For Thomas van den Boezem, a junior partner with Luxembourg-based venture capital (VC) firm PeakBridge, professional responsibilities and personal passion are well aligned.
Having been trained as a public health scientist, van den Boezem appreciates the growing investor interest in startups focused on improving health outcomes. “It’s great to see that this area is becoming such an investor focus. Improving the health of people around the world has been a passion and a sort of thread throughout everything I’ve done,” he says.
It’s also an important focus for PeakBridge. Through scalable, proprietary technologies, the VC firm aims to “move the needle” across five of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals: zero hunger, good health and well-being, gender equality, decent work and economic growth, and responsible consumption and production.
The portfolio of 30-plus companies PeakBridge invests in is diversified, ranging from startups focused on artificial intelligence applications to alternative protein technologies. But the companies have some clear commonalities.
“We’ve always been disciplined in investing in companies that solve real industry and consumer needs,” van den Boezem says. Although that may sound obvious, “it’s much harder in practice,” he adds. “We’re laser-focused on avoiding trends and hype, and instead looking at the technologies that can make a real difference, long term.”
Van den Boezem recently offered his thoughts on entrepreneurship, promising investment opportunities, and the benefits of pitch competition participation.
What areas of ag tech and food tech are currently getting the most attention from investors?
There is clearly a lot of attention right now on the GLP-1 Ozempic movement and what that means for the food industry. There is a lot of research around how we can use food and diet to reduce the dependency on these drugs, which are still expensive and carry side effects. Food tech has a lot to offer in those spaces, whether we’re talking about prebiotic fibers, the healthy snacking category, specific categories of functional foods, or highly personalized advice related to lifestyles and diets.
Food security is also finally becoming an area with a lot of investor interest. It’s a wide-scale, growing problem that simply requires agrifoodtech. This carries into things related to upstream agriculture, the use of natural pesticides, natural growth enhancers, and the like. But this also relates to finding ways to shorten supply chains and grow high-value crops and other food ingredients and inputs in more sustainable ways. So those would be two I would highlight—health and resilience.
In addition to your interest in healthy lifestyle innovators, what are some of the investment opportunities that you’re most excited about?
One that I’m personally passionate about is the domain of industrial software. So how do we bring data, AI (artificial intelligence), and smart robotics into the food supply chain and the food industry to ultimately improve decision-making for everybody working in it—from consumers making better decisions about their food choices, to growers making better crop treatment and harvesting decisions, to traders making better decisions on pricing and quality assurance.
Are there many startups working in that industrial software space?
It’s not, I would say, as established as some other areas, but that’s also our job—to be early in some of the bets we make on where the market is headed and what the needs of the industry are in the future.
What are some investment sectors that you see cooling off?
There is, of course, the obvious one: From an investor appetite point of view, the plant-based sector looks very different today than it did a few years ago after the Beyond Meat IPO (initial public offering) and some of the early successes that followed. I would say this is a bit of a blessing in disguise. If we look at the typical hype cycle, the Gartner Hype Cycle, then clearly we’re at the point where the industry is figuring itself out. This new technology is finding its place in the wider food industry. And that allows us to make more realistic assumptions about market size, growth rates, profitability, margin levels, and more broadly to make better decisions.
In addition, it’s probably a good thing to see food-tech investors less focused on quick, last-mile delivery. Not that food delivery isn’t important, but to see that money flow into areas that are a bit higher in impact is a good thing for consumers and for the industry. And that’s exactly what’s happening.
Are there other sectors where investor enthusiasm is fading?
It’s not so much less interest, but more selective and targeted interest in biotech for food, precision fermentation, and cell-based approaches. We’re all becoming smarter about what’s required for some of these highly advanced technology companies to have viable business models.
The fourth area is less attention to vertical farming, high-tech farming for low-value crops. We’ve always had a specific thesis around this, which is that it doesn’t make sense to grow lettuce and tomatoes in a high-tech greenhouse. And hopefully we’ll see more attention toward these approaches for higher-value crops.
Let’s talk about founders. What are the top traits that you look for in a founder as you’re evaluating companies for investment potential?
One of the top traits for sure is a relentless focus on solving real problems, meaning [the willingness] to do whatever it takes and obsess about the problem they’re solving. And not to fall in love with the solution too early because ultimately, it’s about solving the specific problem, and the solution will change and evolve over time.
More specifically to our industry, another key factor is some level of commercial business [experience] and also a sort of emotional maturity, meaning founders who have gone through a few things in their lives and their careers. Founders who have experienced firsthand what it means to build companies, run companies, or own P&Ls (profit and loss statements), or transform parts of a business in this industry—which is complex, fragmented, and traditional in certain ways.
[Also], it sounds basic, but the ability to sell and communicate is crucial—founders who can convince cofounders, employees, investors, and customers of the relevance and urgency of what they’re building. And then to understand how to manage stakeholders, how to deliver both good and bad news. Those are all fundamental to success.
I’ve heard discussion recently that, particularly given a funding climate characterized by caution, it may be more important than ever for startups to forge partnerships. What are your thoughts on that?
This whole idea of disrupting for the sake of disrupting may sound nice, but in practice it’s very difficult to really grow a business in an established industry where you need manufacturing resources, sourcing efficiencies, access to customers, and to consumers.
All those things require multiple types of partnerships, from strategic investment to joint development agreements, and in some cases, indeed, joint ventures. So they are vitally important to scale in this industry. The challenge, of course, is really knowing where to start, who to partner with, how to approach them, and how to manage potential conflicts of interest. That’s something we’re always focused on when working with companies.
PeakBridge is a sponsor of the Startup Pavilion (which includes a pitch competition) at the IFT FIRST Annual Event and Expo. Do you think there are specific benefits that a startup gets from pitch competition participation—in addition to winning, of course?
It’s always nice to win and build on momentum. Beyond that, it connects to what I just said about the ability to sell. Being able to either go on stage or convince a jury or an audience is not entirely a proxy for being able to be a good leader and communicator in a business, but at least it’s one data point. Clearly, the IFT network, with all its partners—ourselves and many others—[is important]. At the end of the day, founders cannot be present everywhere, all the time. So having that visibility to key stakeholders in the industry, senior leaders, and decision-makers in the industry is always a benefit.ft