I founded Koan Agtech Capital to bring more capital to early-stage Canadian start-ups in Agriculture and to share the expertise I have gained over the past decades as a founder/CEO.

One of the key decisions I had to make when setting up the fund, was its structure. There are three options to pick from, Syndicate, Traditional and Rolling. There is no right answer since each of them have their own pros and cons. I knew from talking to several Managing Partners at Venture Funds that one of the biggest challenges and time consumers is raising the fund itself.

A Syndicate or Special Purpose Vehicle is an entity specific setup to make a single investment in a start-up by a group of investors that wish to only invest in that single deal. At Koan we use Syndicates to offer our investors / Limited Partners (LPs) the ability to invest additional capital when there is room in a round of financing that Koan has committed to investing in.

Traditional funds need to raise the entire fund’s capital in a short period of time and often need to close prior to starting to invest in companies. For me that sounded slow and not quick to market. One of my main goals was to launch the Koan Agtech Fund in seven weeks and I knew right away that a traditional fund structure won’t match my ambitions for speed.

I learned about Rolling Funds from AngelLIst who invented the Rolling Fund structure back in 2017.   I knew right away it was the right structure for Koan because it enabled the fund to build momentum over time (rolling!!!) through its ability to accept new capital at any quarter.  It also enabled Koan to start investing into start-ups right away.  This is how Koan has been able to already complete four investments (Tech Brew Robotics, Nectar, Sawback Technologies and Index Biosystems) since the fund launched on January 25th.

Accredited Canadian investors interested in investing in Koan Agtech Fund LP can join before the start of the next quarter on April 1st 2022 or any quarter thereafter assuming there is room for additional investors in the fund. Reach out if you would like to learn more info@koan.vc and on LinkedIn

Managing Partner, Koan Capital

Remi Schmaltz

Published

February 3, 2022