Investor Partners

Barnstorm is a venture foundry propelled by Cornucopian Capital and located adjacent to the UC Davis. In partnership with IIFH, Barnstorm collaborates with entrepreneurs and leading scientific and domain experts to launch new businesses that deliver first-in-class health benefits to consumers through food, consumer health, and healthcare offerings.

Better Food Ventures exclusively invests in entrepreneurs that leverage information and communications technology to transform the food and agriculture sectors. Established in 2013, Better Food Ventures has assembled a team of experienced international investors to identify and develop companies that can improve the performance of food and agriculture industries by harnessing the power of IT, including mobile and cloud-based computing, sensor technologies and “the internet of things”, robotics, artificial intelligence, location-identification and image recognition, massive and real-time data analytics, collaborative production and consumption, and social marketing. Information and communications technologies developed by Better Food Ventures over the last decade can now create value in vertical applications like food and agriculture. Through investment, advice and collaboration, Better Food Ventures draws on their Silicon Valley venture capital and start-up experience to add value for companies in developed countries, regardless of their stage of development. Better Food Ventures is affiliated with The Mixing Bowl, which strives to “connect people who are feeding the world with people who are changing the world through tech innovation.”

Better Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm that backs founders on a mission to build a better world. We partner with startups leveraging emerging technologies and breakthrough science to create a sustainable, healthy, and inclusive economy where both people and planet thrive. We are active in investment themes that map to the UN Sustainable Development Goals including food/ag tech, synthetic biology, circular economy, electrification, personalized health, longevity, education, and the future of work. Big challenges represent big opportunities, and we seek founders with a passion to build world-changing companies with the potential for impact at scale and outsized financial returns. Better Ventures is committed to backing underrepresented founders, and we have set public goals to build investment portfolios with 50%/10%/10% representation of women, Black, and Latinx founders.

Big Idea Ventures is solving the World’s Biggest Challenges by supporting the World’s Best Entrepreneurs, Scientists and Engineers. Big Idea Ventures has 4 funds, one of them being the Generation Food Rural Partners Fund (size USD$124M).

The Generation Food Rural Partners fund (GFRP) commercializes university-developed intellectual property focused on food, protein, and agriculture innovation. We launch new companies, recruit seasoned management teams, and provide support from inception alongside our university and strategic partners. Our mission is to support economic development in rural communities and drive innovation in university ecosystems across the United States.

Bluestein Ventures is a venture capital firm that invests in the future of food with a mission to transform the food system to be better, healthier, and more sustainable. We’re looking for game-changing, early-stage ventures across the food industry that redefine how consumers achieve their health and wellness. Bluestein’s investments span the entire value chain – both B2C and B2B – with a focus on four areas: high-growth consumer brands, proprietary foodtech, next-gen commerce, and value-add digital technology. We invest between Seed to Series A.

Our portfolio includes Meati, Mori, New Culture, BiomeSense, Filtricine, Fount and more. Learn more about us on LinkedIn and www.bluesteinventures.com.

BioGenerator was formed in 2003, and serves as an evergreen investor that creates, grows, and funds innovative companies and talented entrepreneurs in the St. Louis region. BioGenerator identifies and de-risks commercially promising innovations and services; advises innovators and entrepreneurs; recruits and supports entrepreneurial talent; makes staged investments grounded in rigorous due diligence; and offers access to enabling lab space and capital equipment. BioGenerator is the investment arm of BioSTL, funding early-stage health and plant bioscience companies through four funding stages, which drive technology development and commercialization. BioGenerator positions companies to navigate the unique challenges of early-stage bioscience company development and provides guidance and expertise in order for the companies to grow and achieve success.

Based in Hawaii and California, Elemental Execlerator is working to address the lack of food resiliency and rising greenhouse gas emissions associated with agriculture, food production, distribution, and waste. Elemental is a mission-focused accelerator connecting commercial opportunities to entrepreneurs building world-changing companies. Each year, Elemental selects 15-20 ventures that fit their culture and mission and funds each company up to $1 million to improve systems that impact people’s lives: energy, water, agriculture, transportation, circular economy, and beyond.

Founded in 2021, E²JDJ is a global VC firm based in New Orleans, Louisiana that focuses on scalable, high growth and early stage AgriFood businesses that promote human health, lower global energy consumption, reduce the environmental impact of the industry, eliminate animals from the supply chain and leverage technology to materially impact productivity. The fund focuses on innovations across the food supply chain that improve the quality, resilience and sustainability of the food system, and ultimately human and planetary health.

FoodShot Global (FSG) empowers bold ideas and innovative companies to accelerate the transformation to a healthy, sustainable and equitable food system. It is a collaborative investment platform of innovators, investors, industry leaders, and advocates working to solve our biggest food system challenges. By connecting knowledge, networks, and funding across private and public sectors, FoodShot creates scalable, impactful, and inspired solutions – MoonShots for Better Food. FoodShot’s integrated capital continuum includes the $500,000+ GroundBreaker Prize for researchers, early-stage entrepreneurs, and policy advocates, as well as up to $10 million in equity or debt investment for winning for-profit businesses. Along with post-investment resources, FoodShot’s blended capital model empowers best-in-class entrepreneurs, researchers, and advocates to transform the most critical food system challenges into opportunities for collaborative investment and meaningful change.

Each year, FoodShot selects a challenge – an identified obstacle to a healthy, sustainable, and equitable food system. FoodShot invites entrepreneurs and innovators to submit businesses that address the challenge for funding consideration, while experts in the challenge area provide issue-specific insights and nominate candidates for the GroundBreaker prize. FoodShot vets and reviews submissions for boldness, viability and impact to determine the best-of-class candidates. Finally, FoodShot and its partners award equity, debt, and prize dollars to the finalists, as well as providing post-investment capacity resources to ensure greater scale and impact See 2018 prize recipients here: FoodShot Announces Winners.

FTW Ventures is a leading, early-stage venture fund investing in the breakthrough science & technology for a more Sustainable Food System.

FTW works with a broad startup, corporate and investor community to reverse climate change, improve productivity, reduce waste, and stave off diet-related illnesses in both the developed and developing world. The team looks for companies in biotechnology, hardware/automation, software/SaaS, AI/ML, novel ingredients, sustainable packaging and climate tech to nurture not only with capital, but their expertise and their network of customers, partners and advisors.

They advise founders along their entire startup journey – through fundraising, developing the initial product strategy, building their go-to-market plan, business development connections and providing guidance on effective marketing.

FTW Ventures was founded by Brian Frank, a serial entrepreneur turned venture investor with prior operating and investing experience in the technology and food tech sectors. He’s raised capital from some of the most notable founders and innovators in Food and Technology sectors, as well as leading corporates that are defining the future of food. And the team leverages his vast network of ‘experts’, many of whom are UC Davis Professors, to support the audacious missions to radically transform our worldwide Food Systems. Brian is also already supported by one of our very own IIFH Fellow alumni, who joined the firm full time after completed her PhD in the UC Davis Veterinary School.

To date, their startups have raised $100s of millions of dollars in additional capital, have launched industry changing products in cosmetics, nutrition, agriculture and food service industries AND do so while creating immense uplift for people, the planet and profits for the network FTW has developed worldwide.

Radicle Growth is an acceleration fund that applies a proprietary platform to discover and support emerging technologies in food and agriculture. They partner with entrepreneurs to turn ideas into game-changing technologies and thriving businesses. Radicle Growth provides early-stage companies with innovation capital, and surrounds start-ups with a robust global food and ag network of resources, partners and research institutions. Through additional operational services and strategic partnerships, food and ag tech companies gain the power to bring the latest technologies to market and transform the future of food.

Supply Change Capital’s mission is to invest in the changing face of food to catalyze the food systems of the future. Founded in 2020, they focus on food and food tech, investing with a gender and diversity lens to bring about a future of food that is sustainability mindful, supply chain efficient, better for you, and culture rich. The firm focuses on early-stage companies in food and agriculture technology, ingredient technology, and consumer-facing brands with a specific lens to health, sustainability, and diversity.

Based in Los Angeles and Chicago, the women-run firm leverages experience in food, food tech, supply chain, operations, and technology to team with founders as they grow and scale. Current areas of curiosity include fermentation, food preservation, and supply chain technology.

TechAccel LLC was founded in 2014 as a first-of-its-kind technology and venture development organization in the agriculture, animal health & nutrition, and food technology sectors.

TechAccel sources, invests in and acquires early-stage innovations. Through collaborations with dozens of universities and research institutions, TechAccel conducts science advancement and de-risking research and development to ready technologies for commercialization. TechAccel is based in the greater Kansas City area and has offices in St. Louis at the Danforth Plant Science Center.

The Production Board is a San Francisco-based technology incubator and investment holding company, aiming to improve the efficiency and economics of global food and agriculture markets. To realize this mandate, they conduct deep research into fundamental problems in the food and agriculture value chain, and identify opportunities where technology may enable new operating models or improved end products. They then fund, build, and capitalize companies based on core theses. In some cases, supplying capital and strategic partnership to external companies already pursuing this work.

Exponential Food Labs (EFL) is The March Group’s venture studio focused on building the next generation of food & health companies with AI at the core. EFL brings together unique domain expertise with leading synthetic biology and data science innovators, food & health industry veterans, and VC operating expertise in partnership with IIFH.

AgFunder is a new kind of venture capital firm. Our mission is to invest in bold and impactful technologies rapidly transforming our food and agriculture system.

Founded in 2013 and based in Silicon Valley, AgFunder is one of the world’s most active foodtech and agtech VCs. We’re rethinking venture capital for the 21st century. We were born online, and with our publication AFN we’ve built a global ecosystem of 85,000+ subscribers. This gives us one of the most powerful networks to help build impactful and important companies.