Investor Profile: Lauri Reuter of Nordic FoodTech VC

Lauri Reuter, Ph.D. is Founder and Partner at Nordic FoodTech VC.

FUNDRAISING DYNAMICS

What’s the best way for founders to get on your radar?
We are very straightforward. Send a deck and the most important info through our website (www.nft.vc) or just drop any one of us a message. We do our very best to reply all humans reaching out.

What’s the most common mistake founders make when pitching to you?
Losing our attention by starting from how the food system needs to be fixed. Just like any other sector-focused investor, we work with the food system day in, day out. That’s why we are the investor you want to talk to! If you need to explain the very basics, you are in the wrong room. Instead, start with the specific problem you have a unique  solution to. That gets our attention.

Also, we really don’t need any more disruptions in the food system. Or revolutions for that matter. We would really like to see how you can work together with the industry to bring a new solution to scale fast and efficiently.

What advice would you give to (FoodTech/AgTech) founders before their first meeting with a VC?
If you know that the investor you are going to talk with invests in early-stage companies, don’t overthink it. They are probably used to having very early talks with founders. They will probably ask you a lot of questions that will help you to shape the idea further. It’s a long relationship you need to build. The first meeting is just the first of many.

Though, it is a good idea to have some kind of a deck to send over beforehand. Investors really like decks.

Do you have any key metrics (e.g. revenue numbers) you expect startups to hit at the stage you invest?
We often invest in very early stages in quite tech-heavy companies. We don’t expect any revenue, but we would like to see at least some technical proof-of-concept.

What are some red flags that prevent you from investing?
Lack of trust. We only invest in teams with high level of integrity.

PORTFOLIO COMPANY DYNAMICS

What’s your philosophy around being hands-on or hands-off with your portfolio companies?
Our whole team has a ton of experience and expertise in various aspects of food. We have also been investing together in this sector for more than five years now. We believe there is a lot we can do to help a fresh company to get going. That said, we know when to step back and let the founders do their work. How much we are hands-on depends entirely on the needs of the founder team.

How do you like founders to handle things when everything is going wrong?
Something will always go wrong. It may be the first time for the founder, but it most definitely is not the first time for us. We need the founders to act with integrity and transparency. We need to be the first one to know – not the last one.

What’s the strangest piece of advice you’ve ever given to a founder? Did it work?
Our team has been helping out founders when things literally burned down. The team had everything set up for turning this old building into their first production site. When the power was turned on, the old wiring just could not handle it and the place burned to ground. It took few deep breaths and deep networks to quickly find a new site. All turned out good!

CURRENT INTEREST

Are there any startups you’re looking for right now? Ones that are working on a solution to a specific problem?
We are actively looking for new investments across Europe, but especially in the Nordics and Baltics.

Our approch to finding the best investment opportunities is to end up in situations where we get amazed by the most brilliant minds out there. That means we keep an open mind in order to run into solutions we could not have dreamed of - and then dig into the specific problems they could solve.

That said, we are looking into a bunch of exciting companies working for example on crop protection, next-gen fertilizers and water management in agriculture.

What’s a topic (investment-related or not) that once brought up gets you super excited?
So - I am a scientist by training. And I get really excited about all the stories of a scientific discoveries changing our every day life in very concrete ways. Think of the invention of antibiotics or vaccines. Think of pasteurization or electricity, or the Haber-Bosch process! In this line of work I get to imagine the future transformations of the same magnitude. So – talk to me about how life on the planet could be very different, and you will have my full attention.

FINAL QUESTIONS

What’s the biggest misunderstanding founders have about you or your role as an investor?
We talk with a lot of academics who have spent the first part of their career applying for research grants. The logic of a VC fund is obviously very different. It is not our job to finance all great ideas out there. Its our job to make investments only in great ideas. We will inevitably have to turn down also many good companies.

What’s the most fun part of your job that founders might not realize?
By far the best part of the job is to see a discovery to grow into a company and an actual product. Its hard to express how much joy I get from telling a founder to take two steps back from the everyday hassle and really see what they have built. Often its easier to see the magnificent things when you are not involved in the daily work, but get to follow the progress from a bit further away. It’s the magic of seeing science turn into reality.

What’s one company (in any industry) you never had a chance to invest in, but wish you had?
I have huge admiration to Solar Foods and Onego Bio, both founded by ex-colleagues from VTT. They are great examples of companies built on solid science and they are important corner stones of the strong cellular agriculture industry developing in Finland.