In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.
Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners, Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.
Episode 64: The Yield Lab
In this episode, I sit down with Gentiane Gorlier, General Partner at The Yield Lab Europe, an early-stage VC fund with 32 investments across the AgriFood value chain. Gentiane shares a refreshingly contrarian view on why animal protein and health remain critical investment areas for the next decade, despite the hype around alternative proteins.
We dive deep into why the “Silicon Valley SaaS” model breaks when applied to biology, the harsh reality that consumers will not pay a “Green Premium,” and The Yield Lab’s specific playbook for engaging corporate strategics. Currently raising their second fund, Gentiane explains how they help startups navigate the “valley of death” by bringing multiple corporates to the cap table to ensure balance and commercial viability. 🎧 Listen to the full episode to hear how Gentiane identifies deep-tech winners and why she believes the best time to invest in AgriFood is right now.
Key Facts The Yield Lab:
- Goal: Enabling entrepreneurs to sustainably revolutionize agrifood systems globally.
- Milestone: Successfully managing a portfolio of 32 companies and currently raising Fund II to deploy larger follow-on checks (up to €6M).
Alex’s Top Findings:
- The Contrarian Bet: Animal Health is Here to Stay. While many investors pivoted entirely to alt-protein, The Yield Lab Europe maintains that animal protein remains a cornerstone of the global food system. The focus is on efficiency, ethics, and vaccines to reduce emissions per unit, rather than waiting for an alt-protein takeover that isn’t technically or economically ready. ”We strongly believe that animal protein and animal health should continue to be in the investment thesis for the next years. We absolutely believe that alternative protein is part of the future, but we’re simply not there yet… So the real question for us is not whether it exists, but how efficiently and responsibly and ethically it’s produced.”
- The “Green Premium” is a Myth: Unit Economics Must Lead. The collapse of the insect farming and indoor ag hype cycles taught a brutal lesson: neither consumers nor corporations will pay more just for sustainability. Startups must reach price parity and have a clear path to profitability without relying on a “sustainability tax” that the market refuses to pay. “Nobody wants to pay for sustainability, and that’s really something we learn… The economics needs to make sense. Corporate [partners] won’t buy your product if it’s more expensive… We have seen companies that pivoted away from food ingredients into cosmetics just simply because the food market was not ready to pay the price.”
- Strategic Corporate Engagement: The “Two-Corporate” Rule. Engaging corporates too early can burn a startup, but engaging them right is the key to an exit. Gentiane advises against being beholden to a single strategic partner. Instead, aim for two or more strategics to create competitive tension and ensure the startup isn’t “manhandled” by one company’s internal restructuring or strategy changes. “One of the biggest mistakes startups do is when they go too early to corporate. Because if you go too early, you can burn yourself very easily… [We advise] to try to have at least two corporates on the cap table… So you don’t get, let’s say, manhandled by only one partner. So if you get the valuable partners that really know what you do, they can help you.”
Link to Apple Podcast here.
Catch the full podcast series here.
