Invest in startups like Concert Bio alongside Climate Capital here.
Founders: Paul Rutten
Motto/Mission: Enabling growers to harness the vast potential of the plant microbiome.
Year Founded: 2021
Stage: Seed
Location: London, England, UK
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Climate Capital: What made you want to solve this problem?
Paul: Agriculture takes a massive toll on the planet - half of habitable land, 70% of freshwater use, and it's expected to be devastated by climate change. We need to reinvent a lot of it - from crops to livestock, just to continue meeting human demands as the climate changes. That reinvention is also an opportunity to make it more sustainable, and hydroponic greenhouses are a great example of doing both in one go. My whole PhD was looking at how microbes help plants grow, and hydroponics is perhaps the industry where that relationship has the biggest impact. So it was a great place to leverage my specialized skillset for impact - and I'm Dutch, so greenhouse growing is in my blood!
Climate Capital: What are you building?
Paul: We're developing plant-beneficial microbes specifically meant for plants growing in hydroponic greenhouses. The impacts we've already been able to achieve for growers are huge - up to 20% improvements in yield have been reported by growers running commercial trials. Agriculture is always a low-margin business, so for these greenhouse operators that kind of yield improvement has a transformative impact on their profits. This big improvement in commercial returns helps massively accelerate the transition to more sustainable greenhouse agriculture.
Climate Capital: What is next?
Paul: We've started with lettuce because it's a significant hydroponic crop and grows very quickly, which means we could develop quickly. However, lettuce doesn't feed the world. The much bigger success story in hydroponics is tomatoes, the most-produced vegetable on Earth. We're working on a product for that and have already found several beneficial microbes in independent trials. Sales are live in the UK now, and we're expecting to launch in the US this summer followed by the EU shortly afterwards. We're not just about improving yield, growers tell us they would also love to use our products to prevent diseases and even improve the taste of their crops. As we continue to grow as a business, we can't wait to do more work in those areas as well, which microbes are well known to have a big impact on.
Climate Capital: What are the core elements of the culture you are building at your company?
Paul: We're building in an industry that is famously skeptical about anybody trying to sell them microbes because of all the snake oil that's out there right now. We've therefore stressed a culture where we're not only putting robust science front and centre, we're also doing it as much in the open as IP allows us to, and not shying away from being transparent with growers about what we can and can't (yet) do. Ironically, we've seen time and time again that telling growers what we don't know and what we know doesn't work makes them much more willing to engage with us than overselling our products like others do.
I'm also a solo, first-time founder. From the earliest days, I've therefore put a premium on experienced team members who thrive with a high degree of autonomy, and that's something we still highly prize internally.
Climate Capital: What are the key challenges as you scale your company?
Paul: Before our first commercial trials started coming in, we faced skepticism everywhere we went about whether we could develop microbes that really worked. That has changed radically in the last few months alone as word has begun to spread between growers about the results they've been seeing. These days, we face a bigger challenge with investors who equate indoor agriculture with vertical farming, not realising that greenhouses are 20X+ the size of vertical farming and have been profitable for 40 years - just with a lot less fanfare than the recent vertical farming boom and bust!
Climate Capital: What have you learned that you want to share with other founders?
Paul: Worry only as much as is helpful, anything beyond that is an unnecessary use of energy. Keep your investors in the know about what you're doing, they'll only be as helpful as they have the information to be. And keep emailing people until they say "no", I've lost track of how many people didn't respond for 6+ months only for them to finally see one of our emails and tell us they'd been meaning to reach out to us and were very excited to talk!
Climate Capital: How can the broader climate community help you on your mission?
Paul: We're always looking for more hydroponic growers to connect with! And if you or somebody you know has experience with the indoor ag space or selling microbes to farmers, I'd love to pick your/their brain.
If you want to learn more, visit https://www.concert.bio/!