure, please reach out!
 

What we look for: FAQs

At what stage(s) do you invest?

We are high-conviction, high-support investors, which means we partner with teams from the early days and for the long-haul.

We make initial investments at the pre-seed and seed stages. While definitions can vary a lot, this means we are typically looking to invest anywhere between a couple hundred thousand and a million dollars with our first check.

We don’t necessarily expect you to have your product in market or revenue. We do want to see validation of your innovation and the value it unlocks for your target customers. We also want to see evidence of your ambitions for global growth and large-scale impact.

What geographies do you invest in?

As an early-stage investor, we want to know and work closely with the teams we partner with. Given our HQ is in Australia and our team has strong ties to North America, we are particularly active in these geographies. 

Our Fund I is formed under the Australian Early Stage Venture Capital Limited Partnership (ESVCLP) scheme, and as such, the majority (80%) of our investments must be into Australian-domiciled companies. 

We are working towards Fund II, which will have a broader international remit. However, in the meantime, we remain primarily focused on Australian opportunities.

What parts of the value chain do you invest in?

We invest in companies operating up and down the food and agriculture value chain, so long as two key criteria are met:

  • You are developing and commercializing innovations that will apply in and scale to major agricultural systems globally
  • Your innovations can deliver meaningful climate impact

As such, we don’t invest in projects that are largely based on operating equipment, facilities, food/fiber production, or agricultural land in a specific location.

We also don’t typically invest in CPG brands, unless they are underpinned by a specific technology or business model innovation that enables impact at scale.

What topics and themes do you invest in?

Our investment mandate is to foster the development and growth of innovations that can be applied to global challenges in food and agriculture. Pathways for impact that we invest in include, but are not limited to: 

Waste & Resource Recovery

Identifying & reducing waste, re-designing supply chains and products to eliminate waste, or valorising waste streams

Embedded Finance & Risk

Unlocking new supply chain finance, risk, and insurance products and business models through enhanced data and transparency (e.g., asset backed finance, parametric insurance, etc)

Sustainable Protein

Alternative and climate-neutral (or better) methods to create and/or incentivise production of nutritious protein from animals, plants, and novel production systems

Lower Intensity Production

Technologies and business models that enable the agri-food value chain to respond to, and thrive amidst, the push toward lowering the input intensity of production systems (e.g., reduced chemicals, energy, emissions, etc.)

Democratized Infrastructure

Reimagining infrastructure as modular & distributed and powered by automation & digital disruption, that will reconfigure agri-food value chains to unlock new economics & impact

Enhanced Natural Capital

Tools, processes, and markets to incentivize & reward growers for ecosystem services (e.g., bio-sequestration) and scale markets to deliver environmental impact globally

Seeking Investment?

Are you looking for investment? We review all the companies that contact us, so please fill out the form below to tell us more about you! If we think there's a possible fit, we will be in touch to progress the conversation!

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Let’s build an awesome project together.

Describe your project and leave us your contact info, we’ll get back to you within 24 hours.
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Looking to Invest?

If you are interested in learning more about our investment portfolio, becoming an investor in our funds, or more about Tenacious Venture in general, please complete the form below.

To receive detailed information about investing in Tenacious Ventures, you must qualify as wholesale (sophisticated) investor.

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