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 38: ClearLeaf
In this episode, I speak with Lawrence Pratt, co-founder and president of ClearLeaf, a Costa Rica–based agtech startup developing non-toxic, broad-spectrum fungicides and bactericides. Lawrence walks us through the long and methodical journey to closing their seed round, led by Hawthorne Food Ventures, and shares why Clear Leaf focused exclusively on agtech VCs who understand the slower scaling realities of agriculture. We explore how accelerator competitions like MassChallenge and Grow-NY built investor trust, how a strategic licensing deal in Japan helped overcome objections about global traction, and why their product—effective, shelf-stable, and climate-friendly—offers a rare alternative to both synthetic chemicals and fragile biologicals.
Key Facts ClearLeaf:
- Goal: To create sustainable crop protection strategies that manage the impacts of harmful pests while maintaining natural balances on the farm, protecting farmers and consumers.
- Recently closed a seed series round with lead investors, Hawthorne Food Ventures, a fund run by a family office out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Alex’s Top Findings:
- Fundraising Duration: 18 Months of Persistent Process. The fundraising round took 18 months from start to close. The team planned for 12 months but hit delays due to market cycles and fit. “ We were definitely not planning for 18 months, but we were planning for 12, and we had realistic expectations. We were at the time a kind of interesting spot. Our market product was getting decent market acceptance in a couple of different markets. Still, our experience has been this strange, squishy middle when you’re very early stage and you don’t have any sales people who get all excited about your technology.”
- Fundraising Methodology: Global Mapping + Relentless Follow-Up. The team built a broad investor universe across the US and Europe, tracked progress in spreadsheets, and stayed in touch even with non-deploying funds. “ We got a lot of advice and a lot of input, and we were able to fine-tune how we were approaching some of these funds. It was just basically a lot of Excel spreadsheets, tracking who we had talked to and when we last spoke to them. Is it time to go back to them again? A year ago, they said they were bringing in a new $50 million group of LPs as a time to go back to them, and we just kept coming back. Everybody who didn’t slam the door in our face would rather say, ‘Hey, you’re interesting. Let’s talk more when we’re in a better position. We just kept following up and following up.”
- Lead Investor Origin: Warmed-Up Cold Intro via Biz Dev. Hawthorne Food Ventures initially met Clear Leaf at World AgriTech in 2023. A London-based BD partner rekindled the connection via a referral from another fund. “ That was in 2023. We then re-met them in a more meaningful way, through a strategic connection that was brought to us by our business development arm, which is based in London. We work with a group in London on a variety of different issues, including biz dev, and we triangulated back onto Hawthorne Food Ventures. Then, we got into detailed discussions, and starting in 2023, we went through DD in the good first half of 2024 to bring us to a close of the last few months.”
Link to Apple Podcast here.
Catch the full podcast series here.
