Preparation for Investment Committee (IC) will involve fulfilling our investment criteria, recruiting advisory and co-founding team members, and parallel fundraising for additional expansion funds.

Assuming success at IC, you will receive pre-seed investment from DSV and Grantham Foundation, and spinout the company in 2027. You and your co-founders will own a significant stake in the business and continue receiving support post-spinout.

THE OPPORTUNITY

Conventional insecticides - spanning from neonicotinoids to organochlorines - are a double-edged sword. They play a vital role in shielding crops from pests but can wreak havoc beyond their targets. Pollinators like bees and butterflies, vital to 75% of global food crops, are in free fall - some bee populations have declined by over 43% in high-insecticide regions due to lethal and sublethal exposures that impair navigation, immunity, and reproduction. Pest resistance to widely used small molecules is also a growing phenomenon, straining our available toolkit for safeguarding yields. This threatens both global food security and biodiversity. Beyond ecosystems, these chemicals can also cause acute intoxication, cancer, neurodegeneration, infertility, and hormonal disruptions in humans, driven by oxidative stress, DNA damage, and systemic inflammation - a problem being increasingly recognised especially in exposed rural populations. The transferability of these insecticides - spreading through soil, water, and trophic chains - amplifies their devastation, making sustainable alternatives non-negotiable.

Improved insect controls have already shown scientific and commercial traction at the proof of concept level. For example, semiochemical approaches have shown commercial success in disrupting pest mating patterns, while novel biological modes of action such as peptides illustrate the scope to achieve species-specific pesticidal targeting. However, the ability of novel modes of action to disrupt the incumbent agrochemical market remains relatively limited. Among the most important constraints in scaling adoption are high costs, coverage limitations, delivery efficacy, and risks of evolutionary ‘escape’. For example, the effective dose required for RNA-based controls remain an order of magnitude away from small molecules, while Bt crops - arguably the most prominent precision insecticide technology to date - have demonstrated a decline in efficacy after multiple growth seasons due to evolved resistance.

We imagine a future where we can protect crops without decimating ecosystems, collapsing food chains, or endangering human health. This is the vision driving our venture creation in this opportunity space: reimagining pest control to build a thriving agricultural sector that aligns with ecological and human health.

Our preliminary scoping of the area indicates high potential to develop approaches that meet our desired outcome: pest control that is scalable, durable, and effective without off-target effects. Emerging technologies, from crop-based RNAi and antiviral strategies through to endophytic microbial biocontrols, provide a set of promising tools that could provide the foundations for commercially viable propositions. However, each approach presents outstanding constraints that require solving. We believe that advances in diverse sectors, spanning from bioprocessing and genetic engineering through to AI and precision agriculture tools, mean that it is the ideal time to tackle these barriers.

Requirements

WHO SHOULD APPLY

Essential Values

• You are highly motivated by unsolved challenges in insect pest control, and driven to challenge the status quo in agrochemicals.
• You are impact driven, take the initiative, make things happen, and think from a first principles perspective to figure out what’s really needed.
• You have clear entrepreneurial spirit and mindset, demonstrated through impactful innovation, and an ability to work in ambiguous, unstructured but fast-paced, demanding and pressurised environments.
• Collaborative nature, with the ability to work effectively in cross-functional teams.

Essential experience (must-have)

• Previous Founder experience.
• Previous C-suite experience.
• Previous fundraising experience (from VCs).
• Commercial & BD expertise (licensing, partnering, collaborations).
• Strong track record of building and leading successful teams.

Preferred experience (nice-to-have)

• Core science depth (PhD or equivalent industry R&D know-how) in genomics, molecular biology, entomology, plant pathology, virology (or similar), with breadth across technological areas relevant for next generation pest control such as:
• Biological modes of action (e.g. RNA design, stability, formulation/delivery);
• Behavioural and life cycle manipulations (e.g. semiochemicals biosynthesis/bioprocess scale-up, deployment/mating disruption);
• Safer small molecule discovery and screening (e.g. molecular glues, PFAS replacement)
• Microbial or in-plant expression of biocontrols (Bt and beyond);
• IPM design & field implementation with measurable on-farm outcomes.
• Translational execution: e.g. taking traits/actives from discovery to field efficacy, managing CRO/CDMO programs, building regulator/investor/customer-ready data packages; and/or partnership development (growers, CROs/CDMOs, suppliers) and scalable IP strategy.
• Cross-functional ownership across: R&D - Product - Regulatory - IP, evidenced by shipped results (trial outcomes, submissions, patents, launches); and/or EPA/EU experience and GLP study planning/oversight; or design of pivotal field trials supporting registration.

Benefits

OUR OFFER

By joining DSV, you’ll be joining a team of operators who have founded companies and led translation of science at some of the most respected universities, charities, funds and government agencies. 2/3 of the team have founded or led a company at C-suite and 65% have a PhD. Our team dedicate several hours every week to each Founder or founding team to provide tailored guidance, resources and feedback covering every aspect of what it takes to successfully launch a new venture from both the tech and commercial perspectives:

• We provide optimised, purpose-built, proprietary tools, resources and processes to help create high-impact ventures from scratch, using our venture creation methodology.
• DSV and Grantham Foundation's extensive network incl. leaders of biotech VCs, technical & commercial domain expertise, and wide-ranging portfolio company capabilities.
• We jointly provide an initial £250k (~$340k / €290k) investment governed by our Investment Committee to incorporate the new venture and develop early proof-of-concept data that is often needed to attract high profile non-venture studio VCs. This funding is also key for obtaining grant funding, which often needs to be matched with private investment.
• You and your co-founder(s) together will own the majority equity stake in the company.
• We provide minimum guaranteed income of £4,166 per month (fixed), paid to each Founder as a consultancy fee until the company is launched and pre-seed investment is secured.
• We provide continuous support post spin-out, including fundraising, commercial partnerships, recruitment and team-building (amongst other things).
• Other Founders currently at DSV across sectors working collaboratively and supporting one another - a unique resource to draw on.

Originally posted on Himalayas