Unlocking Innovation Ep. 6: Investment, capital gaps, and what Canada needs next

Realagriculture.com's presentation of Unlocking Innovation, A national call to Action is brought to you by Bio Enterprise Canada. I'm Shaun Haney with Real Agriculture. Today it's episode six. It is hard to believe we are on our final episode of this series, Unlocking Innovation. We've covered a lot of ground. This is a, you know, we've had a lot of great feedback as well from many of you because this is an important topic. This is a part of Canada's future in terms of some of the things that the country is trying to accomplish specifically in the ag innovation ecosystem. And keep that feedback coming. You can do that by sending me an email. Shaneeyeal agriculture.com Today's episode is investment and funding. So we're going to talk about some of the money today, where that needs to come from, where it is coming from and what change needs to potentially look like. Let's get to our panel. Up first it's Paul Richards. Hey Paul, how are you doing? I'm doing very good. How you doing Shaun? Doing good. So Paul, you're with Invest Nova Scotia. So tell us about yourself and what Invest Nova Scotia does. Sure. Invest Nova Scotia is the government agency primarily responsible for economic development in Nova Scotia focusing on everything from investment attraction to more traditional economic development and throughout the regions. And we have a venture capital arm, several incubators and priority sectors that we focus on, including ag tech, biotech, industrial biotech, any, any sector that we see as a priority sector where Nova Scotia has the winning conditions to grow. Cool. Well, hey, welcome. Great to have you here. Now we also have Michael McGee who is with Bio Enterprise. But Mike, you've got a, like you got a career and a lot of experience when it comes to the innovation space. You, you've worked through different angles on this topic. Yeah. Good morning Shaun, thanks for having me today. As you mentioned, I've been very blessed to be active in the investment community for over 30 years ranging from early stage investments to later stage investments. And for the past five years I've been director of Innovation with Bio Enterprise Canada. We're a not for profit focused exclusively on helping ag tech and food tech companies commercialised and we provide non dilutive funding for these companies through our various federal and provincial partners. Prior to joining Bio Enterprise about five years ago, I was a general partner in an ag focused fund that had a presence across the country with investments into the United States as well. So have learned a lot about agriculture over the last 15 years being in Western Canada. Yeah, great stuff. Welcome And a very familiar face to this series is Dave Smarten, President and CEO of Bio Enterprise. Thank you, Shaun. Wonderful to be here. As some of your audience may know, I'm the President CEO of Bio Enterprise. We have been helping agriculture innovations move into the marketplace since 2004 and we're a national organisation with offices across the country and we're looking to help make change here in Canada. Well, let's start off with alignment and complexity and Paul, I'll start with you. When we think about federal and provincial funding priorities, how do we make sure that they're aligned? And just give us some of your experience in this area. Sure, John. One of the things that we have that's unique in Canada is the size of our country, the pure complexity of being a country with five time zones, the complexity of linking all the key natural assets, all the key infrastructure assets, logistics partners, advisors, research institutes, growers. That creates a tremendous amount of complexity where individual regions as a standalone like Atlantic Canada, aren't a complete ag tech ecosystem. So we have to look and get much better at connecting, closing the spatial gaps to really bring synergies align. You can imagine a scenario where in Nova Scotia we develop a technology that utilises a protein from the prairies or vice versa. If the BC looks at a particular technology around the lobster industry or the fishing industry or something that we have in a different region, how do we make those connections and connectivity? And many times our systems and our provinces are vertical and we develop partnerships and synergies and try to develop relationships more closely aligned where the post office box are as opposed to where their strategic alignment is. So that adds a complexity that perhaps smaller countries or more dense countries where the industry is more coordinated and centralised, we have to get good at really understanding, identifying and finding ways to bring those partners together under one roof. So really, strategic alignment and finding the winning conditions aligned and what platform do these companies match up with all those assets we described? Yeah, and because production in the industry is so diverse, there's regional differences, you know, why you have these different regional hubs and you know, some people will say, well, we just need like, you know, one entity and you know, we'll do it out of a central location. We'll, we'll take all the, the, the overlap out. But then you mentioned Atlantic Canada, something, you know, as being with Invest Nova Scotia, it's obviously very important to you. That's where, you know, an Atlantic Canada or Nova Scotia specifically maybe gets a little bit, it becomes a bit of an afterthought because People would focus on, you know, well, look at all the arable acres in Saskatchewan. Let's focus there. Right. And so there's, there's a reason why we are, like you said, why we are how we are. Dave, should governments be funding fewer initiatives like less peanut butter approach where we spread it all out or you know, and should we have more deeper investment over longer horizons with specific players? Yes, yes and yes. I think first of all, you can have the provincial and regional differences and have separate agendas for them. But I think overall you have to have this what I would call an overarching national funding component where the provinces and the regions can tap into that and have it focused on a national perspective while the provinces are focused individually. So having just the province's money is only going halfway. And so I think there's an opportunity to change that. As far as, you know, spreading money around like peanut butter. I think you get into the political side where municipalities, I mean, I've been in meetings where a municipality wants to establish an incubator because two municipalities next door also have one. Well, that doesn't make a lot of sense. You should have one incubator that could service all three municipalities in theory. So there is that aspect of applying money out there into the regions in order to accommodate political agendas or to have a sense of equality across those agendas. So we need to be more strategic in how we put that money out there. And so it's all very doable, but we've got to take a step back first and assess, okay, why are we doing what we're doing and how do. We crack the problem? Right. So Mike, from an investor's perspective, you can represent that whole area here. What impact do shifting policy trends and short funding cycles. A lot of times we're dealing with three years. What impact does that have on the willingness to co invest in the agri food innovation space? Great, great question. I think Dave and Paul have sort of touched on the idiosyncrasies that exist in Canada provincially versus federally. And it very much is a challenge. But from a policy perspective it would be, I think, beneficial as there was a little more cooperation amongst the various levels of government to sort of have a more unified approach, if you will. That being said, I think you touched on the biggest issue and that is you what generally is a three to five year funding cycle. And the reality is to develop agriculture, technology takes much, much longer. So at the very least you have to have, I think, an investment horizon likely well in excess of 10 years. And probably closer to 15 years. Traditional venture capital funds with an LPGP structure usually have a 10 year horizon with a number of years they can extend. But I'm sure Paul and Dave can speak to any number of companies that have been around for 15 and only now are getting their legs. And of course we have to be mindful of federal, provincial jurisdictions, et cetera. But overall, I think it really depends on who the fund is, whether it's a institutional fund with LPs, whether it's a crown corporation or a family office. And the good news is we're seeing more impact funds that are looking at agriculture, coming into agriculture, recognising that it may be a long time before they see any exit. So Paul, do you see a reality or a path to a national portal or single window approach for entrepreneurs to apply for funding? Or is more of this regionality a better way to go? What I envision is I can't see a portal per se, but what we should be striving for is a well thought out financial continuum where companies in the system allows programmes and initiatives to follow the sequence and company journeys to support them where they need it, when they need it to achieve their business and financial objectives. And the more coordinated that can be to move companies through towards investor readiness or to, to allow them to prepare for the appropriate stage of investment, the more that can be coordinated gives efficiency, but also allows the ecosystem and all the partners to know where they fit into the system and where they fit into that, that vertical. The more that can be coordinated, it leads to greater efficiency and in companies and will understand that there is a pathway, but it also allows for us to understand that later stage companies shouldn't be jumping back to an early stage to, to from another programme that's not aligned, identify the programmes for the right stage at the right time and progress through. So really it's a, it's, it's a, it's an important stage of purely coordinating a funnel as opposed to a one portal. Yeah, well, you know, speaking of all those stages, Mike, I'll go to you next. And one of the things that I learned through being the facilitator all these roundtables across the country is, I heard the phrase, you know, valley of death a couple times and it's, it's a real thing and it's this space between early seed funding a startup and then trying to get to a scalable enterprise, something that has some scope and scale. What's holding Canada back from supporting those companies in the middle series A B? Those Kind of rounds of agri tech. What needs to happen to minimise that impact? Well, I think first and foremost we have to acknowledge that the Canadian venture capital market is limited in terms of size, particularly in comparison to the us. I think secondarily there just are very few Canadian funds focused on agriculture and food. And it requires a certain level of specialisation to truly understand the risks in the business. And by and large Canadians are known to be quite risk adverse. As it relates specifically to the early stage, I think what we've found is if we accept the premise that it takes much longer for a agtech foodtech company to commercialise, that ultimately means that it likely will take a lot more money as well. And we know there are capital intensive businesses in agritech, controlled environment Ag, amongst others, plant based protein, the need for investment in fractionation plants and so forth. And unless there is a abundance of prospective partners, if you're focused on seed series A, unless you have an abundance of prospective partners to co invest with, you have to be a really large fund to be able to get the company far enough along where you can attract investors that are less risk adverse. And there really aren't any, you know, delighted plug for our friends at Farm Capital, Farm Credit Canada rather, who just announced, you know, a $2 billion initiative to invest in ag tech, some of which I'm assuming will go to fund to funds and hopefully to invest in companies at the seed and series A scale. Because as we all know it's a funnel and if there's not enough opportun coming in series A series B there won't be enough really good quality opportunities for later stage investors to invest in. Yeah, that funnel's a real thing, right? Like you got to prime the pump, so to speak. I don't know what the ratios are, but you got to have that top of the funnel to get to some real winners at the bottom. So Dave, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. Sad to that point the valley of death is real. But we can, as a government apparatus look at how do we support the companies through it. And one is these are deep tech companies on the wrong side of a steep capital cost curve. And the more that we can invest in shared infrastructure, where companies can plug in to infrastructure that multiple companies in a vertical and a sector will be using in sequence, the more that we can invest in that type of infrastructure as government allows them to plug and play, use it when they need it and then proceed through those stages. Because too often what happens is every one of these companies in particular a sector that we're focused on a great deal is the industrial biotech sector where we do a lot of proteins, for example, single cell proteins. Every company needs the same set of equipment and every company needs to be hiring the same type of workers. So let's build centres of excellence and infrastructure where companies can enter, utilise the equipment, hit their technical milestones and then proceed to the next stage, therefore reducing the significant amount of capital. And really from our perspective, it does two things. It improves capital efficiency and increases velocity where you can accelerate through that valet death faster than if they tried to go it alone. Yeah, well put. Okay, so Dave, the US was mentioned. Entrepreneurs say they often need to go to the US to raise, you know, serious significant capital. Is that a talent issue in Canada, a policy issue in Canada, or is it just. Listen, it's the market size, it's just a natural thing. I think my two compadres here would probably agree that's all the above. You know, the market size in Canada is pretty small. If you look at the number of venture ready companies that we see coming through our doors, it's a very small number. There's a whole lot of them that are startups that are preventure and they may end up being preventure for quite a long period of time. So they're not going to be able to get out of the United States and raise significant dollars. Those that do try to do that, you know, the US appetite is probably 5 million and up and maybe even, maybe even larger than that. Whereas in Canada if you want to raise $5 million, you're going to have a real struggle because it's got to, got to be done through probably four or five different investment organisations that are each putting up a million to a million and a half, you know, in equity. So it's just a very big challenge to raise capital. In Canada, as Michael said, there aren't a lot of venture firms that are focused on agriculture and agritech and food tech. So you're going to hit your brick wall pretty quickly and then you're going to have to go somewhere else, whether it be to Europe or to a corporate investor or to the venture capital community in the United States. So Paul, to follow up on that then, how can regional development agencies or funds better support companies that are profitable but don't cheque all these policy priority boxes that are exist in Canada? Yeah, I think the pendulum is swinging on that. Yeah, we will be getting to, I think all governments are looking at the fundamentals being acknowledging the changes in the environment we live in the macroeconomics. We are now in an environment where prioritising profitability, innovation is a, is going to benefit those types of companies. So I think the focus will change and I think we'll be looking at companies trying to reach, expand into new markets, product development, new market development, penetration into markets that we haven't seen before. And I don't think we'll run away from some of those priority sectors but the fundamentals will come back in alignment. So Mike, how can like, how can we incentivize Canadian private capital like family offices, angel investors, even banks, corporate community to be more active in this space of agriculture and less risk adverse when it comes to agriculture and agri food? Right. I would say, I mean the first thing is we have to do a better job I think of celebrating our successes. Sometimes we have really good storeys in the ag space but unless it makes the front page of the Globe and Mail being a unicorn exit, it just doesn't get the coverage. And there is money to be made in the sector for sure. I also think we need to do a better job de risking technologies for family offices and by that I mean a lot more time spent trialling technologies with the likes of smart farms. Kane obviously has an initiative on that front. Out here in Western Canada we've got Old Olds College as I mentioned, agriculture's a very interesting vertical to invest in and not a lot of folks, unless they happen to be a farm family or had some exposure, understand the business. So I think we can do better job educating. We certainly have an abundance of incubators except accelerators, information sources on that front and I think we have to see more collaboration amongst various organisations in the ecosystem to high grade the best opportunities and help convince investors, those family offices etc. That the technologies have been de risked. Instead of a technology looking for a home pull through from the customer and ultimately I would also say tax incentives. We've got various tax incentives, provincial, federal, etc. But if the returns for investing in an agtech deal is going to be less than investing in video or in an indexed fund, we have to, we have to be in a position to sort of offer complementary risk adjusted returns and maybe some more aggressive tax incentives, deductions, et cetera, shred might just move the needle. Dave? Yeah, I want to task Mike with a comment here and see if we can't delve a little more deeply into it. So Paul had mentioned the investment continuum. So you start with very early stage companies with angel investors and you move up the chain of Command. As the company matures, you may be able to entice some family offices and some other forms of government funding and so on, and eventually you get to what is a more traditional venture capitalist and so on. So when you look at that continuum, and I think we've all kind of agreed that there's not a lot of investment dollars focused on agriculture in Canada. So Mike mentioned the tax, the potential tax credits and there's a couple provinces that have them, but there's no national programme. But one of the questions is how you populate the continuum with greater amounts of private capital. And in the old days, our pension fund community were one of the key investors all across the board in various forms of venture capital in various sectors and they've all but left. So I'm wondering if Michael has any, any thoughts on how to entice some of those bigger organisations to come back into the investment community, back into the venture capital community. Wow. I wish I had a good answer, but what I would say is this. I mean, we've seen the numbers for cpp, we've seen numbers for others that have a venture asset class and recognise their mandate is to maximise returns. I think some pension funds, provincial pension funds, do a better job of investing in the asset class and for the simple reason is I think they're not just measuring the return they receive for investing in ag and food tech in the terms of cash on cash return, or DPI as it's called, but they're recognising it's about food security, it's about better health outcomes. There's so many, you know, societal benefits associated with enhancing our productivity. A so we, you know, we see food costs, you know, stabilise or not continue to rise exponentially, you know, with inflation in Canada. And it allows us to produce more to export to what will increasingly be food deserts around the world caused by climate change. And so again, I think these are criteria that need to be considered by policymakers when they look at the other sort of more subjective benefits of investing in agricultural technology and food tech. Yeah, okay, so I mentioned corporations earlier. I want to circle back on that. And one of the things the roundtables identified was a lack of corporate involvement in this space in Canada. So, Dave, why do you believe corporate Canada has largely been missing from the innovation, investment, conversation, anger, food in Canada and what do we need to bring them back into the fold or into the fold period? Yeah, I think Michael talked about a number of the possibilities for bringing them back in. One is education and two is showing them successes that we've had in Canada. But there's been a pullback, not just in Canada, but actually globally of corporations. In the old days, and that's only 10 to 12 years ago, they used to have these technical scouts and they would fly them through Canada two or three times a year. They'd hit Calgary, they'd hit Saskatoon, Guelph and maybe Montreal or something, and then fly back home. And their goal was to find innovation and to find innovation that would be of interest strategically to the corporation. And what happened was these became very expensive to do and the bottom line is they didn't find very much, so they stopped doing it and they now rely on other sources to find that information. The other thing is that most of these are headquartered outside of Canada and what we have in Canada is nothing more than a marketing budget. So any investment decision typically has to go outside of Canada to wherever the corporate headquarters is located. So getting beyond the marketing budgets, you've really got to get to the headquarters of these organisations and say, look, there is an opportunity here in Canada and we have to educate them and sell them on it. I'll come back to one storey that we were visiting with Syngenta in Switzerland, their headquarters, and we presented them with an opportunity to support innovation in Canada. And they said, well, wait a minute, Dave, you need to know a couple things. First of all, we employ 3,000 scientists and the chance of you finding something in Canada that we don't already know about is pretty slim. So if you want us to be involved, you need to get us involved in some aspects that are more futuristic. At that time, they were talking about digital agriculture and they said, we don't have a lot of expertise on digital agriculture, so if you've got something in digital ag, we might be interested. So the assumption that we have that we can go to these organisations and say, hey, come and look in Canada, because you're involved in the pesticide business and we've got some really good natural pesticides, they already know about them. So we have to find a way to entice them. And I know that, you know, it's not Bio Enterprise and Mars and all these other organisations that exist in Canada all have the same issue and that is, how do we get corporations to pay attention to Canada? Yeah, like what I think of when you're saying that is get away from the, you know, you need to do this because it's the right thing to do. And, you know, Canada is a great place versus, hey, you know what, here's what's really good from a strategic standpoint for you to be participating in this, in the roi, like you know, getting into some more of those details. So Paul, talk about this from a regional standpoint. What are you seeing in Atlantic Canada as you try to involve corporate entities? Every, every cluster development needs corporates. Hard stop that. The corporates are a critical centrepiece of cluster development. They're there, they develop value chains where companies can plug into. They become important talent pools to help populate like minded sectors. They're incredibly important from an infrastructure perspective that drives business activity and economic development through the entire region. But it's even more important when it comes to technology type of companies, innovative based companies, because a lot of times they're the innovators and their problems are the catalysts for companies to look at innovating. And the more that we can have big corporations or corporations that can qualify and quantify the size of their problem, that creates synergies and opportunities for companies to really focus on a problem worthwhile solving. And those are the companies, the corporates that are big enough to help those companies scale. So critically important as we, we in Atlanta Canada are always looking to find opportunities where our corporates and attracting corporates can lower the lower the elevator and see the value. As Dave mentioned earlier, really it's a matter of seeing the value where these fast moving, nimble problem solvers can plug in and look at their problems through a different lens. And the more that we can create those opportunities, the better. Ag and ag services and ag related industries have been slower than other sectors. Life science have led in this. Open innovation has been part of their vocabulary for 20 years. It has embraced this. But ag and industrial agriculture has been much slower to jump into open innovation and we have to do a better job encouraging that. Now we're seeing opportunities with that where companies are looking to solve problems through academia and synergies with smaller technologies. But we have a long way to go to find balance with other sectors. Okay, let's talk about success. When we're talking about investment, obviously we're not doing it for the benefit of our health. There's monetary metrics to all this. So Mike, we've talked about this a lot through the roundtables on what exactly is success and do we need to rethink it? There's not a lot of billion dollar exits out there. Should we be looking more at things like, you know, resilience in the economy, jobs created, food security, export capacity? Probably a lot of metrics we can come up with. What are your Thoughts here in terms of judging success? Well, I think you commented on a lot of them. At the end of the day I think it's going to require a lot of deep thinking on the part of all parties that are investing in the, in the sector that it's not just about return. Especially you know, the issue of return is compounded with the passage of time. Time, you know, if you get three times your capital back over, you know, 10 year horizon that's, you know, it's a 12% annualised return that extends to 15 years. To get an exit then you got to get 50 times your capital back. So I think we have to look at, you know, rural employment. I mean a lot of these small businesses are being developed and coming out of sort of rural communities. I think we have to recognise that while a lot of people will say we don't want to invest in anything that doesn't have a global application that makes a tonne of sense, massive addressable market the globe is. But you have to start somewhere. And I think there are examples of success storeys that you might have where a company isn't a billion dollars in revenues but is only $50 million in revenues employing 40 people in a small community. You mentioned the other food safety supply chain. You know, our dependence as we found out during COVID on the state of California for fresh produce was problematic and hence the big investment being made in Quebec and elsewhere in controlled environment ag to grow strawberries, you know, our greenhouse industry, peppers, tomatoes, et cetera. These are all, you know, I think objectives that are very important but don't always get the attention they deserve. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Paul, from your aspect, how do you judge success in this, in this area of innovation funding? I think a comment you just made earlier around finding a balance between urban success and rural success is going to be critically important. The. Chasing exits and billion dollar companies and only focusing on kind of venture capital model is puts rural communities in peril and they are the job creators and they do produce the jobs of high paying jobs. But if those are, if those are urban phenomena, those types of jobs, we have a disconnect and we'll have a significant imbalance. So ag and ag tech produces one of the only opportunities where you can have high growth science based technology, exponential growth, types of companies anchored in world in rural parts of Canada, certainly rural parts of Nova Scotia. And that has to be a part of the priority of what are the options of creating the jobs of tomorrow and the jobs, high paying jobs, the, the innovative opportunities. How do we Find a vehicle for those to be anchored in these areas. And ag and ag tech are some of those opportunities. So success is finding a balance of urban phenomena or urban generated startup ecosystems, but also finding opportunities for those same types of, of results sprinkled through the more rural communities and not only prioritising on downtown urban core. Yeah, well put John. I'd just like to add, I mean one of the things that comes to mind for me is that you know, agriculture and you know, food is such a thin margin business and at the end of the day, you know, labour is your number one cost. And so to the extent that, that, that a farmer or producer can add some technology that just saves an hour a day, you know, is a significant investment or rather significant return to that individual. But it not, it might not manifest itself in the corporation providing that technology being hugely profitable and scalable. But as it relates to the boots on the ground guy, it's meaningful. And so how do we capture, you know, all these technologies that are time savers for growers in manufacturing in a thin margin business that, you know, that moves the needle but may not manifest itself in the corporation providing them being hugely profitable? You know, it's not an Amazon or a Google or a Microsoft, but it still has tremendous value to the ecosystem by providing those technologies. So many great examples of, you know, an innovative idea and a product that was developed and it employs 10, 20, 50 people that is critical to that local rural community and that should be celebrated for sure. So Dave, talking about this, all these, you know, these success metrics, what do we need to do to make sure accelerators and some of the support organisation stakeholders, I'm gonna make sure they're doing the right things or enough to help some of these entrepreneurs understand some of these markets so they can be successful and most importantly have that compelling business case, that business plan to get them to the other side of this stuff. Yeah, it's interesting. The ecosystem is somewhat hamstrung across the country and we've talked about this in the roundtables where you have a number of incubators or accelerators, they're funded locally and they're typically underfunded and under resourced. So the average size of an incubator accelerator is between three and five people. And it's really hard to have the necessary expertise to move a startup company and their innovation forward and do so quickly and efficiently with only those kinds of resources. So we're not well set up across the country to do this. In some ways we're better at doing Little incremental innovations, small things that are a little more regional in nature than we are looking at something that is national or, as Mike said, global. So, you know, the idea of increasing the capability and the capacity of the ecosystem, I think is critical in Canada. And that's not to compete with the regionals, it's to make the regionals better and stronger. Right. I think the other thing is that both Paul and Michael have talked about is the investment model is always focused on not the incremental innovations, but the substantial and impactful ones that are more global in nature. And they're really, really hard to find and hard to develop and our ecosystem is not geared toward doing that. So who is going to fund these incremental ones? And that's a key for me, is that if you have these companies that are going to be between 20 and 50 people and you're located in a rural area, how do you attract the investment dollars to those? And clearly to me, there's got to be some incentives in place, but it's probably going to be incumbent upon the government to provide some form of incentives or some other type of vehicle to attract that kind of money into those organisations where we're not looking for the home runs all the time. But come back to the point about the ecosystem. We can do a better job of preparing these companies, de risking them and making them more pretty for the investors. We just aren't doing a particularly good job. Now, Keith, what does that mean, though? Dave, what do you mean de risk? Are you talking subsidisation or what are you talking about there when you say that? Well, a lot of. If you go back to so many of the entrepreneurs that we've seen over the years have a really interesting idea, or the idea could come from the university community, but these individuals have not necessarily been on a farm and lived on a farm, visited 20 farms to determine that, yes, this is what the farmers need, this is what they want and we're going to focus on this. So we end up being in a position of taking an interesting technology and then having to go out and find out, is this really what the farmers want and how do we de risk it? How do we test it over a number of years to make sure that that product is actually going to do what the farmers need it to do? And so during that period of time, you need certain sources of funding to help that company survive while it's going through that process. We've talked in the past about regulatory. That's a piece of it. How does an early Stage company survive during the regulatory period and how do they fund the regulatory process? So these are all pieces of the puzzle that we don't do a very good job of. If we look at it in a continuum, we may be able to do one offs, but we need a system in place that allows us to follow a company from the start all the way through to the end where commercialization and adoption can take place. And if we can do that successfully, we'll have more investors ready to invest. So Mike, is there a capital issue or is there an idea issue? I'm asking that question because I know across the roundtables there's a diverse opinion on that. Just provide some perspective from your seat. Well, I definitely think there's a dearth of capital focused on early stage agri, food, tech. I think the numbers prove that out. I think we got more money focused on later stage. And that's largely because the technologies are de risked in later stage. The investment horizon is shortened and more in keeping with what's traditionally been the case. So I think yes, there is a shortage. The other side of that coin, some people might say, well, there's just a shortage of really good quality opportunities. If it's a good quality opportunity, it'll find investment. And there's some truth to that as well. But it's always subjective. Risk and return risk for one person is very different than risk for another. And the return horizon might be very different where you are in your fund, whether you're a family office, an impact investor, otherwise. I think, you know, Dave's touched on all the things that the roundtable, not all of them, most of them that the roundtable suggested we need to address to enhance the amount of capital going into the space. But to me, the most meaningful would be, and the easiest one would be some kind of federal tax incentive that levels the playing field a little bit because it doesn't take much more than a swipe of a pen. But all the other elements in terms of, you know, streamlining accelerators, more ecosystem collaboration, you know, the regulatory sandbox, those are all initiatives that you mentorship that you would have to do in conjunction with the former, because without the latter, you know, these companies still need help in all those other areas. You know, Paul, when we talked during the roundtables with investors and funders, one of the things that was made clear is that there also needs to be a focus on ensuring that these innovators, these people trying to bring these new products to market, there's some management training or education available to them. To help them through this because they may be a really good scientist that's developed this really super cool thing, but developing that is different than running a company and that's a gap. Absolutely. And you mentioned, you asked Dave what about de risking and one of the factors of how you de risk is you develop teams, you develop a strong team around the innovation and investors will always say this, we'll invest in a great team and an okay technology, but never an okay team and a great technology. Teams are the first thing you look for. So support is critical and that's through a mentorship. That's the accelerators. Dave mentioned the necessity of support. That's just not at while they're involved in a 10 week programme because the problems and the challenges that face these companies are over the span of years, not short periods of time. So that constant support mechanism, raising a company is a little bit like raising a child. Takes a neighbour, a neighbour neighbourhood to do it and a community to do it. And we got to get better at that of embracing the startups and helping them nurture them through the process. And the other is important part is how do we help companies. The part that is missing in the ecosystem today is we have a lot of attention at the early stage government and it's a little bit of the creating the culture of startups and innovation. And so we're very good at the iteration stage. We have lots of programme and lots of support. What breaks down is that period of time where it's commercial testing, validation, commercial demoing and getting a stage of a company through different where you're ready to be purchased or you're ready to have a product ready for commercial sales. And that's a missing gap that there's not as many programmes for that stage because they're not necessarily involved in publicity or you a little bit of money can't be spread around and have a lot of public successes. But it's a critical part of really de risking and moving a company from an early stage or a minimal viable product to a product that's ready for sales. And we got to get better at closing that gap. Dave, I'll throw it over to you. Any final thoughts when it comes to the investment side of the ecosystem and some of the challenges and things we need to do? Well, I think with all the challenges that we have, there are some that are addressable and more easily addressable than others. Mike highlighted the potential for a national tax credit programme, which I think makes complete sense. You know, we have investors that, you know, in British Columbia that can take advantage of it, but the ones in Saskatchewan can't. You know, it's having a national programme provides equality across for all investors and it might help attract others into the agriculture marketplace. A lot of the basics, you know, talk about successes, get the successes out there, show them to other investors. The other thing that Mike had mentioned in one of the roundtables, which I think also makes a lot of sense, is get the investors more closely related and talking to each other about deals, about opportunities. You know, co investment is critical and it does take place. But. As I guess was Paul said, we're a huge country and you've got investors on the east coast and investors on the west coast and they don't know each other. So if you can get them working together, maybe they'd be doing more deals together, right? Yeah, absolutely. Guys, this has been fantastic. I really do appreciate your time here today. Perspectives and thanks so much. Mike, it was great to chat with you, you likewise. And Shaun, thanks for all you do for the ag space. You're a beacon. Well, I appreciate that, Paul, Thanks a lot and keep the great work there in Nova Scotia. Excellent. Thank you. And thanks for Dave and Mike to share our ideas. Appreciate the comments. Yeah, it's important, you know, I'll tell you what, innovation does not happen if there's not investment. So this is a critical, critical component of the Canadian ag tech ecosystem. Dave, I really appreciate this. Thank you very much. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, everyone.