In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2026 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 105: Jaap Zijlstra of Navus on Why “Process Tech” is the Missing Link in Scaling AgriFood and Why Family Offices Beat VCs in the Hard-Tech Winter
In this episode, I sit down with Jaap Zijlstra, representing Navus, a Dutch family office-backed venture firm. Unlike traditional VCs, Navus leverages the technical heritage of a world-leading dairy robotics family to build clusters of sustainable food and energy companies. Jaap explains why the “AgriFood winter” is not a death knell for innovation, but a necessary maturation phase that favors patient capital over hyper-speed software models. We deep-dive into why Navus doubles down on process technology and hardware-enabled IP (like their investment in Cosaic), and why agriculture will always follow the laws of physics, not the speed of software deployment.
Listen to the full episode to hear Jaap’s candid take on why family offices are the natural home for hardware-heavy biotech, how they leverage in-house patent offices to vet deep-tech, and why they prioritize “real-world” adoption cycles over “get-rich-quick” exit timelines.
Key Facts: Navus
- Headquarters: Netherlands
- Goal: To build clusters of successful tech companies in sustainable food and energy, leveraging the family’s deep-rooted experience in global machinery and robotics.
- Investment Profile: Roughly 25 portfolio companies. Invests from the family office balance sheet (not a traditional fund), allowing for multi-stage, multi-year holding periods. Ticket sizes vary from $1M–$2M (Seed/Series A) to significantly more for private equity-style deals.
NAVUS is a Dutch family office-backed investment vehicle specializing in controlled environment agriculture, robotics, automation, and alternative ingredient production technology. By operating outside the constraints of a standard 7-to-10-year fund cycle, they provide the “patient capital” required to navigate the harsh realities of physical-world agriculture and energy hardware.
Link to Apple Podcast here.
Link to YouTube here.
