77: Investigating the agri-foodtech start-up environment post-COVID-19

The food industry has shown incredible resilience in the face of the challenges presented by COVID-19, but what about food and agritech start-ups? How has the pandemic affected venture capital funding and investment in the sector? We assembled a panel of experts to discuss this, and what the future holds for the start-up community in food and agritech. Spoiler alert: investors still have capital they want to invest, and are looking to support disruptive start-ups with funding. Find out the new opportunities they are seeing in this exciting space. About our panel Nicky Deasy, Co-Founder and Manager Partner, Yield Lab Europe  Nicky is the Managing Partner at Yield Lab Europe. Nicky oversees the day to day operations, including investments, fundraising, portfolio, and company operations. This includes raising capital, dealing with the limited partners and investors, maintaining and managing a deal pipeline, running the due diligence process, and coordinating investments into portfolio companies.  She also works to set up the accelerator programming, and supporting those companies with financial mentoring, commercial mentoring and scaling support, and overall fund management.    Nicky worked for 7 years as Associate Director at KPMG Corporate Finance in Dublin, where she ran the Food & Beverage M&A team, before moving to EY Galway to set up a corporate finance practice for EY’s regional offices, as Director of Corporate Finance, which she ran successfully for 5 years before leaving to set up her own corporate finance practice in Galway.  She was a mentor to the EI HPSU in the role of assisting companies go to market to raise equity.  She has worked with many early stage companies across a variety of sectors to raise seed and Series A equity capital, having advised on rounds totalling hundreds of millions over her 20 year career, and has extensive links with the venture capital and business community in Ireland, both in Dublin and Galway. Costa Yiannoulis, Investment Director, CPT Capital  Costa is the Investment Director at CPT Capital, the venture arm of Jeremy Coller’s family office. Costa has led the building and management of the CPT Capital food and materials tech portfolio including Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods, Memphis Meats and Perfect Day amongst others. Costa sits on the boards of Geltor, Gathered Foods (Good Catch), Redefine Meat, and 3F Bio. Prior to CPT Capital, Costa managed Jeremy Coller’s broader personal technology investments and advised Jeremy across both his corporate (Coller Capital) and philanthropic (FAIRR Initiative / Jeremy Coller Foundation) endeavours. Previously Costa spent 3 years in Management Consulting with Bain & Company in London focussing on Strategy, Organisational Design and Private Equity across sectors; and 5 years within Deutsche Bank in London building the bank’s Emerging Markets platform across Africa. Costa holds a BA(Hons) and MA in Economics from Cambridge University, and an MBA from INSEAD. Andrew Ive, Founder, Big Idea Ventures Andrew is the founder of Big Idea Ventures. Its purpose is to solve the world’s biggest challenges by supporting the world’s best entrepreneurs. Our first fund + accelerator (NY & Singapore) invests in plant-based foods and ingredients to impact climate change, animal welfare and personal health. Investors include Tyson Foods & Temasek. Advisory Board member for Tufts Nutrition Council. Friedman School Entrepreneurship Advisor. Harvard Business School graduate, Procter & Gamble brand management trained.  Yield Lab Europe, CPT Capital and Big Idea Ventures will all be attending Food Tech Matters on 12-14 October 2020. Food Tech Matters is the place for disruptive agri-foodtech start-ups to meet investors and corporates focused on a sustainable future. Join them