Briefly describe your work with agtech and explain what motivates you to invest your time in this work.

The Yield Lab Asia Pacific Fund (TYLAP) is Asia Pacific’s unique impact fund which invests in sustainable and scalable Food and Agricultural technologies at the Seed and Series-A stage, serving the hemisphere with the greatest GDP growth driven by 60% of the world’s population, all in need of a healthier and more efficient food supply chain.

Briefly explain any commitments to sustainability that you or your organization bring to your work on agtech innovation. Be as specific as possible regarding what kinds of social and environmental impacts you aim to produce, and the relevant strategies you are pursuing.

With deep knowledge of food and agriculture from science down to commercial implementation, we identify impactful disruptive innovations across all aspects of the Agriculture industry (such as: Climate-smart Crop Science, Precision Agriculture, Aquaculture and Animal Health, Sustainability, Traceability/Supply Chain and Food Ingredients) with the mission to comprehensively make more efficient and effective the food supply system that addresses the ever-growing global food security issues.

TYLAP is a member of the global federation of The Yield Lab funds which have on the order of $150M assets under management and are present in North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia Pacific.  Globally to date we have over 85 AgTech investments in the portfolio; all are successfully achieving commercialization and follow-on investment as they proceed towards their successful exist.  We have driven over 30 times in follow-on funding (over US$450 Million), created over 4,000 jobs, and made direct and measurable impact in 12 of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Briefly describe the way(s) in which you assess/measure social and environmental impact in your work on agtech innovation.

TYLAP has several sequential processes to asses, design and track the impacts that each portfolio company makes.  Initially there is an assessment that indeed there is an innate ability to make impact and to scale that impact.  Then each company needs to identify the impacts that are core to their business and to identify the metrics needed to measure those impacts.  Then, each company is required to incorporate the impact drivers into their business model so that it becomes an integral part of their performance as they grow.

Our research and this workshop aim to investigate tensions between the demands/imperatives of the tech-finance industry and the demands/imperatives of social-environmental problem solving. Please comment on this problem frame in general, and in relation to specific examples from your own experience.

In ‘Early Stage Investing’ in ag innovations, the ‘tension’ is less about profit versus impact ‚Ķ it is more about identifying that both are scalable and about identifying the metrics to steer both by.
In Early stage investing many of the ‘metrics’ to run the businesses have not been developed ‚Ķ and to be honest often times they have not even been thought about, especially the impact metrics.

So, we run an impact metrics development strategy development component.
Each company is coached through the process to identify their innate capacity to make impact, to identify how to measure that, and to then incorporate managing for that outcome into their core business operations.

An additional complication is that the metrics need to be designed so that they are scalable ; TYLAP is designed to select for technologies that are not only viable but are scalable both economically and ecologically.

To investigate the tensions suggested above, we rely on the concept of “mission drift”. We understand mission drift as a tendency for social and environmental impact commitments of individuals and organizations to leak out over time due to pressures and opportunities to expand revenue, valuation and capital gains. Our project aims to investigate mission drift applied to entrepreneurial ventures as well as to organizations dedicated to supporting innovation. Please comment on this thesis in general, and in relation to specific things you have experienced where possible. To the extent you find this thesis useful, what strategies can you identify to defend against mission drift?

I believe it possible to measure and track ‘mission trajectory’; the trajectory for financial performance will be different than impact performance.  A technology (or stack of technologies) is designed to have multiple benefits to the user/customer and the ecosystem it is deployed in.  Some of the functionalities are compelling economic benefits and some are impactful ecologically or sociologically; and perhaps the economic benefits are the motivation to: become aware, to trial/test and then to adopt.  Some of the impact functionalities come as a bi-product of operating the system (used less water) and some require learning more of the more sophisticated operations of the new system.  So there is a lag for some of the impacts.  Also the growth stages of young companies require a stair-step approach where there need to be bursts of growth in adoption followed by stabilization of that growth.  Neither curve is linear, and the impact will tend to lag.

Please share something you would like to take away from the workshop.

Clear ways to communicate to the investor class that the two tracks of sustainability (or whatever words are being used) are able to be achieved in tandem but just not in parallel.