More than 250 companies have presented at InvestMidwest over the last 22 years. We are talking to these companies to learn how InvestMidwest has helped startups over the and to identify what organizations in our Midwest innovation ecosystems have helped these alumni along their individual pathways to commercialization in addition to InvestMidwest. We have begun our blog series with four ag innovation companies.
Company: Divergence
Company: 3Bar Biologics
Company: Aker
Company: Plastomics
* Presenter at InvestMidwest
Problem addressed
Divergence developed a genomics and information technology platform aimed at controlling parasitic nematodes of crops, both agrochemicals and resistant crops.
Technology had applications in human medicine and agriculture. The agriculture market became the focus. The platform helped to develop both agricultural chemical approach and modified plant approach for crop resistance.
Status
2000 founded.
2011 successful exit through acquisition by Monsanto
Founding team
The technology inventor, Jim McCarter, was a young scientist at Washington University. He wanted to found a company and looked for a CEO with innovation experience to join him. He found his CEO at Monsanto in Derek Rapp, then Monsanto’s lead for Mergers and Acquisitions. Derek was attracted by the innovation of Jim’s discoveries and by the commercial opportunities. Derek led Divergence to a successful exit.
What are founders doing now?
After Divergence’s successful exit, both CEO and inventor have remained active in the St Louis innovation ecosystem. Derek joined RiverVest Venture Partners in St. Louis focused on life science companies addressing medical needs. Jim joined Abbott’s Diabetes Care New Analyte Ventures as Medical Director but also serves is a part-time entrepreneur in residence with BioGenerator.
Problem addressed
3Bar Biologics has developed a platform to stabilize and extend the shelf-life of living microbial products and is commercializing beneficial microbes that augment crop nutrition uptake. Their current business model is to provide contract development and manufacturing services for other microbial products companies.
Status
3Bar has doubled its revenue for the three past years from seed investments of $2.4M, much from Ohio-based groups. They are currently growing via revenue growth and are seeking capital from outside their immediate region to accelerate growth. Investment capital would allow 3Bar Biologic to build out larger manufacturing facility and hire additional talent.
Problem addressed
Aker is developing automated on farm pest scouting over and under the canopy via drones and machine-learned analytics.
Status
2016 founded. Since founding to automate crop scouting and provide services to agriculture chemical manufacturers to manage field trials, Aker has pivoted to be closer to the path of recommendations to solve something on farm. Aker is currently pursuing their growth by growing their customer base and revenue. They have made their user interface easier to use by growers and farm advisors and their platform more easily integrated with other data collection on farm.
Founding team
Orlando, a software executive, started Aker with Todd Golly, a corn and soy farmer in the Great Lakes region.
Problem addressed
Plastomics aims to enable crop improvement by stacking multiple genes and expressing high levels of transgenic proteins in a single crop variety. Their platform utilizes chloroplast transformation as an improved method for developing crops with new traits.
Status
2017 founded.
Founding team
The founders all met at Monsanto where they held various roles.
What are founders doing now?
Sharon and Elizabeth have worked together before founding Plastomics and both are now supporting another startup. Sharon is helping Pluton Biosciences with product development and regulatory strategy, while Elizabeth is serving as Pluton’s current CEO.
InvestMidwest provided a platform for Derek to network and pitch the vision of Divergence. Derek presented twice at InvestMidwest once in 2001 in Kansas City where he first met Brian Clevinger, managing director at Prolog Ventures and then again in 2002 where he and Brian continued discussions. Prolog Ventures later led the first institutional round of investment into Divergence.
As part of their effort to make get noticed and build productive relationships with venture capital firms for additional investment and other microbial product innovative companies for customers, Bruce and Jane presented to InvestMidwest in 2018 where they networked with other microbial products companies for customer development.
By presenting and networking at InvestMidwest, Orlando feels he created greater familiarity for Aker among a group of investors and that this familiarity provided the catalyst to close his round that was led by Lewis and Clark and also included Flyover Capital.
Sharon attended InvestMidwest in 2012 while she was a venture scout for Dow Agrosciences. When she and her team needed to raise capital for Plastomics, they presented at InvestMidwest to get visibility for Plastomics and to build stronger relationships with the regional investment community.