Tramlines Fund: growth capital for sustainable agritech

11/20/2023

Introducing ... The Tramlines Fund

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One of the greatest luxuries of life is the opportunity to focus on what you yourself think matters most. Luckily I enjoy just such luxury and so I am pleased to confirm my involvement in creation of The Tramlines Fund, focusing on investment in growing agritech businesses as they engage in global expansion, alongside my continued involvement with AI-driven drug discovery.

For me, these are the two most important forces to focus on right now.

So what is the Tramlines Fund?

Having been involved in the formation of UK agritech early-stage investment syndicate Cambridge Agritech, colleagues and I realised that there is a serious and harmful gap in the agri investment market: growth capital. There are a decent number of early stage funds and groups like Cambridge Agritech around in the UK now, but hardly any specialist ag funds able to help companies move to the next stage. The market needs investors able to support business scale-up, once the start-up phase is done.

This is where Tramlines comes in.

Link to website

The Tramlines Fund is a growth capital investment fund, dedicated to upstream agritech, where market risk is replacing technology risk as the key challenge. Our target companies show evidence that technology risk has been addressed by delivery of a simple proxy: the generation of genuine product revenues. The Tramlines team seeks companies that have generated c£2m revenue per annum and whilst we do look at companies with lower levels of turnover, significant additional scrutiny is required in these circumstances before investment.

There are three major reasons for adoption of such a strategy:

Exit cycles: Personal experience as investor in multiple start-ups has taught me that, whilst the founder's assurance that the business will grow to a profitable exit 'in three to five years' is always well meant and believed by the speaker, reality proves otherwise: few ag start-ups have achieved a profitable exit in anything like this time frame. Tramlines is a 10 year fund and we believe that this gives us JUST enough time to take our slightly later stage c3 to 5 year old investee companies from investment to exit.
International arbitrage: We are focused on UK companies for the majority of investments and believe/observe a growing disparity between valuations in the UK and Europe compared to the US and Asia. So our strategy includes international expansion aided by access to the West Coast but also to China, and delivery of capital accumulation by investing in the UK and exiting in the US or Asia.
Investment moment: Industry is tough right now and, as we will see all too clearly over the next 18 months in particular, start-up businesses are at high risk of failure. However the risk of failure diminishes as 'real' revenues are generated. Many investors observe the faltering steps of start-ups as they move towards revenue generation and perceive that the risk of failure remains unchanged until companies achieve profitability. Analysis of market data tells us otherwise: risk of failure diminishes significantly as first revenues arrive, even pre-profit. So ... invest post revenue and enjoy the arbitrage benefit over a three to four year period.

Right now we are engaging with major family offices and HNW as potential Limited Partners, establishing special purpose vehicles to allow us to invest immediately in specific projects prior to completion of fund set up, whilst taking care to look after our many existing investments from the Cambridge Agritech era. We already have support for investment of £40m during our investment period and will seek a further £1m, £2m, £3m, £4m and £5m - £15m in total - over the next 5 years.

Key themes for us include the cross-over from biotech to agtech, development of alternative crops and products and the whole agronomy/sustainability/zero carbon challenge. These are our specialist themes but we are keen to engage with all upstream technologies and capabilities. Target investment size is £1m to £7m, typically in syndicated deals with co-investors able to contribute to the growth of the investee company.

We can discuss investment strategies until the proverbial cows come home. But the simple truth is that it is time for action.

With food security issues, population growth, climate change and a dose of politics to deal with, the issues and opportunities of agritech are here to stay. If there is one sector you should spend some time on now, I urge you to make it this one.

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11/17/2023

China: re-opening and recovered?

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I am not sure whether China is more like a colourful butterfly emerging from a chrysalis or a hungry bear emerging from winter hibernation but, either way, she is emerging.

Presidents Xi and Biden. Talking.

China-friendly Cameron re-appointed

The world sees Presidents Xi and Biden portraying mature collaboration for once and Little Britain offering up former PM and China-friendly David Cameron as Foreign Secretary. Personally, what I see is a set of new government invitations for me to revisit China, with flights and accommodation paid.

As a result, I find myself back in Wuhan – last visited in Jan 2020. Our drug discovery AI company has had an office in Wuhan since the distant days of 2012. All work stopped during the pandemic but restarted in 2023 and we have just completed validation of an important diagnostic for Tuberculosis in collaboration with the Wuhan Pulmonary Hospital. I was back in town to celebrate successful validation of our diagnostic in the Han population, to seek out commercialisation partners and to sing for my supper (aka flights and accommodation) as a guest at the China Daily ‘Vision China’ event promoting the city and China access generally. It was also my first opportunity to engage with investors in the new revolution: agritech.

So, what differences did I notice since I last visited China in 2020?

Well, my main observation is that the controls and regulations of all those lockdowns have left an echo in the form of a more formal working environment. You notice this right from the moment of arrival when passport control takes a lot longer than it used to. It also becomes clear quite quickly that formal dress is expected – and a tie should be added to your packing list if you are expecting to attend any government events. So, ties are added but one positive is that alcohol has been subtracted - from government lunches and from most of the dinners. This latter Moutai-free change is a great relief, as readers of earlier blogs will know. The people of Wuhan seem to be flashing less cash meanwhile, and I hear that the government is generally backing less schemes as their resources are tight from years of Covid support. Meanwhile the ubiquitous business cards have been all but replaced by digital connections on WeChat, and WeChat Pay has all but replaced cash. Luckily, setting up WeChat Pay on my phone proved to be straight forward, even with a non-PRC bank account.

But apart from that, not much has changed: building works appear to be resuming with new apartments being constructed, in blocks of 4 to 16 at a time, right across the city; roads are crammed with cars; events are crammed with visitors; and my fellow speakers at the various presentations and TV interviews hail from many nations.

It feels almost like 2019.

Reconnecting with old friends was a genuine pleasure, I must say – from my ‘Chinese brother’ Tantan and friends to Minister of Culture Li Shuyong and leaders of SAFEA last seen back in 2017, to the Consul team and to my own team members, past and present. A little Moutai was indeed taken with Tantan and co but, thankfully, just the one bottle between eight.

I added a bit of internal travel of course, as per usual, with a one-day trip to Beijing to meet an international CRO and a two-day stint in Hangzhou just south of Shanghai to support another government event (the West Lake dialogue). But the main focus of the trip was Wuhan (same size as London) in Hubei Province (approx. same geographic size as the UK) to seek partners for our TB diagnostic and investors for Tramlines.

Progress made?

The trip hit its objectives: Two new ultra High Net Worth investors are interested in the Tramlines agritech fund and our TB project was received enthusiastically all round - by TB diagnostic companies, pharma SOEs, experienced international CROs and IP advisors with offices in both China and the US, and by the pharma industry as a whole. In short, I have an Inbox full of proposals, a WeChat feed full of relevant new connections to follow up and updated China diagnostics info sufficient to optimise our TB strategy.

Is seems that agritech and biotech AI are the TWO revolutions worth fighting right now.

Progress: Marking the successful validation of our TB diagnostic with Deputy Consul-General Olivia Hildebrand, Chairman Chen and members of the TB team at Wuhan Pulmonary Hospital. Intellomx China head Nicole Song 2nd from right and Senior Advisor YangBo at 1st left.

And then, filming complete and tie removed, it was time to set off back to Vancouver. The other downside of the comparative lull in business soon made itself known in the form of fewer flights. The homeward leg of my journey took over 20 hours via Hong Kong (with the rather surreal experience of taking off at 01:00am from Hong Kong on Wednesday and landing in Vancouver at 8:30 pm on the previous Tuesday - and then doing the rest of Tuesday again in a Groundhog Day-like manner).

To all those who tried to make China engagements work in the past I would say: be brave. Try again. And to those who have never visited I would say: get out there. Read all the data and propaganda, fact and fiction that you can get your hands on and then get on a plane and go see for yourself. The sooner you connect with a Chinese friend the faster you will learn about real China. And the sooner you get over any internal prejudices the faster you will understand the forces of the future.

Industry is still in pain, in China and elsewhere. But governments are seeking to re-engage, hoping to catalyse renewed growth in revenues and trade. And don’t listen to the small minority of triumphal voices in China who claim that we can’t compete with Chinese companies because they are No 1 in automotive and many other sectors blah blah. Don’t listen because we do compete, across the board, such that there are no industries that I can find where China has won 100% of the market. They may be big and getting bigger, but both sides still need each other and we must not forget it.

For myself I am striding/stumbling back into the international limelight, reflecting on occasional moments being treated in China as if I am a VIP, and daring to anticipate more for my biotech business and agritech fund in 2024 than we achieved in 2023.

I urge you to come and join us.

To view the WUHAN TV interview ... click here

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Introducing ... The Tramlines Fund

China: re-opening and recovered?

Simon Haworth

Author of the Tramlines blog

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