About

One Earth Capital is a
San Francisco Bay Area-based, boutique venture capital firm.

Our intention is to support the well being of the planet and its people while generating superior financial returns.

Our strategy is to find and fund early-stage companies with decentralized, game-changing technologies in agriculture. We have a particular interest in agriculture companies that intersect with the water and energy space.

Ideally, we seek technologies that not only help the environment today (for example, by reducing greenhouse gas emissions), but also help to mitigate the societal impacts of environmental degradation (for example, by helping growers optimize the use of their dwindling water resources as global drought worsens).

By focusing on a small number of investments, we are able to play an active role in each of them. We create lasting, synergistic partnerships with our portfolio companies, helping to provide the support, guidance, expertise and resources to bring innovations from inception to wide-scale adoption.

We choose to work with passionate, innovative, growth-oriented people who share our vision and values and who have the experience and track record to steward game-changing ideas through to successful actualization. To further support the personal development and leadership potential of our portfolio CEOs, One Earth Capital subsidizes the cost of executive coaching.

Our preference is to co-invest with other firms who share our vision so that our portfolio companies get as much benefit as possible from their boards. We leverage our network of connections with other investors and industry professionals to maximize our companies’ chances of success.

The One Earth Capital team shares a passion for nature, the environment and solutions that lead to planetary well being and sustainability.

Joe Hudson

Joe Hudson has more than 20 years of corporate and philanthropic experience in financial services, wireless technologies and environmental industries. He has advised companies in strategic visioning, operational efficiencies, funding, and growth opportunities. Joe has worked with companies such as Barclays Global Investors, Sprint, Wells Fargo Bank, Environmental Defense Fund and the Bureau of Reclamation. He has also worked with numerous Fortune 500 leadership teams, venture capitalists, and smaller entrepreneurial companies across six continents. He is currently a Managing Director with the David and Barbara Jacobs Foundation.

Chris Berkner

Chris Berkner has extensive experience in start-up management including business analysis and software development. He founded AnalyzViz, a 7-person consulting company that specialized in business intelligence dashboards. His diverse client base included AIG, Pfizer, Avery-Dennison and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Previously, he was Vice President of Systems and Programming at Guiness Telli*Phone Corp., where he spearheaded the launch of the company’s first three products and helped grow the company’s valuation from $8M to $120M in six months.

For more than 19 years, Chris has engaged his passion for green technology and renewable energy. He has held a renewable energy research internship at Stanford’s Material Science Department, where he discovered a new method of controlling pore size in organic nanostructured materials for photovoltaics. He also spent a summer at Princeton studying the economic and environmental implications of Brazil’s biomass energy program. Chris graduated with honors from UC Santa Cruz with a B.A. in Business Economics. He has also taken extensive coursework in chemistry and engineering at San Francisco State University and UC Berkeley.

Portfolio

One Earth is a closely held company and not a fund.

For this reason we are more private about our investment activity. Below are a couple of companies in which we have invested. We hope they serve as examples of our investment strategy.

Marrone Bio Innovations

Marrone Bio Innovations discovers, develops and markets effective and environmentally responsible natural products that focus on unmet needs for weed, pest and plant disease management.

We were interested in this investment since it had a broad pipeline of products, a unique IP creation mechanism, and it plays in the energy and water markets. Just as importantly, we think Marrone is well positioned to replace many harsh chemicals that are currently used on our food and in our water. www.marronebioinnovations.com

PureSense

PureSense is revolutionizing agriculture by helping growers irrigate precisely, increase yields, and decrease water, fertilizer, and energy use. It is the premier platform for remote monitoring, control and decision support in agricultural irrigation.

We were interested in this investment since it has a huge addressable market, makes growers considerable money in less than a year, and fills a huge need in the market. The result of the technology is just as exciting to us as it saves billions of gallons of water, reduces fertilizer pollution and dramatically reduces the carbon footprint of the farm. www.puresense.com

Advice

We value integrity, honest communication, hard work, mission-driven passion, humor, and good listening.

Files for download:
Effective Business Plans (PDF)
How to Play the VC Game (PDF)

If you believe your team embodies these traits, then you’re off to a good start. To get a successful company off the ground and funded by venture capital, you’ll also need a few other ingredients, like a stellar business concept with a well-developed plan, a large ($500M+) available market, a defensible and significant competitive advantage, and a highly skilled team.

To interest One Earth Capital, your product or service must also have an innovative, positive ecological impact in the area of agriculture. We are particularly interested in agriculture companies that intersect with water and energy.

In addition to all of the above, you’ll need to learn to play the venture capital game. Whether or not we are the firm that ultimately provides the funding you need, we want to help you successfully navigate this complex arena. To this end, we have prepared a downloadable PDF that we hope will provide some of the basic information and guidance to help you succeed in your quest for capital.

Contact

We appreciate your inquiries.

One Earth Capital is eager to hear from entrepreneurs and companies that meet our investment criteria, are aligned with our philosophies and share our vision for a healthy planet and people.

One Earth Capital is not currently hiring, but we are always on the lookout for talented individuals who have experience in the both the investment and the agriculture space. We are also interested in hearing from seasoned leaders who are looking for new opportunities in our investment area.

Feel free to send us your info if you fit in the above categories.

Via Telephone: (888) 611-5515

Via the Internet: