One Earth Capital eyes expansion – exclusive

One Earth Capital, an agtech boutique venture capital firm based in the San Francisco Bay area, is expanding its client base.

The firm, founded by Joe Hudson, currently manages assets for a single family office but has now opened up to manage the funds of other family offices, according to Hudson.

But the business expansion will not impact the firm’s mantra: “We won’t work with people that only want to do good because they make bad investment choices, but we won’t invest in something if it is not doing good,” he told Agri Investor. “If we are not a fit in terms of motivations for investing, we will not go ahead with that investor.”

Hudson and his client are particularly interested in the food technology sector. “Since we started eight years ago we knew food consumed more resources than almost any other industry,” said Hudson. “Our interest is scaling regenerative food production and to make a real change with a global reach.”

By comparison, big data in the agri space does not present such an attractive investment opportunity any longer, he added.

“Valuations in many ag technologies companies are now often unreasonable,” said Hudson. “The fundamentals are decreasing and the market is now crowded. We believed in it seven years ago when they were only three of us in the space – OpenPrairie, Cultivian and us – and we have made investments that were successful, but prices are too inflated now. We are happy to wait and take advantage of the lessons this new crop of investors will potentially learn.”

One of One Earth Capital’s past investments is PureSense, which it invested into seven years ago; Hudson is on the board of directors. PureSense is an irrigation management technology company.