209 Bart van der Zande - Thanks to the learning of the 1st, the world 1st regenerative venture studio gets ready for the 2nd cohort

A check-in interview with Bart van der Zande of Fresh Ventures Studio, a venture studio specifically focussed on building regenerative businesses, about how the first program went, the companies they are building, and what they are doing differently with the upcoming cohort.
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Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:00

A check-in interview with Bart van der Zand of Fresh Ventures, a venture studio specifically focused on building regenerative businesses. How did the first program go? How many companies got built or are being built? And what are they doing differently with this upcoming cohort? This is the Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast, Investing as if the planet mattered, where we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Why my focus on soil and regeneration? Because so many of the pressing issues we face today have their roots in how we treat our land and our sea, grow our food, what we eat, wear and consume. And it's that we as investors, big and small, and consumers start paying much more attention to the dirt slash soil underneath our feet. To make it easy for fans to support our work, we launched our membership community. And so many of you have joined us as a member. Thank you. If our work created value for you, and if you have the means, and only if you have the means, consider joining us. Find out more on gumroad.com slash investing in regen ag. That is gumroad.com slash investing in regen ag. Or find the link below. Welcome to another episode. Today, we have Bart back on the show of Fresh Ventures. Fresh is a venture studio that builds new companies that accelerate a circular and regenerative food system. And we have a lot to check in because since we last talked, they run their first program. So there's so much to learn, to unpack, to change, etc. So I'm very happy to have Bart back. Welcome, Bart. Thank you, Koen. It's good to be back. We just checked, the last time we talked was in April 21, which feels like an eternity ago. Can you share, just for people that didn't listen, of course, and we'll put it in the show notes below, but just briefly what Fresh is, Fresh Ventures, and then we'll unpack what you have done over the last almost two years and what the lessons learned are from that.

SPEAKER_01: 2:16

Yeah, of course. Yeah, Fresh is a Fresh Ventures studio in full. is a startup studio on a mission to transform the food system towards a regenerative and circular food system. We build multiple new companies per cycle per year from scratch to help progress this mission in our studio, but also we kickstart this in our program, our venture building program, our pre-studio program, which is a three-month in-person full time program where we invite around 30 entrepreneurial people to start exploring and building new companies that's going to help well progress this mission. The companies that we found and we are ourselves are also steward owned companies or mission first companies and we try to align the way we do things but also how we organize the governance to match the mission we are trying to pursue. And indeed, we ran our first program last year, or actually in November 2021, semi-in-COVID still. We started with a digital program, and then in February 2022, the three months, we engaged in the three months of in-person with 25 people in Rotterdam. And we could probably dive into more detail, but that's the short story.

SPEAKER_02: 3:46

So you started with the digital one probably partly because of COVID, and the situation at that point. And I remember because I was partly involved in that or a bit involved in some sessions, it was really a deep dive or sort of getting everybody up to speed about the issues and challenges of the food system. Because just as a bit of background, where did you find these people or how did they find you? What did the cohort look like in terms of, you say, entrepreneurial people? It's a very specific word you use and you chose it specifically. why what is a a typical cohort person that doesn't exist sorry what was the the breakdown of the court like what kind of people were part of that cohort and why did you need to do first a deep dive just to get everybody up to date on the issues and challenges and the opportunities of course of the food system

SPEAKER_01: 4:40

yeah so what we would i think let's let's start like on the universal principles that will that we looked for in everyone that participated and that also resulted in an interesting group i think is is first of all a strong mission drive, so people that really are powered, I would say, by a strong drive for a certain mission that aligns with ours, and putting that one first. The second one is a growth mindset, so really taking every opportunity to learn, and it translates a lot into curiosity, and continuously progressing and seeing ways to get better out of also failure, for example. Third one is grit. So especially in what we're trying to do, I think many of your listeners as well, it's very hard. We need to run through a couple of walls. So we try to select people that have proven that they are not stopping at the first moment when problems start hitting them. And the fourth one was this entrepreneurial drive, this entrepreneurial itch. And this can be quite evident with people that have built ventures before, but can be that they have been part of a startup team early startup team or they have played a very entrepreneurial role within their organization but we were looking for some proof that they are capable of yeah and enterprising adventuring I would say so that's the overall and then we looked at sort of three main edges I would say one is a domain edge so people that have a deep experience in some parts of the food system this could be from an engineering perspective or soil science or from a market perspective, working at a food company for a while. The second one is, yeah, we call it sort of the catalytic profile, the commercial profile. This is organizational builders, salespeople, people that can really set up the organization and sell the thing, I would say. And the third one is a technical profile. So that's really, for example, we have an aerospace engineer engineer and we have a hardware engineer software engineers but that's people with a technical background and what we've seen I think is that actually the catalytic edge and the technical edge are the most important and then let's say the domain knowledge is spread over the two profiles I would say so some have a deeper experience already some are kind of new and that circles back also to your question I think to our opening our digital program is really getting everyone up to speed on sort of the same language, the same understanding of the challenges, the same perspective, I would say. And that's one thing, but also taking a systems perspective, which is a very dominant, I would say, approach in how we do things and requires a bit of zooming out also and looking at the problem in a different way. So seeing the interconnection between different parts of the food system also. So

SPEAKER_02: 7:51

just to, yeah, it's... It was fascinating to interact with that cohort of people, of course, as they came from very different backgrounds, but definitely showed those different qualities and our criteria as well. And now looking at, let's say, the end of that cohort or the end of that program and four companies are part of the studio, you invited four companies in, which means a collection of those people ended up in the studio. We're going to talk about the different companies, but just looking back at the cohort and of course you've done that analysis and you just mentioned two or three things already. What have you learned there? What were the most important ones that you're now going to apply as the next program is starting with the next cohort in a couple of months? What were the lessons learned? How are you adjusting, let's say, the screening, the filtering of the people applying now?

SPEAKER_01: 9:32

Yeah, I think, I mean, it was the first time and also when I was listening to our podcast, that was still on paper. So it's very easy to talk about all the stuff on paper, of course, and then you get into real life. But if we look at the design, we really went for diversity in terms of backgrounds. So it was quite a diverse group and we were a bit agnostic, I would say, on what areas they would be interested in. So that's one thing we did previously. I'm going to get back to it, how we do that but that resulted in a very wide variety. And part of that was also a difference between people that are maybe exploring on potentially building something in the space and people that are dead set on it, that are really already potentially committing to it. There's no other way. And I think that's an issue.

SPEAKER_02: 10:23

But do you mean people that already have a clear company or product or service or something idea? Or in general, they just... really know they want to build something in this space and they're looking for like the second group you just mentioned are they coming already or they came with something clear in mind?

SPEAKER_01: 10:42

I think it's a bit of a scale so we selected very much for people not having a startup they're working on right so it's really selecting individuals that are interested to build something but I think the ones that had a clear profile already I would say and are really clear on I want to do something in this space I want to build something that those are the people that actually went and built and the ones that we thought maybe would be interesting are like the ones that are exploring and maybe making this leap which we I think we even call them leapers I think that's a hard group to involve in such a program and there should be different programs potentially to help this group because it's a big group probably a group that reaches out to you a lot as well that's sort of still exploring like what is my role in the in the ecosystem how can I but it's not a new company per se as the outcome

SPEAKER_02: 11:40

I'm laughing because that's exactly why we started the podcast because I didn't know what to do in the space and talking to people is a way to do that and of course accidentally found out that running the podcast and talking to people is probably our role in the space so I very much let's say connect with that and can connect with that to but I can also imagine that it's not the ideal group to run into a venture studio and start venturing, enterprising, etc. So that second group, I'm just completely assuming here, but you're going to focus more on that particular group for, smaller group though, but particular group for the upcoming cohort. Is that fair?

SPEAKER_01: 12:26

Yeah, I think so. So the closer we can get to, I'm dead set on setting up a company the better I think but still I think it's very important also looking at sort of our mission and the problem we try to solve in general is like fixing this the beginning of the pipeline right get more people to actually build organizations and work in this space on this mission we are still open to people that are a bit more explorative or getting into it I would say because I still think that there's a lot of value there and I think that's also a second lesson on that we learned is that we were quite focused on ventures as an output, I would say. But if you bring together 25 people that are experienced, that are, well, very capable, very mission-driven, often value-aligned, you inject them into this mission, I would say, often they're on it, they're not gonna do something else. So everyone of these 25 people are landing in the food space in very interesting positions also. So even if people didn't start a venture, that doesn't mean it's not interesting or it's not the impact we want to make. So we now see that coming back. So people, for example, one of the people is working at Climate Farmers. The relationship grows with them. They spread out all over Europe. We get additional information. So it's very helpful also for the ones that are not building a venture to go through this program and become part of this cohort, I would say.

SPEAKER_02: 14:01

Yeah, you just want to probably fund it differently and not necessarily, yeah, not with the, they're going to be investable companies coming out. If somebody lands at a large, even a large corporate and really, like the alumni network is going to be very interesting, but it's not all going to be investable ventures that grow to an impact unicorn. I heard somebody say yesterday. Impact unicorn, okay. Or an impact, yeah, instead of the zebra that people have been using, but it doesn't really... let's say, resonate with so many people. So somebody called it an impact unicorn. And then the 1 billion, we can figure out if it's a billion hectares, a billion or acres or billion people, a billion money, like Euro pushed into the space. I mean, but that billion we can play with, it doesn't have to be a valuation of, it could come after that. But anyway, that's a side note. Let's talk about the four companies that are definitely part of the studio. If you want to run us through, of course, these things change. We're recording this at the beginning of February 2020 so companies pivot and morph and change but I think they're pretty well set now and to give a short intro to the four companies we've had of course Susanne on the call of Harvest Care she's made great progress since we interviewed her I will put the link below and we're looking forward to having the others when time comes and it makes sense to of course have here on the podcast but can you walk us through the four studio companies at the moment

SPEAKER_01: 15:29

yeah of course maybe maybe Maybe I can sort of segue from the program into the studio and then mention them because I think it's good to note that at the end of the program there's sort of a transfer into the studio. So the program is a set period of time and then the studio we build for one to three years alongside the companies that we invite in. And we had nine teams actually applying for the studio and four of those are now still in the studio and six of them are in total six are sort of operational. And I think the other two are actually also doing amazing stuff. So yeah, I'll focus on the four, but there's more coming out of it than just four adventures. Yeah, so Harvest Care you had on the podcast focused on food as medicine and the diet shift that's needed. So they're really building this connection between the personal and the soil health. They're offering services to help in this diet shift, but also building, I would say, the whole ecosystem that's needed to deliver this mindset shift between the relationship between health and our food system. Springtail is focused on developing and facilitating new markets. I think what they ran into, and I think many people are running into, is that we have, I think, 250,000 edible plants or even more and I think eight of them give us like 75% of our calories so we have we have reduced the diversity quite extremely and we need to diversify but if we look at diversifying then there's I would say a cloud of problems that you run into for farmers but actually for the whole value chain so how can we help farmers actually diversify by building value chains for crops that actually help them build the soil and how are nature-inclusive. And what's needed then? So on the one hand, it's driving the market, but there's also just missing steps in between, or there's confusion in between, the complexity increases, so how do we manage for that? And that's what Springtail is doing. Yeah, FarmOn is focused on the finance side, or unlocking the finance for farmers to transition into RegenEgg. They're using geospatial techniques and machine learning to help do that. I think in general, maybe this accounts for all of them, with them specifically, if we have reduced the complexity quite significantly, I would say, as human beings, we've tried to reduce the complexity and make it understandable and now we're transitioning back into working with nature, which increases the complexity and we need to embrace that. And I think one of the key challenges actually is all the organizations organizations that are financial stakeholders for farmers are struggling very hard in how to manage this increase in complexity and they're building the tools to help them do so for governments, for banks, for carbon credit companies. We'll probably get into that. There's quite a lot of debate the past weeks also to help them prove and build the proof for what they're actually doing and make sure that this whole scene, I would say, is not becoming a greenwashing operation. And the last one is Clover. It's a hardware company looking at the transition, I would say, or the symbiotic relationship with animals in the food system, helping animal farming or dairy farming to start including crops and getting to mixed farming and the other way around, how to integrate animals more. They start off with a collar system, so sort of a virtual fencing or herd management tool that can actually help farmers to graze more, to go outside more, but also to integrate animals into more complex farming systems. It's a bit of the

SPEAKER_02: 19:58

overall It's funny how they're mostly on the farmer's side and the farming side. I mean, harvest care to a certain extent, of course, it's a more of a consumer or the eater side of things, but three out of four are, was it something like if we, I would have asked you a guess in April of 21, you would probably not guess that I'm imagining, like what is, was it something you imagined to have such a heavy focus on the farming and agriculture side and not the necessarily the food side?

SPEAKER_01: 20:34

Well, first of all, I think most of the impact is to be made close to the soil and close to the farmer. And I think our whole philosophy is that we need to build what is not being built. And if we look at an underserved area, it's very much this area. So also if you look at where the energy and money flows, it's often close to the consumer, it's delivery services, alternative protein, et cetera, while actually most of the impact challenges are with the farmer and helping them. So that is our priority. This is part of our framing of the problem. And although we take a systems perspective and we look at how can we create a systems change, we want to optimize, I would say, for the changes we will see in the soil for the farmer on the production side. So if we do things close to the consumer, the question is, how does this help us produce the food differently. How does this help farmers? So it's not an accident, I would say. This is the focus.

SPEAKER_02: 21:38

Yeah. But it's interesting because there's an argument to be made as well. Like the market or the demand isn't ready or the markets aren't ready to or aren't absorbing the stuff fast enough. And if you create enough demand on the demand side,

SPEAKER_03: 21:53

the

SPEAKER_02: 21:55

whole farming piece becomes a lot easier because farmers like to transition or transition finance will become a available, et cetera, et cetera, if there's a strong market driver. But that's a whole different, yeah, a different type of company, of course, to make, let's say, regen products or regeneration on the shelf, sexy and things like that. It's a very different focus. So what are you, of course, you're not selecting the companies or the ideas at the beginning. What are you doing differently with this cohort on that selection side? You already said we're going to focus more on people that are dead set on building a company. is that going to make it more tricky to fill up the cohort what do you think

SPEAKER_01: 22:34

yeah well we'll see I also think the focus of the areas that we'll focus on we're still agnostic and people can come in and I think it's good to know that it's for us and I think in general it's very important that there's a very intrinsic founder problem connection so someone that has a almost like unkillable fire to solve that problem that's key so it has to be is something that comes out of the person. But now we have four ventures active already, right? So these are operating in challenge areas, I would say, that we don't need to build new ventures, or it doesn't make a lot of sense to build more of the same. So there are different areas that we're now more actively looking into, and one of them is inputs, transition financing, and landscape and ecosystem level restoration. So we have, I think, different parts. Actually, what you were mentioning just now, like developing the market, I still think that is a very important part. So Springtail is working on that partly, but getting more brands that are really focused on, well, let's say, claiming parts of the shelf, but actually brands that then help regenerate. I think that's something we still need to do. So what are the areas on the shelves that are maybe a bit sleepy that we can... that we can disrupt, I think that's one of the things we need to do as well.

SPEAKER_02: 24:05

Yeah, what are the key, what are the entry points? And we'll have a few episodes on that coming out and somebody, I don't know if it's out yet, when this will be out, but look forward on who's building a brand or set of brands in Ibiza. And of course you're wondering why, but really going after the extremely affluent and if there's one place where you can launch something, especially around like essential oils, especially around very specific crops, almonds, but activated elements which I learned what they were in that interview there you can you can drive you can you can follow the Tesla model going for a ridiculously expensive sport car first to fund a lot of other things and slowly going down which of course everybody claims to go after the Tesla model as always but there is there is an argument to be made I'm not sure if it's true but to go after the more affluent markets first to kick start a lot of things on the ground and then slowly working your way down as a as processing becomes easier, as just a lot of economies of scale kick in, I think there's a reason why Amphora, which we had on the call, or on the podcast before as well, starts in Switzerland, because it's a very high-priced olive oil, and there's a market for that, and a liter price that you find maybe in Paris and London and Europe, but not many other places, and then slowly, as you scale, work to other ways. Of course, that's the ideal scenario. There's so many honking behind me, but there is an argument to be made to to yeah drive that but of course then the question is okay what are those few acupuncture ingredients that you can start with that really drive scale on the landscape scale like you don't want two or two or three flowers and that's it like you need hectares and hectares and what what lends itself well for a brand how do you build that brand how do you make sure you're not holding water throughout europe and the rest of the world like what's like what makes sense there's a lot of overlap or a lot of layers you need to build on top of each other to figure it out so i'm very curious if that essential oil, almonds and olive oil, et cetera, are in debt with those regions, some of those first movers and some of those beachheads. And in Ibiza and in Switzerland turned out to be willing to pay for quality and willing to pay for land quality and willing to pay for taste, et cetera. So it's something I'm very interested in. Not easy to do, but yeah, it can be a big pool. I mean, we both know the example of Tomaso, which is very successful and starting to, and the soy sauce side, very high end, but starting to impact quite a lot of hectares around Rotterdam and the example of Wild Farmed, which are coming on the podcast, don't worry, which are affecting a lot of hectares in terms of grain because they made soil very, very sexy and very high quality flour for the bakers in London. So there are examples. I only know two. So we're hunting for others if you know anything. Of course, there's the Regen Brands podcast, but it's mainly US. I'll put a link below if you're interested in that as well. So there's something there. Very different type of company, I think, than what you have in the studio until now. So that's something you're going to adjust like slightly different areas to focus on. That means that you're selecting also for people that have an experience in the input side, for example. You're actively searching for that instead of looking for the most diverse group that you sort of did the first time around.

SPEAKER_01: 27:26

Yeah, I think it's still very important to have a diverse group and there's a certain level of emergence that we need to lean into in terms of how this works. But indeed, we are a bit more actively looking in some of these challenges and how to solve for them. Maybe in a quick response, because I think it's an interesting debate in general that we have also in our studio, right? In this, well, let's say the Tesla model or getting regenerative products out there first to like high paying customers. And then we will scale and then it will be for the masses. But I mean, And it's interesting. I also think, and it's a question, for example, with harvest care, very clearly, I mean, dietitians are now partly a luxury good, or it's a health question, right? But it's a luxury good. So how do you get the lifestyle change actually to the group that is being excluded? And I think this is a bit of a question. Like, I think the longer we wait and say, all right, we'll first figure it out in the Tesla model, and then we start including, I think it's going to be a problem. I actually think if we can get it into the business model, in the way we fund the companies, embed it into the whole mission that the whole goal is to make it available to the masses, then at least you give it a try, I would say. For example, with Harvestgate, what is the role of insurance companies that we can include in the way this is financed? It has to be probably more multi-stakeholder instead of just, this is the thing we sell, this is the consumer. stakeholders need to get involved in getting that price to a certain point for the services or the products needed. I think this is a big challenge because I'm not sure if it's actually going to happen and I'm not sure it's going to happen in the pace that we need actually to make this transition if we just focus on really cool stuff for chefs and very wealthy people.

SPEAKER_02: 29:28

No, very fair point. And I think especially on the health side and also on the, of course, the climate impact side, but the health side, yeah, if it's only for the affluent, it's not going to reach. But of course, with activated almonds and essential oils, you can argue on the health benefits of that. They're for sure healthy, but if it only reaches the happy few that are probably already following an interesting diet plus interesting dietitians, that's not where the impact is and that's exactly like the food as medicine or nutrient density series like how do we make sure it reaches people actually we're working on by far the biggest impact which is where the worst diets are now and where the worst health outcomes are now and there will be an interview live soon on diabetes too and regenerative food and the connection there or the opportunity there let's say which is fascinating like the savings are enormous it's fully grant funded until now but there is an argument there or there is an opportunity there to structure that as outcome based finance or to structure that differently because the savings for all of us are enormous it's just a question of how do you concentrate that in a way that you can scale these programs and have some kind of return to whoever puts the risk money out there so very very interesting good point very fair of course we get swept away by the Tesla model which took 15 years to change anything in the car industry anyway and we're still not nearly where we want to be and building massive electric SUVs instead of smaller electric bikes but yeah that's for another podcast

SPEAKER_01: 31:08

if it's okay to build on top of it because it's partly maybe also a lesson or a challenge that we have if we talk about regeneration right is that it does require sort of this whole paradigm shift or this deeper mindset shift I think that's something we learned also in the program and something we need to lean into as well it's not just oh I now understand how the food system works and regeneration and I've read a couple of things and I've talked to a couple of people it always requires a personal change as well and we've seen that happen in the program that it's such a profound life altering process that you go through if you want to build a business that is focused on regeneration you cannot do it without changing yourself and I think that is a bit of the question as well if we just have fancy products that are regeneratively made, is that actually also helping shift the mindset of the consumer? Or is it just, hey, it's exactly how you always had it. It's like the exact amount of convenience. We'll bring it at your home. It's the same thing, but now it's regenerative. I think it's part of the solution, but I think it's also the challenge, like how do we actually really, really change the way we look at how our food is made and what our relationship to food is. And even if we build this Tesla model products, I think they should be a tool to drive this change

SPEAKER_02: 33:06

yeah what does a regenerative food system look like it's more than a few fancy ingredients somewhere

SPEAKER_00: 33:12

yeah

SPEAKER_02: 33:13

exactly And so what are other things you do differently now as you're recruiting for the new cohort? I think recruiting is the fair word here. And so just practically as well, what are deadlines? What are things people absolutely have to know? And then we go to who should apply.

SPEAKER_01: 33:30

Yeah, so the application is open already. So there's first rounds of interviews are happening. And the next deadline is 1st of March. The program itself in person starts the second week of May. And before that, we have a less extensive digital program than last time, but a digital preparation where we do a similar thing that starts half of April. But that's digitally and part-time, so you can do that next to whatever you have running still. So that's the numbers, I would say.

SPEAKER_02: 34:06

And then it's again three months in person from the half of May?

SPEAKER_01: 34:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 34:10

So basically going over the summer into the summer.

SPEAKER_01: 34:13

Yeah, in Rotterdam. So May, June, July and then August. We also learned that you need a bit of a short break or a moment to sort of process because it's very intense and life-changing as I said. But then from end of August, September onwards, we kickstart with the teams in the studio.

SPEAKER_02: 34:36

And And so what is your pitch for who should apply? How do you pitch this to the ear of a few people here and there in the space? Or if they know somebody listening, if they are people themselves that are intrigued by enterprising in the regeneration space, what is your ideal client, ideal person that should definitely reach out and hit the button?

SPEAKER_01: 35:05

Ideal client or what the pitch is? Which is, I think, basically, and also I will loop in sort of the feedback we got from the people that participated, which maybe saw different upsides that we didn't account for as much. But I think finding like a co-founder or building your team is very hard in the beginning. So finding deeply value aligned people that have the same level of knowledge, that have the same drive, it's super hard. And the chances that you find someone increases significantly, both in the program but also being part of fresh I would say because we are continuously attracting these people being able to really dig into some of these challenges so we have a second brain that we developed so a lot of pre-research is done which helps you accelerate your understanding if you're newish and exploring but even if you're deep into a certain subject we can help out by getting access to experts getting access to to the right people a lot faster. I think that's proven to be very helpful. And also what we've seen is we have a network, but we bring in 25 people. They have probably a similar size of a network, so it was a bit overwhelming even how many people got pulled into the program. But anyway, you can navigate a lot faster and save a lot of time. Access to funding, so investors, financiers, we have a lot of them in our network. We're looking at ways to do more there ourselves as well. But anyway, getting access to capital, it can be project funding or philanthropic funding or investment. We're pre-organizing that. And I think the thing that we are still looking into or what we learned also from this group is that it is, I would say, it's quite hard. In general, it's quite hard to set up a business in the first years. It's really hard work. And then if you look at this transition or what we're working into, on is extra big of a challenge. And doing that in a group, doing that in a studio, doing that in a context with people that are all on the same journey is proven to be very helpful in terms of, well, learning, of course, in terms of access to network, but also just your mental state, I would say, and your development as a leader, as an entrepreneur. It's, yeah, that's a big appreciation of the people in the studio. So that's a pitch. and what we're looking for technical talent people that have proven to be able to build an organization or really think they can do it and are looking for a technical talent to do it alongside with people that are sort of on an id id stage i would say already have an i have sort of a sense i want to build something here not yet incorporated and yeah looking for support to to do so potentially finding a team getting a bit challenged maybe on the like the influence on the system it will have um those are the people we are looking for

SPEAKER_02: 38:14

and what was the biggest surprise from the from running the first program for you personally

SPEAKER_01: 38:25

I think surprise and learning is that the quantity of ventures or people applying for the studio was a lot higher than we expected. More people really ended up with something they wanted to work with, where we really saw a very strong connection between who they are and the problem they're trying to solve. And also we saw that the problem they were trying to solve was super relevant. So that was hard actually for us. And in terms of where they got in terms of validation of the solution, we were expecting to be a bit further ahead. It often requires a bit more validation, especially if it's multi-stakeholder, I would say, to get up and running. So that was, I think, a very important learning and then to tie it to sort of a challenge of what we do a bit different as well. If you look at making a systemic impact, it's really about the question also, are we building a solution that is the next year's problem, right? Is it a new problem we're creating? or is it a solution that can really help solve the root cause? And that does require loving the problem quite extensively. And I think we do that in the program as well. So we keep on challenging, like go deeper, go deeper, go deeper. Do you understand? Have you talked to a lot of stakeholders? Do we see what potentially happens? Which meant that we potentially stick around in a problem last time a bit too long and we can move into the solution a little bit quicker especially also because we were quite facilitative I would say on people's edges and then yeah you can get lost and that's a bit of the goal as well you can get lost in the problem a little bit but helping people identify how their edge connects to relevant solution spaces or relevant problem areas I think now we feel confident that we can do that a lot faster which will which will speed up the process a lot more So I think in many ways we learned how we can speed up the process further and help better I think.

SPEAKER_02: 40:36

Yeah, no, it's fascinating to see. And then probably as well, what you've noticed is that then the moment they start companies, even in the studio or without, they're going to learn so much because the moment you're working in the problem is very different than theoreticizing on paper about the solution as well. The moment you're working in the solution, I'm imagining things just keep evolving very, very quickly compared to what they were thinking, let's say, before last summer when they were wrapping up the program. So I'm imagining the learning curve of the last six months has been quite steep again for many. Is that something you've seen? Like, have they changed a lot since they sort of came out of the program and started, some of them, of course, in the studio, some of them out of them, out of the studio? Have you seen big shifts there, switches and as they went into the wide world? I

SPEAKER_01: 41:27

wouldn't say like big shifts on like the mission. And I think the problem were quite well validated. Like this is the general challenge and these are also the stakeholders that didn't changed that significantly but it's indeed it's also finding the right starting point I would say to get to the end vision which often hasn't changed that much but what are the good starting points and how to get those started and where to put your priorities that have shifted quite significantly and it's a very iterative very intense process in terms of these early stages where you also are building your team I mean we accelerate that of course it's a very intense experience three months but they're also developing their team and iterating on that or even finding additional co-founders in this phase so yeah it's quite a lot of moving pieces I would say

SPEAKER_02: 42:22

fascinating and before we close There's something in Uganda I think you want to mention. And then I'll put all the links below, obviously, for people that want to sign up and we'll be running some other communications. I think we'll share quite a bit on this and then potentially a webinar here and there. And I will try to also be personally involved if I can in the car at this time. Also last time, actually, we managed to do that. So any closing words before we wrap up on this update?

SPEAKER_01: 42:53

Closing words. Well, there's a bunch of closing words, I think. No, I think it's interesting to see that the model that we envision is sort of replicating as well earlier than we expected that maybe we're planning there's a yeah let's say fresh inspired version starting in Uganda focused on East Africa led by Hannes van den Eekhout called ROOTACLE that just received funding as well so we can also see which parts of the method are very context specific for our focus which is or Western Europe and which parts are sort of universal that we can replicate and accelerate the learning also on how to do this. So I think that's great news and so people that are interested not specifically in our geography might be interested more in the East African context that we also have someone working on that there. Yeah then in terms of final words indeed like the program is starting again so I think we already discussed the applications are open and I I really recommend joining. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out or join one of the Q&As. I think it's also good to sort of note, I think it's good to check out the ventures that we're building. So I think all of them are getting to a point where they are nearing sort of an investment readiness point. Clover is actively fundraising. Pharma is nearing it. So for people that want to get involved, also feel free to reach out to get more information on the different on the different ventures because there's a yeah you might you might want to invite them there so there's a whole story behind all of them I think yeah I think those are I can go in depth there but as a closing remark maybe that's a bit too crazy

SPEAKER_02: 44:46

let's wrap it up and follow follow the progress of of course the four studio companies and and also the program over time I think it's we need we need more companies we need more entrepreneurial or enterprising, I don't think it's a verb, but in this space.

SPEAKER_01: 45:00

Maybe something we didn't discuss, Koen, which we both find fascinating, but maybe that's for next time, is also something we work on or something we learned also is about the financing of these companies, right? So we are working on how to structure them and it's about steward ownership, governance, et cetera, et cetera. But the more you get into it, it's also very much about how they get financed. And I think that's a very, very interesting topic, actually. And what you see is that if the mission comes first or a certain change in the system that we want to see, I think that's actually what we've been doing the past two years as well. We've been talking to VCs and impact investors, but also to a lot of philanthropy. And we see these barriers crumbling. And sometimes we have been the people with the hammer trying to bring down those walls between these different types of funding. And I think that's a big part of the challenge that we're trying to do as well in terms of how to get capital in this very, very early stage. So there's, in my opinion, a big problem in a lot of money transitioning into, all right, let's get to this different food system. But that's big, big money and how to cut that up and bring that towards the early stage. It's a big challenge that we're trying to address the coming 12 months as well, potentially being able to invest ourselves. And I think a studio like... concept I would say would be able to absorb more money to cut it in smaller pieces and also cover for the overhead that's needed to do the work on small investments with high risk. So people that are interested in that I would say I'm getting into that quite deeply as well and I think that's part of your base that's interested in this question as well because we're gravitating away from the early stage while we see that there's need for more in the beginning of the pipeline.

SPEAKER_02: 46:59

Yeah, let's unpack that in another one, like how to make big money small, I think, or how to cut up the massive amounts of money available to certain, into much smaller, which, yeah, there are reasons why that's not happening. And they're perceived, they're real risks or perceived risks, and it's just easier to do bigger deals in many cases. But also many reasons why it should happen or other mechanisms we can use. So let's unpack that in another one. And But it's something very, yeah. How do you, if the first bit is missing, of course, we're not getting a lot of companies further along that can absorb larger tickets and then can have a much larger impact.

UNKNOWN: 47:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 47:45

Perfect. Thank you so much for your time and we'll definitely check in and good luck with going through all the applicants, all the screening conversations. I remember last time it was a lot of work on your side and this time I don't think it's going to be less as you're going to have probably way more people applying as you're known to run a first program and of course the message is out there.

SPEAKER_01: 48:10

Yeah, I look forward to talk to more people I would say so I feel free

SPEAKER_02: 48:15

to reach out.