Investment Climate Podcast

Alex Shandrovsky
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Entrepreneurship

We are uncovering the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.

  1. 1d ago

    On Crossing to the Other Side of the Table, & Off-Take Agreements Over LOIs-Darko Mandich, gener8tor

    Episode 115: BEAM Circular Accelerator (Powered by gener8tor): Darko Mandich on Crossing to the Other Side of the Table, Off-Take Agreements Over LOIs, and Turning Almond Waste into a Bioeconomy In this episode, I catch up with my friend Darko Mandich — Managing Director of the BEAM Circular Accelerator (Powered by gener8tor) and Ag Practice Chair at gener8tor — for a rare look at fundraising from the investor's seat. Darko knows both sides intimately: he built and exited MeliBio, the bee-free honey pioneer (acquired by Switzerland's FoodYoung Labs), and has now crossed the table to back early-stage founders turning agricultural waste into value. He shares what genuinely surprised him about the investor side — how many internal "yeses" it takes to cut a single check, and why founder patience is so misunderstood — and makes a passionate case that the founders winning in 2026 are commercially driven, not science driven, doing far more with far less. We dig into why LOIs no longer cut it (investors now want signed off-take agreements), how gener8tor and BEAM Circular are attacking the CapEx barrier head-on by building a shared California Bioeconomy Innovation Campus in Modesto, and why California's Central Valley — with 80% of the world's almonds and mountains of hulls and shells — is one of the best launchpads on earth for the circular bioeconomy. 🎧 Listen to the full episode to hear the single biggest mistake founders make when following up with investors (and the "keep delighting us with news" approach that works instead), why aggressive AI-generated outreach lands you in the spam folder, how building in public and authenticity get investors to source you, what BEAM Circular looks for in an applicant, and the incentives that make the Central Valley — not just San Francisco — a place to scale. Key Facts: BEAM Circular Accelerator (Powered by gener8tor) Darko Mandich: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darkomandichWebsites: gener8tor.com · beamcircular.orgProgram Base: Modesto, California Focus: Early- to mid-stage startups in biomanufacturing, waste transformation, and circular solutions across agriculture and natural resources — turning agricultural side streams (e.g., almond hulls and shells) into materials, fuels, ingredients, and chemicals.Support (per company): ~$100K in combined support — a $15K non-dilutive grant, a $35K investment, and $50K in California Bioeconomy Innovation Campus credits — plus mentorship and partner perks. Blurb The BEAM CIRCULAR ACCELERATOR, powered by gener8tor, is built on a bet about geography and timing: that the next wave of the bioeconomy won't be built only in San Francisco or Boston, but in places like California's Central Valley — where 80% of the world's almonds are grown, and where the hulls, shells, and side streams once treated as waste are becoming feedstock for materials, fuels, ingredients, and chemicals. In partnership with the Modesto nonprofit BEAM Circular, the program pairs small, concierge cohorts with a shared California Bioeconomy Innovation Campus designed to remove the single biggest killer of deep-tech startups — CapEx — so founders don't have to burn venture dollars building their own pilot facilities.

    On Crossing to the Other Side of the Table, & Off-Take Agreements Over LOIs-Darko Mandich, gener8tor

  2. 3d ago

    Raising Friends-and-Family in a Frozen Market & Giving a VC Goosebumps in 5-Mins - Saku Biosciences

    Episode 114: Saku Biosciences: Mark van Zee on Raising Friends-and-Family in a Frozen Market, Betting on the Jockey, and Giving a VC Goosebumps in Five Minutes In this episode, I sit down with Mark van Zee, Co-Founder & CEO of Saku Biosciences, who just closed a $940K round with Big Idea Ventures coming in as the institutional lead. It's a refreshingly different conversation for this show — instead of a later-stage playbook, Mark takes us all the way back to the very first checks, and how you actually raise when the market is frozen. Saku started fundraising two weeks after the tariff announcement that sent institutional capital "to zero," so Mark and his co-founder John got scrappy: friends-and-family checks of $5K–$100K that triggered a "pile-on" chain reaction, plus capital from a non-obvious private institution that took a year of relationship-building and ultimately saved the company. Mark reframes friends-and-family money not as a source of anxiety but as motivation — a commitment "in blood" — and makes the case that early-stage investing is betting on the jockey, not the horse. We close on one of the best fundraising stories I've heard: how the Saku team reverse-engineered exactly what Big Idea Ventures' decision-maker was looking for ("something that gives me goosebumps") and built a five-minute narrative to deliver it. 🎧 Listen to the full episode to hear why fundraising is more like dating than a transaction, how to unlock non-obvious capital that isn't promoted anywhere, why you sell to the associate and the partner completely differently, how Mark turned "I ride my bike to college classes at fourteen" into a goosebumps pitch, and why nobody in food tech has cracked the scalable-company code yet — but the wave is coming. Key Facts: Saku Biosciences Mark van Zee: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-van-zee-089910154Website: sakubio.comHeadquarters: Los Angeles, CaliforniaFunding: $940K round (SAFE), with Big Idea Ventures as institutional lead (Global Food Innovation Fund II) — following a friends-and-family raise and capital from a private institutional source. Blurb SAKU BIOSCIENCES exists to fix a quiet but expensive failure in biomanufacturing: the strains companies screen in the lab are optimized for the lab, not for the fermentation tank they'll actually run in. That mismatch produces false positives, wasted scale-up campaigns, and stubbornly poor unit economics. Saku's PicoShells platform — hollow, porous hydrogel particles that isolate millions of strain variants and let them be tested under true bioreactor conditions — lets producers select for real-world manufacturing performance, and get to the cost parity that fermentation needs to displace incumbent animal- and plant-derived inputs.

    Raising Friends-and-Family in a Frozen Market & Giving a VC Goosebumps in 5-Mins - Saku Biosciences

  3. Jul 22

    Treating Every Investor as "One Shot," Selling w/o Selling, and Fundraising as a Probability Matrix

    Episode 113: Rainbow Crops: Giacomo Bastianelli on Treating Every Investor as "One Shot," Selling Without Selling, and Fundraising as a Probability Matrix In this episode, I welcome back Giacomo Bastianelli, Co-Founder & CEO of Rainbow Crops — and one of the first founders to return to the podcast, because eighteen months ago we were talking about his pre-seed, and today he's just closed a €9.7M seed round plus a $7M grant from the Gates Foundation. Rainbow Crops is a VIB spin-off out of Ghent developing next-generation crop genetics, combining precision breeding, multiplex genome editing, and AI to tackle the complex, multi-gene traits — yield, stress resilience — that a single-gene approach can't touch. Giacomo walks us through how he ran the raise like a disciplined operator: preparing the seed materials before the pre-seed even closed, building a manually curated 60-name investor funnel in Trello, and treating every first interaction as a single shot he couldn't waste. He explains why his lead investor, Turin-based LIFTT, was nowhere on that list — and why doing the work is exactly what opens you up to that kind of serendipity. Along the way we get into a genuinely different take on persuasion for deep tech: honesty as a sales strategy, presenting risk as a probability matrix, and why the best salespeople never actually sell. 🎧 Listen to the full episode to hear why Giacomo built his own pitch deck instead of hiring an agency (and when a "polisher" makes sense), how he structured a results deck that lands for both non-technical investors and PhD experts, why you should pitch your tier-two and tier-three investors first, how he used a probabilistic model to talk investors through regulatory and patent risk, and the "tip of the iceberg" principle behind a deck that could survive real due diligence. Key Facts: Rainbow Crops Giacomo Bastianelli: https://www.linkedin.com/in/giacomobWebsite: rainbowcrops.comHeadquarters: Ghent, BelgiumFunding: €9.7M seed round led by LIFTT (with LIFTT EuroInvest), alongside AIF, PINC, VIB, Corteva (via Corteva Catalyst), and Maia Ventures — plus a separate $7M grant from the Gates Foundation for climate-resilient corn and sorghum. Blurb RAINBOW CROPS is built on a hard genetic truth: the traits that matter most in agriculture — yield, drought tolerance, climate resilience — are almost never controlled by a single gene. They emerge from networks of genes interacting at once, which is precisely why they've resisted decades of conventional breeding and single-edit biotech. Rainbow Crops attacks that complexity head-on with its Trait Foundry™ platform, pairing multiplex genome editing with AI and automated phenotyping to search enormous combinatorial spaces and engineer the multi-gene traits that older tools simply can't reach.

    Treating Every Investor as "One Shot," Selling w/o Selling, and Fundraising as a Probability Matrix

  4. Jul 20

    On Treating the Raise Like a Sales Process, 110-Slide Data Room, & Turning Complex Into Compelling

    Episode 112: Michroma & We Are Palta: Ricky Cassini and Alan Valicenti on Treating the Raise Like a Sales Process, the 110-Slide Data Room, and Turning Complex Into Compelling In this episode, I sit down with two Argentinians who have been building together for almost six years: Ricky Cassini, Co-Founder & CEO of Michroma, the precision-fermentation startup making natural food colors from fungi, and Alan Valicenti, Partner & Chief Growth Officer of We Are Palta, the design-and-marketing agency built for science-driven deep-tech companies. It is a rare, candid look at what it actually costs — in dollars, in time, and in discipline — to make a deep-tech company look as serious as its science. Ricky breaks down how Michroma rebuilt its entire data room into roughly 110 professionally designed slides — carved into a teaser deck plus dedicated decks for market opportunity, the platform, the ingredients, regulatory, IP, team and advisory board, and techno-economics/manufacturing — and how that data room helped oversubscribe a $5M target into a $6.4M seed that investors said "looked like a Series B." Alan pulls back the curtain on how We Are Palta scopes and prices the work, why "subtracting" is the highest-value skill in an age of AI slop, and how one professional photoshoot and brochure flipped Michroma from radio silence to inbound sample requests — without changing the product at all. 🎧 Listen to the full episode to hear why Alex argues founders should budget roughly 10% of a raise toward actually raising it, why an in-house designer can't replace a multidisciplinary team that understands both biotech and what investors need to see, how We Are Palta turned a 110-slide master deck into five reusable decks plus website and commercial assets, why colorants that don't change taste still command a premium (and what that says about design), and the three questions every founder should ask before hiring an agency. Key Facts: Michroma Ricky Cassini: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cassinir/Website: michroma.coHeadquarters: San Francisco, California and ArgentinaWhat They Do: A precision-fermentation platform using fungal "biofactories" to produce natural food colors and flavors — led by the heat- and pH-stable natural red designed to replace synthetic Red 40.Funding: ~$8M raised to date, anchored by a $6.4M seed round that oversubscribed an original $5M target (led by Supply Change Capital, with SOSV/IndieBio and a deep syndicate of strategic and food-industry investors).Key Facts: We Are Palta Alan Valicenti: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanvalicenti/Website: wearepalta.comHeadquarters: Argentina (operating globally) Blurb MICHROMA is built on a stubborn technical problem the food industry has never fully solved: natural colors tend to fall apart. They fade, shift, or break down under the heat, light, and pH swings of real manufacturing, which is why so much of the world's food supply still leans on petroleum-derived synthetic dyes like Red 40. Michroma's answer is biology. Using fungal "biofactories" and precision fermentation, the company brews natural colorants — starting with a heat- and pH-stable red — that are designed to survive the processing line and match the performance food makers expect from synthetics, at a cost that can compete rather than command a sustainability premium.

    On Treating the Raise Like a Sales Process, 110-Slide Data Room, & Turning Complex Into Compelling

  5. Jul 8

    On Out-Scoping University Research, Techno-Economics, and Avoiding False Assumptions- Elissa, Twynam

    Episode 111: Twynam Management: Elissa Glorie on Out-Scoping University Research, Techno-Economics, and Avoiding False Assumptions In this episode, I catch up with Elissa Glorie, Investment Manager at Twynam, a deeply specialized venture capital firm focused on early-stage global decarbonization. Elissa gives us an exclusive look behind the scenes of their thesis-driven investment engine, detailing how their team converts macroeconomic signals into actionable deep-tech bets. She walks us through Twynam’s recent high-profile follow-on into PlasmaLeap Technologies’ $20M USD (~A$30M) Series A, a round alongside the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and global nitrogen giant Yara Growth Ventures. Elissa breaks down their precise, gated due diligence playbook and provides critical advice on why the vast majority of deep-tech deals fall apart under the microscope of realistic technoeconomic models.🎧 Listen to the full episode to hear how Twynam’s internal AI tools scrape academic research before ideas even reach a corporate desk, why a CEO must possess the technical depth to cross-examine their CTO, and how Twynam evaluates decentralized, non-thermal plasma architectures against the centuries-old Haber-Bosch process. Key Facts: TwynamElissa Glorie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elissaglorie/Website: twynam.comHeadquarter: Australia and SingaporeGeographic Mandate: Structurally built for true global deployment—actively tracking and backing winners across the US, India, and Southeast Asia, alongside a dedicated side-vehicle exclusively for the Chinese mainland.Investment Sweet Spot: Pre-Seed through Series B, with standard, high-conviction initial checks scaling up to $3M USD.BlurbTWYNAM operates on a central, pragmatic insight: the global economy will not decarbonize out of moral virtue alone—it will decarbonize when clean technologies become undeniably better, faster, and cheaper than fossil incumbents. Rooted in decades of handling real physical assets like heavy industrial farming and mining loops, Twynam takes a rigorous, numbers-first approach to climate tech. Their team spends half their time building highly detailed, forward-looking theses that anticipate structural bottlenecks before mainstream venture markets spot them. By utilizing custom-built AI discovery pipelines to scan global research data, Twynam uncovers breakthrough chemistry, engineering, and thermal physics plays at the university level, giving them a distinct first-mover advantage as an early institutional partner.

    On Out-Scoping University Research, Techno-Economics, and Avoiding False Assumptions- Elissa, Twynam

  6. Jul 6

    On Surviving the Long Game, and Renegotiating a "No" - Sérgio Pinto, Cellva Ingredients

    Episode 110: Cellva Ingredients: Sérgio Pinto on Surviving the Long Game, Renegotiating a "No," and Upcycling Coffee Side-StreamsIn this episode, I sit down with Sérgio Pinto, the unyielding founder and CEO of Cellva Ingredients, who shares one of the most intense, relentless fundraising stories you will ever hear. Sérgio reveals how he turned a critical, last-minute "no" into a 20 million Reais (~$4M USD) Pre-Series A round led by Amazonian corporate-backed tech powerhouse Digiboard. He outlines the operational complexities of straddling Brazil’s commercial epicenter in São Paulo and its rugged robusta coffee infrastructure in Manaus. Sérgio also takes us deep into the underlying regulatory strategies and unit economics driving Kafkoa—their high-margin, functional cocoa substitute derived entirely from upcycled coffee side-streams. 🎧 Listen to the full episode to discover how Sérgio rescued a dead deal just ten days after his second child was born, how Cellva navigated European and Japanese regulatory pathways without novel food classification, and how they built an integrated network of over 150 local coffee farmers. Key Facts: Cellva IngredientsSérgio Pinto: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sergiorpinto/Website: cellva.comHeadquarter: São Paulo, BrazilFunding: Closed a 20 million Reais (~$4M USD) Pre-Series A round.Investor: Round led by DigiBoard, with additional participation from existing backers such as Air Capital and angel investors like Rubens Pereira BlurbCELLVA INGREDIENTS is redefining circular nutrition by turning Brazil’s massive agricultural side-streams into premium, high-value functional ingredients. While traditionally known for cell-cultivated fat development, Cellva has rapidly scaled a market-ready infrastructure that utilizes micro-encapsulation to transform coffee husks and byproducts into Kafkoa, a multi-tiered structural substitute for cocoa. By operating directly in the Amazonian robusta coffee corridors, Cellva secures low-cost raw materials while creating sustainable employment for remote farming populations. This distinct environmental mandate provides a unique competitive edge, allowing Cellva to unlock regional state-backed funds, build a resilient supply chain of over 150 local growers, and establish a clear path toward processing thousands of tons annually.

    On Surviving the Long Game, and Renegotiating a "No" - Sérgio Pinto, Cellva Ingredients

  7. Jul 1

    On "Agtech 2.0," Managing Smart Capital Stacks, and Scaling via OEMs- Liron Yanay, AgriPass Robotics

    Episode 109: AgriPass Robotics: Liron Yanay on "Agtech 2.0," Managing Smart Capital Stacks, and Scaling via OEMs In this episode, I catch up with Liron Yanay, CEO of AgriPass Robotics, an innovative agtech startup that recently closed a $7.5M Seed round. Liron details their journey from their initial pre-seed and matching grants with the Israel Innovation Authority to locking in Harbor Venture Consulting and E44 Climate as key institutional backers. Liron outlines what she calls "Agtech 2.0"—a disciplined philosophy that avoids building hardware from scratch, focusing instead on proprietary AI and contextual intelligence. She shares incredible, practical advice on managing data rooms, building detailed financial projections, and bypassing standard agtech pitfalls through strategic partnerships with global Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). 🎧 Listen to the full episode to learn how Liron leveraged specialized video updates to maintain deep investor trust, why targeting mid-sized farms beats chasing 18-month enterprise sales cycles, and how to successfully structure blended project financing for hardware tech. Key Facts: AgriPass RoboticsLiron Yanay: https://il.linkedin.com/in/liron-cohen-yanayWebsite: https://www.agripass.co/Funding: Recently closed a $7.5M Seed round (incorporating matching non-dilutive grants from the Israel Innovation Authority).Core Backers: Led by Harbor Venture Consulting (representing premier US and Latin American family offices) alongside E44 Climate.The Mission: Eradicating weed pressure in open-field agriculture through human-inspired, multi-handed mechanical weeding robots driven by real-time contextual intelligence.BlurbAGRIPASS ROBOTICS is pioneering the "Agtech 2.0" wave by engineering an affordable, high-precision mechanical weed control system. Rather than continuing the traditional chemical warfare of spraying or resetting soil biomes through destructive tilling, AgriPass utilizes human-inspired AI to mimic manual weeding at a massive scale. By deploying up to 20 mechanical "hands" governed by real-time spatial vision, their automated system selectively uproots weeds without harming nearby crops or disrupting the soil's organic carbon structure.

    On "Agtech 2.0," Managing Smart Capital Stacks, and Scaling via OEMs- Liron Yanay, AgriPass Robotics

  8. Jun 30

    On Bypassing "Grant Traps" & the Art of Professional Pre-Seed Agtech Strategy - Arnout, Rockstart

    Episode 108: Rockstart: Arnout Dijkhuizen on Bypassing "Grant Traps" and the Art of Professional Pre-Seed Agtech Strategy In this episode, I sit down with Arnout Dijkhuizen, Principal at Rockstart, a leading early-stage accelerator-vanguard and venture capital fund anchored out of Amsterdam and Copenhagen. Arnout, an agtech investing veteran, opens up about what it truly means to deploy professional capital into pre-seed startups. He explains why Rockstart prioritizes founder "coachability" and deeply grounded industry insights over dense financial plans, and breaks down the exact mechanics behind their selective €100k–€150k initial check model. He also drops some hard truths regarding the European funding landscape, warning founders about the subtle dangers of falling into "grant traps" that can turn a commercial business into a slow-moving, administrative vehicle. 🎧 Listen to the full episode to hear Arnout explain how they helped guide the Indian marketplace Tractor Junction all the way to its massive later-stage rounds, why an exit doesn't need to cross the unicorn threshold to achieve superior venture returns, and how physical AI is optimization-proofing legacy systems like industrial slaughterhouses. Key Facts: RockstartArnout Dijkhuizen: be.linkedin.com/in/arnoutdijkhuizenWebsites: rockstart.comRegional Base: Active physical hubs in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and Copenhagen, Denmark.Target Profile: The ultimate first institutional capital in a company's life cycle. Primarily focused on North-Western Europe but structurally built to back elite teams globally, with active portfolio winners in the US and India.The Math: Deploying €100k to €150k initial checks at the ultra-early, pre-seed junction. Crucially, Rockstart reserves significant capital to protect, defend, and follow on their positions directly up through Series A.BlurbROCKSTART operates on the unwavering principle that founders are the true rockstars of modern industry, positioning the fund as an embedded operational engine rather than a passive source of capital. Investing at the absolute beginning of an architectural idea—frequently partnering with founders fresh out of research labs or native family operations—Rockstart pairs rapid, multi-week investment decisions with an expansive, a-la-carte network of mentors, commercial architects, and agricultural experts.

    On Bypassing "Grant Traps" & the Art of Professional Pre-Seed Agtech Strategy - Arnout, Rockstart
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About

We are uncovering the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.

Information

  • Creator
    Alex Shandrovsky
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    131
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Alex Shandrovsky
  • Show Website
    Investment Climate Podcast