The "climate tech" label is doing a lot of work right now. In the last five years, roughly 200 funds have added it to their marketing materials. A meaningful portion of those funds have written zero checks in agricultural climate companies, have no partners with operating experience in food systems, and last invested in anything soil-adjacent when they backed a houseplant subscription service during COVID.
This isn't a problem unique to climate tech — every hot category in venture attracts capital that doesn't really understand it. But for founders building in ag and climate specifically, taking money from the wrong fund can be genuinely damaging. Here's what we'd ask if we were in your seat.
What's Their Check History, Not Their Website
Fund websites are marketing documents. Every climate fund's website talks about supporting the energy transition and backing transformational founders. The thing that actually tells you what a fund cares about is their portfolio. Specifically: in what stage, in what subsectors, and over what time period have they actually written checks?
A fund that says it invests in ag climate tech but whose portfolio is 80% software SaaS and has two agri deals from four years ago is telling you something important about their actual investment behavior. Ask them to name the three portfolio companies they're most proud of in your sector and what the path to exit looked like or looks like for each one. Listen carefully to how specific they are.
Do Any of the Partners Have Hands-On Ag Experience
This one matters more in agriculture than it does in many other categories because ag is genuinely different from mainstream tech. Sales cycles are seasonal. Buyer relationships run through co-ops and agronomist networks. The regulatory environment is specific and regional. Failure modes are often agronomic, not software.
A partner who has managed a farm, worked in an agri input company, or run operations at a food business has lived intuitions that a generalist tech investor — even a brilliant one — doesn't have. It's not that generalists can't help. It's that a partner who has never been to a field day, never talked to a crop advisor, and doesn't understand what "June corn prices" means is going to give you generic startup advice, not climate ag advice.
Ask directly: which partner will be on your board, what's their ag background, and how many board seats do they currently hold? A partner with seven active board seats in unrelated sectors has about two hours a month to think about your company.
What Does Their LP Base Look Like
Not every LP relationship is the same. A climate fund backed primarily by university endowments and family offices has different pressure dynamics than one backed by large institutional LPs with ESG mandates. A fund with strategic corporate LPs in food and ag — ingredient companies, food manufacturers, ag input businesses — may have introductions to offer that a purely financial LP base can't.
You can't always get a detailed LP list from a fund before you've signed a term sheet. But you can ask in general terms about their LP mix and whether any of their LPs are strategic investors in your sector. If they are, ask to understand the terms — sometimes strategic LPs have information rights or co-investment preferences that affect how your company can interact with potential acquirers.
What Happens When Things Go Sideways
Every fund will tell you about their portfolio support when things are going well. What you actually want to know is what they do when a company hits a hard stretch — a bad growing season, a regulatory setback, a key customer that falls away.
The most useful reference call you can make is to a founder in a fund's portfolio who had a really hard 18 months. Ask them how the board behaved, whether the fund doubled down or got quiet, and whether they'd take money from that fund again.
Ag companies hit hard stretches. The nature of working with biological systems and weather-dependent customer operations means things go wrong in ways that pure software companies don't experience. The board behavior in those moments matters a lot.
One More Thing: Fund Horizon
Climate ag companies often have longer timelines to meaningful revenue than SaaS companies. Regulatory approval cycles, agronomic adoption rates, and the seasonal nature of customer buying decisions all slow things down relative to a software company's growth curve.
A fund on its 10th year of a 10-year fund life is under exit pressure. If you take their money in year 8, you may find yourself being pushed toward an acquisition you don't want at year 11 because the fund needs to return capital. Ask where they are in their fund cycle and what their typical hold period looks like.
We run a 12-year fund because we understand how long it takes to build a durable ag or climate company. Not every fund is built the same way.
