Paying It Forward: Experienced CEOs Are Bringing Their Talents Back to Startups
Startups need more than just investment. They also need experience. Experience in their markets. Experience growing and leading a team. Experience developing and marketing a product. But, that is often the one thing that most founders lack. They’re new, they’re just starting out, they’re learning as they go.
Forget Cryptocurrencies. The Real Opportunities are in Entrepreneurship
Meet the Davos on the Delta Philanthropy Partner: St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
Food Insecurity Is the Biggest Threat to Life On Earth, Except That it Isn’t
MIT OpenAg Is the Future of Agriculture. Here’s How We’re Helping
The MIT Media Lab is reimagining the food supply. It’s called the Open Agriculture Initiative (OpenAg) and it is staffed by a team of researchers that has been working since 2014 to create healthier, more engaging, and more inventive future food systems.
Why It Matters That We’re Talking About Gender Discrimination in Agriculture
Corporate Venture Capital Is Reaching New Heights, and That’s a Good Thing
iSelect Monthly Update: March 2018
Why the Midwest’s ‘Blue Collar Silicon Valley’ Is About More Than Just ‘Mid-Tech’
What the ‘Rise of the Rest’ Is Still Missing
Peter Thiel Is Bullish on the Midwest. So Are We
Peter Thiel is one of the savviest investors of our time. His $2.5 billion net worth is proof of that. So when Thiel says the next big innovations will be born in the American Midwest, it’s probably a safe bet that he’s onto something — especially since he is planning to put his money where his mouth is.
Are Retiring Boomers to Blame for Slow Economic Growth?
The U.S. economy grew at roughly 2.5% last year, below the 3% benchmark that policymakers have targeted going forward, indicating a general economic slowdown that might be difficult to reverse. Are retiring Baby Boomers to blame?
Why it Matters That Financial Advisors Are Becoming ‘Longevity Navigators’
The population is aging, that much we know. But it’s the implications of this for individuals that should really have the attention of financial advisors.
Dehydration Nation: Preventing One of the Most Common Health Risks in Real-Time
Up to three-fourths of Americans are chronically dehydrated, and the condition can be far more debilitating than it might seem. Mild dehydration — literally, not drinking enough water on a day-to-day basis — can impair cognitive performance by up to 20%, affecting reaction time, mental accuracy and memory. More severe cases, however, can result can result in seizures, brain damage, shock, and death.
Agrifood Conversations, a New Agriculture Innovation Webinar Series
iSelect Fund, The Van Trump Report and The Yield Lab Institute are pleased to announce the launch of a new weekly webinar series entitled Agrifood Conversations featuring the best in agricultural innovation. With in-depth presentations from some of the leading companies and entrepreneurs in the agtech space, Agrifood Conversations is all about driving agriculture innovation forward and sharing the stories, successes and developments in the industry.
Agrilyst: Developing New Tools to Help Indoor Farmers Thrive
Based in Brooklyn, NY, Agrilyst’s SaaS-based platform provides indoor farmers with data-driven insights to make more profitable production decisions, optimizing labor cost efficiency and improving crop yield. With Agrilyst, indoor growers create seeding plans, schedule harvests, assign tasks, manage climate and nutrient density, and forecast yield, sales, and varietal performance.
It’s Getting Cold in Here: Transforming Modern Refrigeration With Control and Efficiency
Based in Boulder, Colo., Rebound Technologies is commercializing a freeze point suppression cooling cycle technology that targets the most critical part of the cold chain: refrigeration.
HerdDogg: Bringing IoT to the Field
Ag Venture Capital: Here’s What Investors Are Watching in 2018
From AgDaily: Software, social media and the latest wearable gadgets might be getting all the attention, but its the technological changes that are shaking up the agriculture market that are really going to change lives over the next decade. And it’s coming not a moment too soon.
RNA Is Becoming the New DNA, Opening New Doors in Medicine
If a person’s DNA is the roadmap of their lifetime health, their RNA is more of a real-time barometer, recording what happens in their body on a minute-by-minute basis. Our DNA stores and transfers genetic information, but remains little changed throughout our lives. At best, it can tell us about the probability we will someday develop various diseases — whether or not we will get cancer, for instance, or be susceptible to diabetes or heart disease — but it can’t tell us much about our current health.
Agrilyst Closes Strategic Funding Round
Agrilyst, the intelligence platform for indoor farms, is pleased to announce the recent closure of its latest strategic fundraising round. New investors included iSelect Fund, Argonautic Ventures, Horizons Lab and Onlan Capital Ventures, with existing investors Compound and New York State Innovation Venture Capital Fund joining as a follow-on.
iSelect Monthly Update: January 2018
This is iSelect’s monthly venture update for the month of January 2018. Learn about Mark Zuckerberg’s trip to St. Louis, what iSelect offers to entrepreneurs, what our portfolio companies have been up to, and more.
A Note from iSelect CEO Carter Williams: 2017 Year in Review
As of the end of 2017, iSelect had invested in more than 30 startup companies, created more than 300 new jobs, our portfolio companies raised more than $160 million and the total value of our portfolio companies exceeded $300 million. We were also one of only 21 VCs in the country to have two startups or more named to CB Insights’ Game Changing Startups 2018 list, including Benson Hill Biosystems and Neuros Medical. iSelect also had two startups, Benson Hill and Agrible, named to the Thrive Top 50. In addition, Benson Hill was named to the AI Top 100, while Indalo was named to the Top 20 Startups to Watch in 2018.
Bonumose: Creating Healthy, Affordable Sugars From Agriculture Waste Products
The modern world has a serious problem with sugar. As of 2015, the average American consumes more than 129 pounds of sugar each year, according to the USDA, more than double what we ate two generations ago. And, unlike in previous decades when most sweeteners came from cane and beet sugars, today the vast majority are derived from high-fructose corn syrup, which brings with it unique new health risks.
Why Gen X Can’t Retire: Changing the Calculus of Retirement
As of 2013, the mean retirement savings of all working-age families was just over $95,000, according to a report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Broken down by age group, the average 60+ year old had about $163,000 in total retirement savings (notably down from $211,000 before the financial crisis) while those under 40 barely peaked above $40,000.
Flywheel: Accelerating Discoveries By Creating an App Store for Science
Flywheel is building an archive of scientific developments, methods and tools so that future researchers will be able to build on those discoveries.
GeneMatters: How Genetic Testing Is Pushing Us Toward Medicine’s Next Frontier
Genetic testing has gone mainstream — consider examples like 23andMe and even Ancestry.com, which both offer genetic analysis by mail — and the market is on track to exceed $10 billion in the next several years.
What iSelect Offers to Startup Entrepreneurs
We’re Challenging the Financial Services Industry to Think About Venture Investing
I recently participated in a panel discussion at Worth magazine’s 2017 Power 100 Summit in Greenwich, Conn. Titled “The New Landscape of Power,” the event was a deep dive look from the investor’s point of view at everything that has happened in the last year — from the rise of populist politics in the U.S. and Europe, to Blockchain, climate change and more.
Seed Funds Are Finding the Midwest, But We’ve Been Here All Along
Here Is the Big Advantage That St. Louis Has for Healthcare Entrepreneurs
What iSelect Is Looking For in the Companies It Invests In
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