The Production Board

About

The Production Board (TPB) is a venture foundry and permanent holding company headquartered at 1 Letterman Drive, Building A, San Francisco, CA 94129 ¹. Founded in 2016 by David Friedberg — previously founder and CEO of The Climate Corporation, which sold to Monsanto for approximately $1.1 billion in 2013 — TPB builds and invests in technology businesses across food, agriculture, biomanufacturing, human health, and the broader life sciences ¹²³.

Unlike traditional venture capital firms that raise time-limited funds, TPB operates as a permanent holding company. Friedberg has stated: “If one of our companies were to go public or get sold, we don’t take that capital and distribute it back to our shareholders. It stays on the balance sheet and we keep building” ⁴. The firm builds new businesses from scratch based on emerging scientific discoveries, providing capital, infrastructure, and market insights, and also makes external investments across all stages ².

In May 2023, TPB announced it had raised $300 million in new capital ². Its backers include Alphabet, Allen & Company LLC, Cascade, Baillie Gifford, Emerson Collective, funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, Koch Disruptive Technologies, Counterpoint Global (Morgan Stanley), Foxhaven Asset Management, and Arrowmark Partners ².

TPB’s leadership includes founder David Friedberg and Partner Dr. Risa Stack, who previously co-founded Veracyte (NASDAQ: VCYT) and was a partner at Kleiner Perkins for nearly a decade ⁵⁶. Rachel Konrad, formerly of Impossible Foods and Tesla, served as Chief Brand Officer from 2022 to 2024 ⁷.

TPB also launched TPB Acquisition Corporation I, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) that completed a $1.2 billion combination with Lavoro, Latin America’s largest agricultural inputs retailer, listing on Nasdaq under ticker “LVRO” in February 2023 ⁸⁹.

Stated Thesis

(Self-reported: These represent what TPB says publicly about its investment approach. See Inferred Thesis for analysis of actual behavior.)

TPB publicly describes its mission as working to “commercialize scientific breakthroughs and build remarkable consumer brands” that create value for employees, investors, customers, and the planet, under the banner of “Reimagine Earth” ¹.

The firm states it targets businesses that can deliver “at least a 10x improvement in the cost, energy, time, or carbon footprint of conventional systems” of production ². Friedberg has written: “We began investing in and building new businesses that we believed could deliver at least a 10x improvement in the cost, energy, time, and carbon footprint of traditional systems of production that make all the things that humans consume” ².

TPB’s philosophy page frames the firm as believing humanity must shift from incremental scaling of ancient technologies to radical reinvention of production systems, driven by the conviction that “Earth is infinitely resourced with molecules and energy we could ever use, and humans have developed the tools needed to convert any molecule into any other molecule” ¹⁰.

TPB describes its focus areas as Life Sciences, Food and Agriculture, and Software, investing from seed through public markets ¹. The firm follows a “thesis-first” approach, deeply understanding market trends and emerging technologies before identifying or building companies that align with its thesis ¹¹.

Friedberg has distinguished TPB from traditional VC: “This isn’t like a VC where you give founder a bunch of money and you hope he does well with it or pivots away onto something else. We are trying to identify scientific engineering breakthroughs that can be applied to the markets in non-obvious ways” ¹².

Inferred Thesis

The analysis below is based on 19 verified portfolio companies and investments from The Production Board’s public disclosures, press coverage, and the firm’s website.

Sector concentration (based on 19 verified entries): - Agriculture / agtech: 8 of 19 (42%) — Ohalo Genetics, Pattern Ag, NorQuin, Tillable/CamoAg, Frontier Farmland, EarthOptics, Stenon, Lavoro - Food / nutrition: 4 of 19 (21%) — Soylent, Supergut, The Every Company (Clara Foods), Cana Technology - Synthetic biology / biomanufacturing: 2 of 19 (11%) — Triplebar Bio, Culture Biosciences - Life sciences / health: 2 of 19 (11%) — PinkDx, Dextera Biosciences - Software / AI: 2 of 19 (11%) — Storylines, Rumi - Restaurant / retail tech: 1 of 19 (5%) — Wellio (acquired by Kraft Heinz)

Key patterns:

• Venture studio model dominates: TPB primarily incubates companies internally rather than backing external founders. Ohalo Genetics, Pattern Ag, Triplebar Bio, Supergut, Cana Technology, Eatsa, and Wellio were all built from within TPB before being spun out with dedicated CEOs ²³¹³. This makes TPB more comparable to Idealab or Flagship Pioneering than to a traditional VC firm.

• Deep science, not software: Despite listing “Software” as a focus area, only 2 of 19 portfolio companies (Storylines, Rumi) are software-centric, and these are more recent additions ¹⁴. The core portfolio is overwhelmingly biology and physical-science based. Pure SaaS or consumer internet plays are absent from the core portfolio.

• Agriculture is the center of gravity: 42% of the portfolio is agriculture-specific, far exceeding any other category. When food/nutrition companies are added (many of which have agricultural supply chain connections), agriculture-adjacent investments represent 63% of the portfolio (12 of 19).

• Vertically integrated supply chain approach: Several investments form interlocking pieces of the agricultural supply chain — Pattern Ag (soil diagnostics), Ohalo (seed genetics), EarthOptics and Stenon (soil sensing), Lavoro (distribution to farmers), NorQuin and Frontier Farmland (farmland and crop production). This suggests a thesis around controlling multiple nodes of the ag value chain rather than making isolated bets.

• Geographic reach beyond Silicon Valley: While headquartered in San Francisco, TPB’s portfolio includes Lavoro (Brazil/Latin America), Stenon (Germany), and NorQuin (Canada), suggesting a global orientation for agriculture investments specifically ³⁸¹⁵.

• Long hold periods, concentrated bets: The permanent holding company structure means no exit pressure. With $300M+ in capital and roughly 15-20 companies, average capital deployed per company is significantly higher than typical seed-stage VC. TPB led or solely funded many early rounds (Clara Foods seed and Series A, Tillable Series A, Cana’s $30M) ³¹⁶.

• Notable failures: Cana Technology shut down in 2023 after TPB invested approximately $30 million ¹⁷. Eatsa did not scale as envisioned. These failures highlight execution risk in the capital-intensive, pre-revenue studio model.

• Software investments are recent additions: Storylines (2020, video AI) and Rumi (2020, meeting intelligence) represent a pivot toward software/AI that is not yet large enough to assess ¹⁴. If these prove to be a new direction, the thesis may be broadening beyond physical sciences.

Portfolio

This table represents publicly verifiable portfolio activity. Additional stealth-mode companies may exist. Year column reflects the year of TPB’s investment or the company’s public launch, whichever is earlier documented.

In Their Own Words

“Humankind’s science and engineering capabilities should help us render solutions to our greatest global challenges.” — David Friedberg, TPB $300M raise announcement, May 2023 ²

“Many of the leading discoveries in science and engineering are failing to realize their full market potential.” — David Friedberg, TPB $300M raise announcement, May 2023 ²

“If one of our companies were to go public or get sold, we don’t take that capital and distribute it back to our shareholders. It stays on the balance sheet and we keep building.” — David Friedberg, CNBC interview, July 2021 ⁴

“This is more about there being a persistent meaning for the rest of our lives, and an opportunity to realize new technologies that can affect positive outcomes in food and agriculture with such a broad set of opportunities…there’s no reason to put a timer on it.” — David Friedberg, AgFunderNews interview, February 2019 ³

“We operate as an investment holding company. So, we use cash off our balance sheet to start new businesses to fund businesses kind of in the venture stage.” — David Friedberg, Absolute Return Podcast, 2023 ²⁶

“Sometimes we’ll be kind of an investor in someone else’s business, sometimes we’ll start the business ourselves and then we’ll bring in other investors to join us later.” — David Friedberg, Absolute Return Podcast, 2023 ²⁶

“I always say everyone is a founder, meaning you have to make sure that there’s a culture of ownership. And that’s one of the key traits and attributes we look for.” — David Friedberg, Absolute Return Podcast, 2023 ²⁶

“If you don’t have a product that the customer wants that’s better for them, that’s cheaper, that has some improvement or in a B2B case that’s making the B2B partner more money, it’s not going to work.” — David Friedberg, Absolute Return Podcast, 2023 ²⁶

What Founders Say

Jeremy Agresti, founder and CEO of Triplebar Bio (incubated by TPB), stated: “With the combination of capital, infrastructure, and shared vision that TPB provided, pursuing solutions to these problems became a viable opportunity” ¹³.

Rob Hranac, CEO of Pattern Ag (incubated by TPB): “Today, from each soil core we pull, we use only 1% of the genetic data we sequence to drive our core crop protection product” — while this quote is about Pattern Ag’s technology rather than TPB specifically, Hranac’s company was incubated at The Production Board and Friedberg serves as Chairman ²¹.

No independently sourced testimonials from external founders (i.e., founders who pitched TPB for investment rather than being recruited by TPB) were found. TPB’s venture studio model means most portfolio company leaders are hired by the firm rather than seeking funding from it, making traditional founder-investor testimonials less applicable.

Sources