Claire Pribula, Managing Director of The Yield Lab Asia Pacific, Discusses The Underserved AgriTech

Speaker A: Hello and welcome to Dinishwar, the YouTube podcast show once again powered by citiesabc uh.com and citiesabc impact with Domi, AI and intelligenthq, uh.com and business abc.net and once again we keep profiling the doers and the makers that are changing our world and that are pushing business forward ideas, innovation and technology. And today I'm particularly excited to speak with someone that is doing all of this and uh, more in terms of how we take forward a lot of things uh, related with our ecosystem of business and innovation and the investment but as well on the areas of agriculture and technology, which is one of my areas of focus and as well one of the things I've been learning because if you don't have food, you don't have agriculture. We'll have a big problem. And this is a big problem for the world economy that I think most of the people are not realizing. So without further delay, welcome to our series. Uh, Claire Pribula. Uh, so Claire is a uh, senior professional and um, um with a lot of acumen, ah in business in multiple different areas. She's the managing director and co founder of the Yield Lab Asia Pacific Y L A P which is the 8th fund of the Old Lab Global Network of independent funds we shall present in North America, Europe, Latin America. The LAB is the first global agtech uh federation of funds focused on early stage investing and scaling of impactful innovation utilizing relevant deep science and industry expertise across all aspects of Agriculture. With 118 portfolio companies and over 200 million UM assets under management globally the LEV is one of the most active actech funds. Um, in the case of Claire, she's operating from Singapore and she has responsibilities of overseeing and managing the investment, fundraising portfolio and company operations for this uh, the $50 million Target early stage agtech fund. Claire also sits on the global board of the Lab and is a global board member of multiple the Yield Lab. As a Pacific portfolio Companies with over 30 years of experience, Claire has experience in US Asia and in creating and leading new and emerging lines of business for global Fortune 500 technology companies where she started Korea and driving revenues in excess of US uh 300 million and also has experienced the trials and rewards of creating an Asian based startup resulting in a successful exit. So the list goes on. Claire is an honor to have you here and I'm um, very excited to talk with you.

Speaker B: Thank you very much Dennis. Uh, it's wonderful to get this opportunity so thank you for having me.

Speaker A: So Claire, you have unconventional way from the US to Asia from corporate, uh, Fortune 500 to agriculture and technology. So a bit of your background. I know that you have a fantastic history of family. I would like to start a bit of your personal background. What made you become the person you are right now? And if you go back to early, uh, days, um, how did you kick off a bit of background on education and family and how you start your career.

Speaker B: Oh, gosh, yeah. Well, thank you. I don't know. Going back so far, can I remember? No, it was uh, you know, I, uh, it was a time where technology was just really booming. And uh, actually my, my uh, major was art. My natural talent is drawing and realism, strangely. And um, uh, I knew I wasn't going to make money at that, so I switched to business. And it was when technology was really, um, booming. I've always been usually the only woman doing what I do. Um, but most importantly focused on those areas of industry that needed to be transformed. So first it was business process outsourcing. You know, how do we get efficiencies around, um, um, being able to leverage across companies to be able to drive down the cost of innovation. Then it was um, transportation and logistics. And that was before everybody talked about supply chain. It was the precursor to supply chain. How do we collaborate across multiple entities to be able to streamline the supply chain? And then after that, oh gosh, I went on and on, but each industry pillar by pillar. So, um, uh, marketing, you know, how, you know, we spend 10, 20% more a year. And as an executive you're asked, you know, to up your expenditure every year, but you have zero idea what it means in regards to the bottom line or to R and D or anything else. And that's when bi business intelligence and analytics was what we were, what we then could use to be able to know what the consumer is going to want before they want it and to um, diminish those costs, diminish the costs in R and D, diminish the costs in, in um, uh, um, um, PR and advertising to be able to go straight to. And that's when I did my startup straight to the individuals that are going to be able to change the conversation naturally unpaid. So being disruptive all the way in each of these industries. And that is what brought me into agriculture because I was doing this in China. Um, how I got to Asia I can talk about in a minute. But uh, we were doing this in China. The investors that invested in us, um, uh, said if you can do it in China, you can do it anywhere. That was just when Weibo was Being set up and WeChat and other things. There really was no. In China everything's different. There's no uh, Twitter, there's no um, Facebook. So um, they figured if we could make it happen there we could do it anywhere because it's simple. The rest of the world. And that's where we coined the term influencer activation which is now a common term used everywhere. We were on the Gartner cool list and they were amazed we were doing this in China in that we were able to identify uh, through social listening platform that we created those individuals that let's say are runners or um, had the propensity to care about running shoes. So Nike could then engage with them, give them often offline word of mouth marketing experience where they could naturally give um, them exclusivity, a reason to share, educate them. If you appeal to somebody in that way then you actually can. They are, they already become your influencer, they're already um, part of you. And then we would match conversations with those that are saying something erroneous about Nike and that way change the conversation without it being paid, without a focus group, without all this so disruptive to PR and advertising. You might wonder then agriculture, well um, in China there's a real food problem, food safety problem and perception problem. And companies like Monsanto and other big ag companies had, had spent a lot of time with governments but not so much with the consumers which really hurt them. Um, you know with Roundup and other things that were you know, deemed as being ah, very bad for the environment but at the time was the most effective weed killer. Um and so we started doing some work with them and as I got deeper and deeper into, into uh, agriculture and the food challenges, I could see this was the last industry that I to transform. It's the last trillion dollar industry. And it was in that vein that when I'm from St. Louis originally I'm a St. Louisian. Um, it was from that that I started to look at what I could be involved in in agriculture. And agriculture in the US is the breadbasket of the country is in the Midwest. Um, I met uh, the founder of the Yield, which was Ah, Thad Simons who was the CEO of Novus International and Larry Taylor who had a 40 year career at Monsanto in Asia Pacific. And then we started putting together a plan for a fund in Asia Pacific. How I ended up in Asia Pacific in the first place was uh, I felt I'd already pretty much hit the glass ceiling at an early age in the technology industry and in North America. And, uh, realized I was probably not going to make it above a director level there. Um, and so I started getting my master's in international business. And, um, I got a call from a recruiter that was asking me if I wanted to grow a business outside the country, which was exactly what I felt I needed to do. And it just so happened that that was IBM. IBM, uh, research had developed. They develop about 4,000 patents a year. Most of them they don't use or they give away, but there was a series of patents that they wanted to create into a business around supply chain. And that was why I was recruited, was to set that up in Asia Pacific. I'd never been to Singapore. I had been. They gave me, uh, a book that's called how to Kiss Bow and Shake Hands and a Big Budget and just kind of Shove me over there. And I made every mistake possible culturally in every which way. Um, but I figured it out eventually. Uh, and we had a successful business that we created around supply chain that was then adopted by IBM. And then after that I just kind of became the person that was the go to person for Asia Pacific at IBM and then was recruited by SAP to be part of their leadership team. Um, and did that, uh, and then after that, um, uh, Axiom, uh, which was in BI and Analytics, which then brought me to the startup that I did. So that's kind of full circle. So I kind of feel, Dennis, that, you know, this is my last stop. You know, the last. I don't know why agriculture would possibly be, you know, why would banking be transformed before agriculture? Or why would. Why would, uh, you know, even, even consumer product goods and, you know, uh, and advertising and pr. But for some reason we think about something we do every day, not very much. And, um, it's been mostly the research and development has been handled by the big ag companies, which is fine, except that they're not focused on absolutely every aspect of the industry. And that makes things lopsided. Uh, there's 300 million, uh, people right now that are food and stable, um, and you don't even have to go that far, uh, to find that we grow enough grain on the planet. It just doesn't make it to its final destination. It gets mycotoxins on it. And so on one hand we don't have a food problem, um, because we do actually grow enough. It just doesn't make it, um. And on the other hand, we do have diminishing resources and climate issues that make it to where, you know, we're headed for A head crash in, in maybe less than 20 years. And you know this is the type of thing that uh, unlike the recent uh war uh that the company countries will have wars over because you know no, no one can, can live without food and water. So it's important, it's time sensitive and, and I love it for that reason. It's important. Uh, first fund uh was set up in 2015 in North America and it was the first ever agriculture tech early stage fund. So you know the only way to, to be able to transform an industry is to bring in innovation that in fact will be not disruptive for the sake of disruption but transformative and being. It's all about under the theme of doing more with less. Um and this is across a very complicated industry.

Speaker A: Yeah. So before we go to the fund I still want to your questions. Um, so, so your career spans uh over three decades and you lead like you mentioned major business lines for Fortune 500 tech companies and you successful exit as well your own Asian based startup. So I want to touch before we go to the fund just uh, how what was the defining turning point that made you pivot from mainstream enterprise and corporate life into deeply specialized world of first of all moving to Asia and get into early stage actech. Uh culminating on the founding of the old Asia. Because I think this story is quite important for, for our audience and I'm particularly excited myself as well.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean as far as getting to Asia was just career wise. Um, I, I, I always really even before that when I was a child I remember playing with uh, um. What game was that? It was a game with different flags of uh, the, I'm trying to think of the name. It's a, it's an ngo. Um anyway, I remember being very fixated on different flags, different countries. I had a pen pal in Malaysia. Um, you know it just international things always fascinated me and which is weird for being in the middle of the country. St. Louis is landlocked with a bunch of rivers. But it's always been something that I felt is in my future. I don't know why. Uh, and then, and then uh, when I realized that you know from a career perspective as, as a woman in, in the U.S. um, it's, there just are differences and, and how you're, you're in a big multinational, um, you're never going to be in the nudge nudge, wink wink, uh group. And um, so I started getting my master's at Washington U. And in international business. I didn't get to finish it because I Got a recruiter called and offered me. I was thinking of a lovely flat in Chelsea and in London and they said Singapore. And I thought oh gosh, I've never been to Singapore. Um, but I figured that everybody else prob, probably wanted the, the prime that was in IBM, one of the prime locations. And, and that's why they were hiring from the outside. So I couldn't be disingenuous and so it took it. Um, and that like I said was my, my first foray into Asia where, where I, I, you know I, I didn't exactly come in with a huge understanding of the challenges and, and there were challenges because you know, not only did people not know supply chain, which was what I was there to take these patents from IBM research and create a business around, but also uh, I couldn't find anybody that could, could communicate supply chain. I mean uh, it, I had, it actually ended up after six months my boss said you know, why haven't you hired anybody? I said because you can't find anybody understands what I'm talking about. So I finally went to uh, traditional supply people that were actually managing supply chains and turned them into business development people and networked well. So it was easier to do that way than it was to identify anybody in business development that could possibly understand what we were trying to do. Um, and then after that I just started, uh, once you're successful at one thing then you get kind of pegged. Um, and I rolled from one thing to another. I had a few breaks of a few years back to St. Louis but then I was back again.

Speaker A: So there's a big challenge like you mentioned into translating the Fortune 500 to the startup experience. And for instance you've driven over 300 million in revenue from S3 massive tech companies and also lived in the trial and error reality of building an Asian entity first even in corporations and then in the Asian startups from the ground up. How uh, does this dual experience. Because I think this is a big thing right now, especially as the world economy becomes more global in both the corporate scale and the lean startup survival and how this shape your evaluation and mentor early stage agtech founders today, least for what you're doing now.

Speaker B: Yeah, I, I think having that background um, and lends credibility um, you know, for early stage company their biggest challenge is commercialization and um, at first it's the innovation. It has to be compelling and, and, and something that's needed that is going to really drive inefficiencies out or uh, develop something new that hasn't been there before, um, and. But yet to be able to make it as you move up from a seed stage to Series A is commercialization for some reason. Now, one venture capital company quoted a couple years ago that a Series B equals 10 million in revenue a year, which is silly because every company monetizes differently. But that's become now kind of this, this, this target that to get to a series, you know, um, B, you need to be, um, uh, you know, Series A and B, you need to be at least 10 million in revenue a year. So the challenge is, is that I, um, mean, I have that. The background to do that. I also have the background of understanding multinationals and how they think and, and how to engage with them and, and having done a startup, I also know the stress of a startup. So, um, at the time that I did the startup in Singapore, there was only a couple of venture capital funds. There were hardly any. And so it was a pick of nothing. And, um, there were a lot of games that were played and it wasn't nice. And I learned from that that I will never treat founders like that, ever. Um, uh, I kind of learned what I won't do. And what I won't do is, you know, I tell all our people if, if somebody calls that's a founder looking for funds, take the call. Even if it's seemingly not something that we would invest in, take the call because you don't know where they are in their journey, how desperate they are. Nothing is lonelier than being a founder. Um, and nothing is more stressful than knowing than watching yourself run out of money. So we always take the call. It may not be for U.S. investment, but we're there to talk and to be able to give ideas and maybe point them in the right direction. And I think that that, um, you know, experience of mine has not served me wrong. You know, we are, we are a place where we're a small team because, you know, the fun business, you run off of a 2.5 administration fee. So you can never be very big because no investor wants to build a company. What they want to do is deploy their money to where they can get a return on their investment. And so, but I think that that provided my experience, has provided me with a lot of insights into what founders go through.

Speaker A: So, um, deep dive right now in the old lab. So, um, just a couple of notes that I have here, and it's quite impressive, the Yield Network Worldwide. So I would like from you, but just for our audience, I have my notes and then I would like for you to explain what is the Olav and well, the Olav Asia. So it was founded UH, in 2015 and has expanded to a network of funds of different continents. And um, you had multiple exits. But uh, the company, the fund portfolio includes around 118 companies generating over 4,000 jobs and direct impact of the 12 and 17 United Nations Sustainable Developing Goals. And um, we've been attracting a lot of acumen but as well um, there's a lot of things and you are leading the old lab Asia Pacific. So I would like for people that don't know about it, just explain what is the old lab, how it works and um, how you are working on some of the achievements besides what I just mentioned.

Speaker B: Sure. So the reason the Yield Lab was set up um, originally was when Thad Simons retired. Uh, Novus is an animal health company. It's a part of Mitsui and they have a mandatory retirement age. It's based in St. Louis. He uh, wanted to set up an agriculture fund. And what he quickly found out is there in 2015 there really wasn't much innovation. And the reason why is most of the innovation was done by the big ag R D and there weren't entrepreneurs leading the, the the with new ideas. So what we originally did is we set up an accelerator. We've now scrubbed the word accelerator from everything we do because that is the antithesis of what's needed. Um, but at that time most of these innovators within R D had innovation that was, that was very leading but wasn't adopted by big corporate and they'd been, they had been working on it in their G garage or you know, in their, in their um, off hours but had no idea how to bring it to market. So originally we were small fund set up with just you know, 100,000, $200,000 check and then also some programmatic aspects to help these innovators be able to understand how to set up their business. Then as, as time went on, um, we developed larger fund because now you know, by 2018 there were more innovators coming out focusing on the agri food sector. And so we could actually find some innovation that was important and impactful. Um, and then where we are now is we develop larger funds that do seed and series A investment, not just the first check. Um, and so that we can now ride the trajectory of reinvesting in some of these companies but also coming in at the series A perspective, um, uh, point of time with some of this innovation that's out there. It's, it's so it's evolved to where from 2015 to now to where we're the 9th of 10 funds. Um, there are funds on every continent. We don't put our, all of our funds. I know most funds put their, their funds all in one place and like Switzerland or someplace else. And we, what we found is that you lose the intimacy of um, the challenges in the agri food system. Agriculture is very, I can mention the big areas, but underneath it is thousands of fragments of other areas that are also important. So plant science, precision, ag, animal health, sustainability, traceability, food ingredients. Within just animal health, there's aquaculture, fast growing protein, there's all kinds of things. So each of these big block items have just thousands of sub areas. And if you're going to transform a food system you have to cover everything off, which includes ocean as well. So terrestrial as well as ocean. Because what we are running out of is enough arable land. And what we don't want to do is be using crops that are meant for us to eat. Well, we could be using seaweed for example for some things. Um, and so it's the entire food system, it's very complicated, it's very deep. And so our, our ethos across our funds, again we're independent funds because that's the way funds are. They're registered under the monetary authority of whatever country. So we have funds in North America, we have funds for Europe out of Ireland registered, we have funds for Latin America out of Argentina and our fund in Singapore for Asia Pacific. This way we can take a regional view of what's challenging. So for example in, in Asia Pacific there's a lot of small holders. 80% of our food in Asia Pacific comes from smallholders. But yet, um, there's very large plantations which are some of the biggest polluters to the waterway. So you know, we've got both in North America mostly all large producers in Latin America. In Central America there's small holders, but then there's also the rest of Latin America, all large producers. Um, and then of course in Africa a lot of small holders. So, so you can't monetize a small holder the same way as you can a uh, large farm. Um, so they just can't. They're working off of one and two hectares of land. They don't have the money. So you have to find different ways to bring innovation to them. Um, so that regional intimacy and then how we're organized, we call ourselves a federation of funds. I sit on the board, uh, with uh, each managing director of the Other funds. And that's where we share innovation, we share ideas. We move our deals around the globe very fast because once you find, you know, one company that you're in investing in, you most certainly don't want it to stay within its, um, region or country. You want to get into its total addressable market as fast as possible. So we move these deals around the globe so that they can then get to an exit. And you're right, we have 119 companies we've invested in across all of our funds so far. Um, we've had nine exits, you figure for early stage investing, you know, eight, nine years at least to get to an exit, and we've only taken a few off the books. And reason why I highlight that is because, um, you know, the tech industry has a high failure rate in early stage. The tech industry is about 60, 70%. So our, you know, taking just a handful off the books is a, is a pretty good Runway run rate. And, and we attribute that to the fact that we not just apply, we don't just apply capital, but we also apply the relevant subject matter expertise to help these companies finish their development and then begin to commercialize and in this way close the gap between the companies that are more than likely going to do a proof of concept, a paid pilot, uh, uh, a customer, and then ultimately acquire them. Everything we do is B2B investing. So these are companies that are not bringing product to consumer and so most of them are going to probably exit through an acquisition.

Speaker A: So Clary, one of the things that I'm very passionate is about the problems of agriculture. And um, what you guys are doing is quite cutting edge and probably one of the biggest hubs of startups of quality that are doing the most innovative parts. I know that you have a couple of slides you want to share, but uh, before that. So, um, the numbers are quite mind blowing. I showed that in this podcast. We talk about 2.6 billion people directly, um, part of the agriculture ecosystem and we're talking around close to 700 million farmers. But the innovation is very few people, as I'm sure you found that, uh, you found out dealing with this on a daily life, on a daily day. And like you mentioned, there's problems like food security, water, even animal fertilizers and a lot of things that have massive consequences for all of us. And if you put the agriculture and the food together, then everyone in the planet is directly affected by this. So I know that you guys are really on the cutting part, cutting edge part of all the innovation around this But I would like for you to. And um, you're an expert as well on this, being on this for a long time. One of the things you like to share our audience and probably highlight some of the startups and feel free to share some of your. Because I know that you have fantastic slides that can highlight. It's a master class probably we'll have a separate uh, podcast just about that, but just a bit of highlight about innovation challenges and whatever startups you have that are uh, solving some of these problems.

Speaker B: So first I just want to show, you know, we're not talking about like huge money here. You know, uh, this is all across all deals and this is, you know, globally. Um, so it's amazing that this is the, the smallest amount of money, you know, uh, a billion. And that's not even early stage investing. These are, that could be private equity deals. That could be a million things. But looking at Asia Pacific alone, I just want to show this slide before I talk about this one company. You know, whether you're veg, if you're a vegetarian, you may not care about this, but um, a lot of us that are eat protein, animal, animal protein. Um, Americans eat something like £350 a year. Um, uh, Chinese eat about 360 Australians, £380 a year. Yet look at how small the investment is for animal health. And I'm talking not just terrestrial but also aquaculture. It's pretty shocking. Um, and yet the food system needs to be transformed. And um, we do this, you know, quarterly view for ourselves and for our investors. So, so we can kind of see how that the needle is moving. So then, now let me go into

Speaker A: uh, just one question on this part because this is very perplexed for me as well because we are putting trillions of dollars in AI, but you're not putting in the food and not putting the security of the food. So it's because from your experience and you work in tech is because people don't think the food is so important because it's a paradox. We have money for AI that is disrupting the world economy. And we're not. One billion is nothing. If you look at most of the valuations of even some of the AIs, uh, labs, we're talking about trillions of dollars of valuation. And uh, it's a paradox because the world security of food is a big thing. I just want to highlight this because you have not just the agricultural background, but you have as well the tech and the investment background.

Speaker B: Yeah, it is a real paradox um, and I think it's because it's a, it's, you know, unfortunately, venture capital is a bit like the shiny object syndrome. Um, those that aren't specialized around particular area. Um, when something new and novel comes up, it draws the, the cross industry venture capital into the space. Not necessarily rooted in, um, not necessarily rooted in the practicality of what the investment is. So for example, we've had a lot of misfires in industries and those have been like controlled environment agriculture. That became quite a shiny object and a lot of venture capital from cross industry venture capital. So that not specialized in agriculture flew in billions. The unit economics just aren't there. They aren't there for the water and the power utilization, um, that it requires to do an indoor farm. You still want to get, you know, your lettuce and your tomatoes at a reasonable price, um, even though you may be getting it fresher coming from a local indoor farm. So hundreds of millions of dollars went down the drain of venture capital. And then there was cell based. Everybody, you know, shiny object ran to cell based, um, cell based chicken, cell based, you know, uh, anything and, and mostly starting with, with, with shrimp. And again cross industry venture capital come, comes flying in billions of dollars invested and gee, what a surprise. Um, there's really no market for it because again, fermentation equipment and all the research that needs to go to get to uh, a cell based. Anything that has the consistency of what we're used to eating is a lot of money, a lot of cost, a lot of overhead and is. It would take a great deal of time to get to parity with how much chicken, natural chicken costs. So the practicality of it, so that's money lost. Everybody pulled their chairs back and then, then um, alternative proteins, you know, like impossible burger, everything else. Who is that being marketed to? It's number one. It's, it's not even healthy. It's using unhealthy oils. So it's not a healthy choice. Um, and you know, if you're a vegetarian, you really don't like the taste of, of meat. So um, you know, there's a lot of misfires which then causes everybody to go, oh, I'm off of agriculture, agri food. And I think those shiny objects are distractions. As far as AI. AI is pretty much prevalent in every one of our companies. Uh, it may not be the biggest feature, it's a supporting function. And um, so technology is important, but it's for the final outcome. It's to get to the final outcome. And that's you Know that's the reason why early stage ag tech dedicated investing is so hard to get um, funding into. We de risk these deals, um, and so all those investors that come in at a later stage and even cross industry investors will want to invest once of course it's on a trajectory and it's successful and it's driving revenue and meeting the 10 million and above threshold, ah, that's been somehow put out there. Um, then other investors come in. But this early stage part is, is very challenging.

Speaker A: It's very interesting because it's kind of for me one of the paradox because we have the other day we have um, enough food for everything but we're not taking this series enough. And of course there's consequences for health, for insecurity and so forth. But I would like to, for you to give us more insights. This is actually very interesting. I think everyone listening to us should actually take this very serious.

Speaker B: So we have one uh, hundred and nineteen companies. This just shows how cluttered we are. Our fund, we invest in companies that have relevance to our region. In Asia Pacific we have 19 companies now you'll see some that don't exist in Asia Pacific and that's just because what they do drives a tremendous amount to, in value to our region. I wanted to get to some examples of um, as you mentioned, I just want to drive this point home to our listeners that this is what we do. So when I talked about the de risking and the early stage investing, if you don't do this part you're not going to get the transformation of the food industry. Um, other investors that come in that are more generalist, number one, they don't want to put the first check in um, because they don't understand the industry enough to know which ones are the ones to invest in. And the ones that do seem to be ones to invest in is because they can understand a burger, they can understand turning bread into beer, um, but they can't upcycling bread uh, into beer. But that's not what's going to transform our industry. What's going to transform our industry is taking mycotoxins off of grain so that we can with electrified cold plasma, cold plasma technology. These are things that don't roll off your tongue. I mean but that is what if you have a device like that all along the supply chain there is enough grain and grown on the planet. Um, you know, so these are heady topics that we have access, we're blessed to have access to, to hundreds of specialists in the different sub areas like uh, immunologists for animal health or our plant scientists or water experts or soil experts actually, you know, weigh in on innovation and help us triple filter them before we decide that we're going to invest. But this, this just goes to show you how much uh, money is sitting out there ready to do follow on investment. But you know, we, we have to get to where we're, we're able to bring in the right, have enough funds to bring in the right innovation into the industry. So that, that is what is, is coming to, um, an exit and being assimilated into the industry. So that's the reason why what we do um, is so that we can grow these companies up from C bridge, pre A, series A, series B and off. Um, I'm going to talk about, um, because of your question and we were talking about protein, you know, an example of one of our companies. That'll probably be a pretty quick exit. Um, we've just been focusing on, since I Talked about the 1% that's being spent in animal health. Um, this is aptimmune. Um, it has 25 patents focused on swine health. They're completely focused on swine health. And there has been a virus. If you don't know, and the viewers haven't heard of it, I'm not surprised. Um, it's called African swine fever. It's been around for 50 years. The variant of this, this virus is stable. So it's not like it's been moving around and hard for people to target. Um, it's just been really difficult for big ag, big animal health companies to get a vaccine for it. Our company is a small company. It's developed a platform called zmac which allows for you to replicate the cells of an animal over and over again. You may not know that when a vaccine is created for Animals, after every 100,000 doses or more, another fresh, uh, baby animal, uh, piglet in this case has to be harvested for and it has to be completely healthy with no disease and harvested to go on to the, to develop more vaccines. What ZMAC does is it just takes one baby piglet and it's replicating that cell, those cells forever. So you're not killing pigs to save pigs. Um, and in this case they have prrs influenza. They have a patented mucosal delivery system which allows for the vaccine to go through the pathway in which the virus uh, enters the animal. But more importantly, they have also now found a remedy for a vaccine for African swine fever. Um, they're just doing the reports now. Uh, this has been a huge thing because there's been, uh, hundreds of billions lost in this industry. When the swine, the pig gets, um, asf, it immediately gets tumors on all of its organs and it hemorrhages to death and it's dead within 24 hours. The Red map on the left here shows that the regions that have been affected, you know, China is the largest pork producer in the world. Vietnam and Asia Pacific is second. Um, and this is prevalent not just for pigs, but also this, the natural swine, um, boar, wild boar populations, uh, across the globe. It's a national homeland security issue for the US as it's getting closer. And so to be able to finally, after 50 years, come up with, ah, ah, an immunology solution is a big deal for this company. Um, our expert, uh, Bob Norgren has been so involved, he's become the chairman of the board. Um, and we in Asia Pacific have provided no end of access to the right kind of companies and individuals. Uh, but it's been just us and another investor that's been supporting this company. That's how hard it is. Everybody wants to come in after. And even though the valuation will be high, um, they want to come in after. It's a sure thing, which is fine. But that meant that we had to really support this company to get there. And we could have been there 12 months sooner had we had even more resources. So that's just to give you an example of why animal health is so greatly challenged and what the effect of that is. We believe that Aptimmune will be able to achieve, even conservatively, a 20x exit. Um, because we would assume in that number that just one vaccine per pig, which is probably going to be two. Uh, we assume that the focus is just Southeast Asia countries to begin with, which of course will be bigger than that. Um, and, you know, many, many conservative assumptions. So, you know, uh, just one question

Speaker A: here, just for sake, and I think it's important for the audience. So what do you think? Uh, uh, we have this, um, bear in mind the complexity and like you said, the consequences. Because we're talking, for instance, uh, countries like Vietnam is 100 million people. And uh, if, if there's a swine flu influence, it can destroy parts of population. Why are not governments taking this serious? I'm just curious myself. Of course I'm not an expert on this area, but we put so much money in a lot of other things. This is by far much more important. And as well, if you solve these problems, of course the healthcare, um, possibilities are enormous. Because that's a lot of things that will be immediately improving a lot of different levels. So you, I understand that because people don't want to talk. But this is, you think is the lack of education as well, from your experience right now, lack of understanding. Because of course we are investing millions of billions of jobs of, of um, money in technology that partly will destroy a lot of the jobs that exist. And we're not putting enough efforts on the food that of course humans will not be able. If we don't have it, we cannot eat and we'll have other issues. Just trying to understand why something that seems like so basic is the narrative is bringing this to the government. I know the United nations has a lot of programs for this, but as well probably failing on this. So I just want to understand from your own um, understanding of this.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's a combination of things. One, if you, if I go around and ask people if they've ever heard of the common person ASF or African swine fever, nobody knows. So governments put, put attention to where the, the consumer is putting pressure on their local, you know, government representative. I think that's one thing, um, is the lack of knowledge. No one knows that their bacon is going to be gone. No one knows that they're, you know, that that is, that's the direction that things are headed. In the case of China, which doesn't necessarily care about the consumers but takes a very, very um, uh, aggregate view of the country, what they have done, their answer to ASF is to build giant production facilities. Um, and, and where people have to live there and you can't leave. They've got basketball courts, they've got swimming pools, they've got, you know, it's their clothes. So their, their answer to first what happened when they were decimated is that um, they went into their frozen, they had, yes, they have a frozen pork reserve because pork is the primary protein for China. Um, and then when that was done they started building large production facilities to try to just keep the virus out. I'm sure at the same time they're trying to find a remedy. I know some of the labs there that had been working on it. But um, that's, you know, the government looks at it as a whole, but most of the other governments are, you know, are of course the, the, the, the, the US Ag, Department of Agriculture is all over this. And that's the reason why this small company has been able to get access to the virus. The virus is kept off in an island of, of the all Viruses of the US and just to be able to get access to the virus, um, takes quite some doing. And it's because our, you know, Bob Norgren has a great relationship, um, our, our advisor and who's his chairman of the board, he's been able to get, um, and so that abtimune can work on it. So it's a combination of things. Um, I think no one thinks about it until this is just going to be gone. Um, it just doesn't get the kind of attention that the farmers put to it. But from a government perspective it hasn't. I can count on my hand the number of articles that have floated up to just the common man. Periodicals, not an agriculture, um, periodical. Uh, and so it's just, it's just not spoken of.

Speaker A: No, this is really crazy for me. No. Thank you so much. So, so in terms of innovation and of course for the sake of our audience, so there's a lot of opportunities here. There's opportunities related with the, with the business investment. But as well this is creating so much uh, new um, opportunities to scale because ah, if we explain this narrative properly like we have here, you can replace a lot of issues in terms of health, but you can as well improve public health like you said in crops. Um, so how do you look with these startups? Because like you mentioned here just in the slide, you're talking about the food, uh, security which is one of the biggest problems for the world economy. There's countries, they only have food security for three to six months, which is kind of crazy if there's another, um, God forbid, some problem like another or something like that. Um, so how are you taking this? And as well, like you mentioned, you have a, you are not a conventional fund manager because you are actually engaged with your startups and you have quite a lot of knowledge and you're pushing this quite serious in terms of both the technical parts of this, but the business parts. So a bit of that, that work of yours and now you pushing this to the world.

Speaker B: So the question is how are we doing it? Or.

Speaker A: Yeah, how are you putting this ecosystem together?

Speaker B: Yeah, sorry, okay. Um, yeah, so that we, because all of us are out of the industry, so we come with these relationships. Um, uh, and that's the richness of what we bring is. And it's a very generous industry. Uh, you know, we don't have, again, you know, I'm not crying over it, it's just that uh, investors don't want to uh, have more than a 2.5 administrative fee and so we have to do a lot with that very little fee um, in working with these companies and um, it's a generous industry. Every time I speak to a subject matter expert that I want to get involved. Like for example just recently with, with this company Umami. I just yesterday connected Ram Viswanathan who is uh, um, uh the first IBM fellow in India. Um, there's only been 340 out of IBM Research IBM fellows since 1911. That gives you some idea of his status. Um, and his expertise is blockchain and AI. Um and I just connected him with the founder of Umami who has an Alchemist AI platform that's their proprietary platform that they use to be able to get to cell based solutions faster and cheaper. The iterations of different cell based solutions in a B2B environment. And so that he could, so Ram expert in AI could take a look at their platform and see what else could be done to make it even better. Um, and I asked Rom, you know what do you need? I ask everybody. It's the plant scientist, that's a water expert, that's a soil whatever, immunologist, you know, what do you need? And I always get in this industry. Don't worry about it Claire, we'll figure it out later. It's a very generous industry. Um, these are people that are passionate about what they do uh, and are knowledgeable. They bring it both ways. And not only helpful to our companies but they're helpful in us us quickly assessing across the industry. For example like you know in, in the case of, of pesticides I have another slide I can show, you know, an expert on, on, on pesticides that could tell us, you know, what the challenges have been to shift from chemical pesticides to natural um, and if there's anybody else doing something similar as, as effective as that, in this case it was somebody from the University of Iowa. And again you know we're what, what do you need? No, we'll figure it out later. So it's, it's a, uh, it's a very, we're very blessed to be in an industry like that that are, with passionate people behind it. And so what, what Rom will do is he'll spend time getting underneath the hood of Alchemist AI which is listed here in the middle of this slide and, and see you know, what else can be done to make things um, even better. Uh, what Umami is doing is addressing the, the very expensive uh, fish that's getting extinct in, by, by fishing practices such as bluefin tuna. It's cost tens of thousands of dollars for one bluefin tuna, um and an eel which is expensive but also very difficult to breed. So it's not like you can breed it in house. So he focuses on the high end fish industry and this is the only cell base that we have in our whole ah, all of 119 companies globally. And it's because he's kind of the intel inside and he's focusing on those things that are going to you know are going to go extinct. And he's working with the ah, any selling um B2B. He's working with the oldest fishery in um, Japan, Mahiro Nichiro. Um, he's also monetizing what he has. Pets don't care about you know the consistency of the food but the parents of the pets care about them getting the high omegas and the, all the nutrition that comes from the, the bluefin tuna and, and salmon and um, so companies like Nestle are taking a look at utilizing this and Mitsubishi. So he's monetizing what he has and he's also looking at other industries that are utilizing um, fish cells for their, in the cosmetics PDRN in I know in the uk I mentioned it to a few people. They know what they know of pdrn that PDRN is now at Boots, you know, um, you know what does that mean? PDRN is at you know your local store. Um, uh and the PDRN is basically the salmon, the salmon, male parts of the salmon. So after the salmon is processed um, it is uh harvested for its, its remnants and those are shipped from the Nordic countries to northern Asia. How unsustainable is this? So, so um, now he's able, and he's signed his first contract to be able to create cell based pdrn um which goes in the high margin cosmetic industry and eliminates this silly process and expensive process of shipping the remnants of processed salmon from the north of Europe all the way to northern Asia. So you know those are some of the things that as we drive out inefficiencies in the industry and this is something where, where um, cell based makes sense. You know you are getting to better, you're getting to a margin. It's, it is, is diminishing costs. You know just creating cell based chicken, chicken is so cheap. You know you're, you're, it's going to be decades to get the process so inexpensive with fermentation processes and all the equipment that's required to, to replace chicken with cell based.

Speaker A: Wow, this, these are amazing things that are touching us all in terms of um, the daily day, life of us as we consume and different things. So, so for the sake of time and there's a lot of things here, so just a bit of overview about these startups and uh, the ones that you want to highlight. And um, as well I know that you had a couple of exits just um, for people that are more on the investment, I think for all of us. I think everyone should take this series because like you mentioned, this will affect everyone. But I would like just to look at one exit in particular or two that you have. And I think there's a lot of things here that are quite straightforward. But uh, like you mentioned, how to bring these startups to the big corporations and find different parts. So whatever you want to highlight.

Speaker B: Okay, well why don't I highlight? Um, because our fund is not that old so we're just coming to some exits. Um, I'll highlight uh, an exit that happened um, two years ago. So under, let's see, where is he? Under um, Precision. It's um, trying to find him here. Oh, Cover Crest, sorry, Food ingredients. Under can, uh, you see under food ingredients, Cover Crest, the second on the left column. Cover Crest is based on a common weed called the pennycress weed. It's a weed that's all over temperate climates. Um, and it was found to have a tiny seed that expressed high protein oil. Um, and so they rebred this uh, weed multiple times, many times to get to a much larger seed. Originally thought that this cover crop would be used just to protect the soil for temperate climates where they have winter season and they need to keep the carbon in and keep from runoff. But found that actually this could be monetized for the farmer. So now the farmer has an off season crop that creates high protein oil for human consumption but also makes excellent jet fuel, sustainable aviation fuel. So the exit of COVID crest was 51% bear, um, 20something% bungee, the grain company, and another 20something% chevron, the oil company company. And it's being run as a, uh, subsidiary of Bear. So you know, that's an example of uh, you know, kind of a, a great journey of a common weed that's never been monetized before. And that's what we're finding more and more is that you know, alternative crops, new crops that haven't been created before to create, you know, value down here. Treviva hasn't exited yet, but Treviva on the second column under fruit ingredients is somewhat similar, but it hits so many impact buttons, um, that it's spectacular. It's valued at about a $300 million. Now uh, Terriva was in fund one and two of the yield lab funds. Um, it's based off of a pangamia tree. So I just showed you an example of a uh, you know a, a multi seasonal crop cover crest off of a common weed called the pennycress weed. Treviva is all across the subtropics. It's a tree called the pangania tree and in Singapore it's called the Membari. And this tree grows a very bitter bean. So it's a bean that um, has never been monetized before. It was in the original book of Rivada as an essential oil. And that's, it's um, like a, a lima bean. It's a legume. Um, and what the founder found was whey. And it started because of the uh, he started doing this because the, the orange crops were looking at, they had a blight and they were looking at a way to find a new crop uh, to grow. And he looked at this tree and found a way to extract that bitterness to create high protein, over 50% protein oil for human consumption. It's a, the quality of the oil is like a mid oleic sunflower oil clean type, uh, sunflower type oil. Very clean. And it also makes um, excellent jet fuel saf. Uh, this tree is productive for over 50 years. So you don't have to like palm where you have to bring it down after so long because it gets too tall. Um, it is prevalent everywhere in the subtropics. Um, it is reforestation. So you're handling that problem. Um, it handles periodic flooding and drought. So for the climate that we're now facing, which is unpredictable, very stable and the trees even productive after just six years of growth. So it's not that long. You have to wait. He has registered the most prolific um, uh, varieties but is all across the subtropics. Um, and he's done a uh, Naveen Sika, who's the founder has done a thousand woman initiative in India because this tree is all over India. Um, and so that one woman in each village will understand how to harvest the beans. And that's also very safe. Unlike palm where you have to. Somebody's got a client climb up and risk their life to bring down the, the fruit. Um, in this case it's an ordinary peanut shaker. So very safe. And, and basically he's created a whole new commodity class.

Speaker A: Fantastic. This is really impressive work. Congratulations to all of these different things. So uh, for the sake of time, we passed one hour. But I still have a couple of questions to wrap up and uh, I probably will do a second um, podcast club a bit more in the future because I think I would love to involve a couple of experts in agriculture from different parts to tackle some of the questions we have here. So uh, I want to right now talk a bit more on the. Of course, uh, your fund uh, is building a 50 million uh, federation where we have eight I think. Uh, uh yeah, if you can tell us just on the ipac. And then I would like to go for the last part. The tech, AI and agriculture, um, you touch a lot of the things there are the challenge that it touches, um, all the different startups. But like I mentioned before we have enough money available at least on the AI side. Why are we not shifting this? And as well, what are the things in terms of the deep science versus Frost tech that you achieved that you mentioned some of these things but as well AI316 agriculture. Because one of the challenge that I've been finding even with the project CWC impact is the lack of digital transformation, um, the alarming lack of data because most of the things for people listening to us, around 40% of the food that is produced in the world goes to the garbage. So it's actually quite alarming as well. Uh, and then all the things you mentioned. But I would like to see from your experience on the part of the technology and the part of AI how you are integrating this and talking with governments and institutions around these things.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean uh, AI, um, is prevalent in just about everything that I could talk about in our portfolios. Um, and it's either a primary role or supporting role. Um, why? The question you asked at the beginning was, you know, why hasn't the investment that's being put in AI shifted into the agriculture sector? I think it's just because of lack of knowledge and, and uh, understanding of agriculture somehow being different, which it's not. One of our companies um, that we're investing in just now is utilizing AI to be able to come to the right kind of seed based on what the need is. So instead of having to go through various growing seasons doing that all uh, utilizing AI and the germ plasma and um, being able to get to that solution whether it be a more water resistant cotton seed or a more disease tolerant um, you know ah, grape seed or ah, less, less a, a sweeter variety of a particular fruit to you know all of these things can be done through the use of AI and technology and their proprietary platform, um, which is very important. Um, I think that the, you know, uh, the swing of for example with uh, fasal in India, where we started this conversation, I think before the recording, uh, began, which was about, you know, saving water and the ability to do that. This is all based on algorithms. You need to be able to understand the plants that you're growing. It's not a magic wand, right? You have to have some agronomist that understands, you know, the algorithms that it takes to, to support grapes or it takes to support apples or it takes to support um, uh, tomatoes or chilies. And based on that, building those algorithms so that you can get to an ah, IoT device which fossile has, which takes above and below ground information. And then from those algorithms, uh, based on the crop and the climate situations that it currently is under the canopy, as well as combining that with the future forecast of the climate, be able to more proactively and predictively apply fungus, say it's time to apply the fungic, fungicide now to the grapes because it's going to onset before it already onsets and it's turned everything terribly pear shaped. So that kind of knowledge base you have to have with it. You can't come in as an AI expert and just magically create this. You need to work with, you know, plant scientists or you know, somebody that understands the, the conditions of, and what it takes to grow, uh, to grow a high yield, high sugar, um, content grape. Grape is one of the few products that produce in India that makes a high enough margin that it can be exported. And that's the reason why it gets the focus and attention. Another area which is atypical is robotics and AI. I mean we look at, there's, there's four areas of focus and maybe I shouldn't have exited my screen so fast. Um, there's, there's, there's four exits of focus right now and these will change over time. But um, Our future crops. I talked about COVID crest, her viva excellent examples. Um, I, I talked about um, advanced protein aptimmune, you know, things that are around creating, being able to make our, our food system safer, eliminate, eliminating antibiotics through genetically selected peptides like peptobiotics is doing too. So we don't have antibiotics in our food system anymore. But then around AI, as your question asked, um, around robotics and autonomous use. So you know, we have a labor issue. Many places, um, in particular large plantations that can't get the labor that they used to, to be able to do precision placement of fertilizer. And thus, uh, the yield has been down and the palm industry by $1.4 billion billion dollars in just Malaysia alone a year ago. And, and they have uh, sorry, they have been crying out for a solution, a robotic solution for the palm industry. It's not easy because palm is grown on very undulating ground. So it's very hilly, lots of ditches you can't even see with the human eye. And it's messy. I mean there's, there's trees down, there's fronds down. So Earthsense which you see on the upper right has uh, created a robotics for the palm industry. And they'd already had done solar for solar, uh, farms robotics they've already done for phenotyping in the US around row crops. And this was a whole new thing for them. And it was a cry out from government from, from the big palm producers, um because palm is a big uh, money revenue generator for Malaysia and Indonesia and some other countries. So they have now launched this robotics. It is using uh, AI vision based technology to not only see where it's going and move around to the right place but map out the palm, uh, see if there's any areas for maintenance that's required. But to be able to place securely and precisely the fertilizer or pesticides as needed to increase the yield. We don't need. Everybody hates on especially in Europe, right The palm industry. The fact is it's, it's the by far, by like 80% by far the, the highest oil producing plant there is and we need oil. If nothing this war has taught us is that we need sustainable aviation fuel from other sources and um, palm creates it by far. So we just don't need to plant more palm deforest more. There is enough there and um, also there's a tremendous amount of fertilizer that's stolen from palm plantations. So that's being strewn everywhere and that's the reason why you know um, these large plantations have become you know the source of a lot of pollution into the waterways. Um so a super use for AI and autonomous um around Earthsense and the palm industry. So you know these are just examples of uh, you know um, in regenerative technologies technologies. At the bottom left corner we're using AI to be able to find new ways to, to create packaging with using seaweed, um and still have a pellet based injection molding process. So you're not disrupting your, your manufacturing process but you're getting to a output which is a bread bag that's see through which functions as, as fossil fuel based packaging should but just using seaweed mass as the, as the biomass. So, um, and then fossil of course I mentioned already, which is using AI technology and algorithms to be able to, to diminish the use of water and the uh, the amount of pesticides. So um, I'll show you in five years where fossil will be. Oh, maybe I don't have it in the slide deck. It's possible.

Speaker A: No, this is.

Speaker B: Oh yes, I do, I do. Here. 800 billion liters of water in five years. Fossil have saved. They're already across 10 states in India and five countries. But this is just a projection of, of where there will be 5,500 tons of pesticides, uh, eliminated, uh, and increasing the yield. So you know, we, we look at investing in companies not for where they are at the point of time that we invest, but where they're going to be in five years.

Speaker A: Well, this is, this is very, very impressive and very important. So Clara, I have a couple of questions to wrap up. Um, a lot of time, but still. Um, uh, so first of all, fantastic work and I think for people listening to us, I would appreciate to know more and try to get engaged. Um, so we touched the adoption chasm m at the farm level. Um, of course there's the AI360 in agriculture and you touched behind the hype. So I would like to look at two things. So the balanced regional nuance with the global scale. And you touch a bit of that and be in mind that you are based out of South Asia. We have a lot of, of nuance there. And as well, Asia is the biggest populated part of humanity. So that's the part as well where we have the problems with the diseases and different parts. But let's look at uh, uh, between the balance between regional nuance and global scale and the food security. You touched that. But for instance, you mentioned about uh, Malaysia. I mentioned as well because I have quite a lot of experience with the country. You just touch India. Um, how can we look at the 5, 10 years here? Food security horizontal and especially how can we balance this? Because of course that's what you try to do in your organization, but a bit more broader for people listening to us and as well can they can um, start acting something around this?

Speaker B: So how, how can they help? You mean how could they help?

Speaker A: Yeah, how can first of all your views on this, uh, macro views of course, and a bit of micro as well. But as well how people listening to us can start acting because this is kind of, of super urgent. I think the only countries I see that Are uh, taking this very serious versus um, uae because they, they actually create a lot of food security there. But it's still in the beginning. But yeah, I just would like to hear your views in general on a macro level.

Speaker B: Yeah, on the, on the Mac, the macro level. I mean by country, you know, India is a very strong agriculture, um, focus. It's, it's the largest industry and I think one of the largest industries in India, um, uh, Malaysia, I was just there. And it's a strategic initiative of the country from the Ministry of Manpower and also to the pension funds. So it's become a focal point. Um, most of the countries understand the importance of agriculture for serving their citizens and the farmers to keep them in play. Uh, but it comes down to us being able commercially to move quick with innovation because you know, governments, at least I'm an American, of course I can talk from that perspective, move it at a glacial speed on anything. So it's really up to, you know, private industry and innovators to be able to fill these gaps that exist, um, with innovation. That's going to drive impact from a, from a corporate perspective. The corporates do the best they can, but they've got to answer to their shareholders and their bottom line. So they, you know, have to stay focused on, on their mission, which is selling what they have or growing around what they have. Um, so it really comes down to the importance and I'm not trying to make us sound like we're more important than we are. It's just that you have to have a genesis of any new innovation and the genesis, uh, requires capital. Um, uh, I don't see us being able to move fast enough, um, by relying on corporate or governments to be able to do this. I mean the answer government. I heard on one country, uh, was, you know, just why don't we just. I heard this, I won't say which country. Why don't we just, you know, buy out all the small holders and turn it into one big. Well, that would be horrible, right? I mean this is at what price and what will happen to those people? Um, it's bad enough that getting small holder credit is, they're, they're getting hit with, with loan sharks which negotiate, uh, horrible terms and then everything goes pear shape and there's been 50,000 farmers that have committed suicide in India because of it. And then the family gets thrown out and who knows what happens to them. Slavery or something. So, so there needs to be uh, a balancing act here done through uh, venture capital funding to get these companies to the state to where they get the attention of large corporates. Because large corporates do want to find new innovation but they don't have the R and D ability to do what their job is and de risk this innovation. And that's why it really comes down to venture capital like ourselves to be able to do that. And uh, and for to power the engine, of course it needs funds and the more funds we have, the faster we can go. We're 120, almost 120 companies now and in another year we could be double that with the right kind of investment. So um, we've proven I think that, that, that we can move the needle. Um, and we have had exits and I um, know that there's other syndication of funds that want to follow on, invest on, on what we cook up. So there's no end of capital if we can just get them to a series B. And that's where our responsibility is to get them beyond a seed in series A into series B. And then that circle chart I showed you, there's all kinds of funding that's there waiting for that.

Speaker A: Well uh, that's quite amazing and I appreciate all the wisdom that you bring to us. I have still a lot of questions, but for the sake of time. We passed almost two hours. Um, so just last thing for people listening to us, um, um, just young people and professionals. I think most of the people probably never thought about some of these things unless you are in agriculture. And like you mentioned, even looking at the money that is put in agriculture is quite absurd because that's almost everyone in the planet dependent of this. But we're putting a lot of things on intelligence but we're not putting on reality of food and security. So what would be the advice for people first of all to get more insights. And of course I'll put all the links to your websites and parts because I think your knowledge is quite important. Not uh, for instance, I have people from governments to institutions to corporates. This touches everyone. So a bit of wisdom and common sense here that you would bring to anyone listening to us around this.

Speaker B: Well, if you're a technologist, please look at other spaces, uh, for using your talents. I mean, you know, uh, this is agriculture, um, is underserved and I'm talking about deep ag, uh, is underserved. So please look at how to use your innovation to help the food system reach out, educate yourself on you know, agriculture and um, the plant sciences or whatever aspect that you're interested in or think about the innovation that you've created. And how it could be applied to the food system. You know, um, it's, it's a, it's a far more interesting. I, I don't know I, that I do it justice in my description, but these founders are brilliant. The ones that we have selected are uh, uh, so passionate about what they do and they have probably four or five more startups in them of innovation that they're cooking up at the same time. So, you know, these are kind of the best of the best. Um, if you're interested in, in a role with one of these companies, reach out to me. I mean they're always looking to hire bright people. Um, and you know, this is globally. I, I speak on behalf of, of my other sister funds or uh, or federation of funds in that, you know, I know Ireland is currently raising funds right now for Europe. Um, uh, North America, Latin America is deploying right now, but there's there, no matter where you're listening, um, what, what region you're in, I'm happy to point you to, you know, are my colleagues in those parts of the world and, and get you connected and, and have you understand some. And if you're an investor, please take a look at us. Um, you know, our, our results speak for themselves. But I think you, what I would always tell an investor to do is talk to our founders, see what they have to say about us. It's more than the capital, it's, it's the amount of time and effort and subject matter expertise that we help and even accessibility. If they have any issues, they contact us and we always seem to be able to find a solution for them. So, um, that's probably what I'd like to leave with.

Speaker A: Well, uh, Claire, it's been a truly honor and I would say masterclass for people that stay until the end. And um, I want to thank you for this fantastic work you're doing and as well, uh, uh, congratulations to you and all your founders and partners and 4,000 people that are probably or more affected by this. Um, for people listening to us, definitely engage with Claire. We'll put all the contacts, but I think take this serious because if you don't have food, we have a problem with humanity. Uh, thank you so much, Claire. It's been an honor to have you here.

Speaker B: Thank you. Thank you, Dennis. Thank you. I appreciate it very much.