BioConsortia CEO Marcus Meadows-Smith: Trading Retirement for a Part in a Biologicals Revolution
BioConsortia CEO Marcus Meadows-Smith (top) works with research team in Davis, CA labs using its Advanced Microbial Selection (AMS) process. Photo: Business Wire
When Bayer CropScience bought AgraQuest, the biologicals firm, for nearly half a billion dollars in 2012, Marcus Meadows-Smith’s options were limitless, writes Jackie Pucci at CropLife.
As CEO of AgraQuest, and with a highly successful career in the agrichemical and biopesticide industry under his belt, an early retirement was the next logical step. So, he tried it. It was short-lived.
“The R&D behind the scenes has been extremely exciting and has taken us to places that I haven’t seen in the microbial space in my career at other companies. It’s a pretty exciting place to be.” — Marcus Meadows-Smith
“My main takeaway,” says Meadows-Smith, laughing, “is that retirement is boring.” The U.K. native oversaw the integration with Bayer’s Biologics business for a year post-merger, before commencing his retirement of sorts, in California’s Yolo County, where he helps his wife, Jenny, run their boutique winery and vineyard.
To help keep his mind occupied, he began consulting for various private equity and venture capital firms. One of these was Khosla Ventures, which had discovered and partially funded a tiny start-up in New Zealand. The company, called BioDiscovery, had made a breakthrough discovery creating its patented Advanced Microbial Selection (AMS) process, and Khosla wanted Meadows-Smith to find out if it warranted more of their investment money.
“I said, wow, this is really different. This is a very elegant, very exciting, and powerful R&D platform,” he recalls. “Their response was, if you like it so much, would you like to run the company?”
And so it happened, under his one condition that the company relocate to his adopted California hometown of Davis. In 2014, the new company, renamed BioConsortia, raised $15 million from both Khosla Ventures and Otter Capital, and hired approximately 20 biological scientists, including 5 PhDs, with Meadows-Smith at the helm.
Now, five years later, BioConsortia is on the verge of bringing a host of innovative biological products to the market via the AMS process, which cuts by a whopping two-thirds the amount of time and money required to discover a new biological product.
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