Ep 69: David Perry, President, CEO, and Director of Indigo

Today's guest is David Perry, President, CEO, and Director of Indigo Ag,

 Indigo Ag is harnessing nature to help farmers sustainably feed the planet. They improve grower profitability, environmental sustainability, and consumer health through the use of natural microbiology and digital technologies. Founded in 2016 Indigo Ag has raised more than $650 million in funding. The recently announced Terraton Initiative is a global effort to remove a trillion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and use it to enrich agricultural soils.

David is a serial entrepreneur who has founded and built three innovative companies in the last 20 years, leading the last two through successful IPOs and to multi-billion dollar market capitalizations and raising over $1.2 billion while generating significant returns for investors. He was most recently CEO and Co-Founder of Anacor Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ANAC), a biopharmaceutical company discovering and developing novel small-molecule therapeutics to treat infectious and inflammatory diseases. The company was acquired by Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) in 2016 for approximately $5.2 billion. David previously co-founded and served as CEO of Chemdex (NASDAQ: CMDX), later creating its parent company Ventro Corporation (NASDAQ: VNTR), a business-to-business marketplace focused on the life sciences industry. At its peak, Ventro was valued at $11 billion and was later sold to Nexprise. David is Founder and Chairman of the San Francisco-based digital health startup Better Therapeutics (f/k/a FareWell) and a Board Director of the human microbiome company Evelo Biosciences.

In 2000, David was named Entrepreneur of the Year in Northern California by Ernst and Young. He holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Tulsa. He also attended the United States Air Force Academy, where he was a National Merit Scholar. 

In today’s episode, we cover:

• Overview and origin story of Indigo Ag
• David’s career as an entrepreneur, and how he has prioritized what projects to take on along the way
• The most striking problems to David about the food and agriculture system
• David’s consistent approach to starting from zero as he kicks off a new venture
• Indigo’s vision, strategy, and progress to-date
• Overview of regenerative farming
• Value prop to farmers
• Overview of Terraton Initiative and other key Indigo projects
• How they fit into the climate fight, and what their impact can be if successful
• How David thinks about climate change in general, and what else can be impactful in the climate fight beyond Indigo’s work
• How David would allocate $100B to maximize its impact in the climate fight
• David’s advice for others looking to find their lane

Links to topics discussed in this episode:

• Indigo Ag website: https://www.indigoag.com
• Flagship Pioneering: https://www.flagshippioneering.com/
• Cargill: https://www.cargill.com/
• ADM: https://www.adm.com/
• Bunge: https://www.bunge.com/
• Indigo Carbon: https://www.indigoag.com/for-growers/indigo-carbon
• Terraton Initiative: https://terraton.indigoag.com/
• Regenerative farming: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regenerative_agriculture
• 45Q primer: https://www.betterenergy.org/blog/primer-section-45q-tax-credit-for