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Cal Coastal "a small Business lender" was able to assist Vreeland Nursery International with a Farm Loan enabling Gerard Voge to expand his operation. Cal Coastal offers a variety of loan programs to support small businesses including: SBA 504 Loan Program, Direct Farm Loans, Microloan Program, Intermediary Relending Program, Monterey County Revolving Loan, Loan Guarantee Program and Community Advantage 7(a) Loan Program. For more information please visit www.calcoastal.org or contact Loree Van Bebber at 831-424-1099 or email at loree_vanbebber@calcoastal.org. California Coastal rural Development Corporation 221 Main Street, Suite 301 Salinas, CA 93901 t: (831) 424-1099 f: (831) 424-1094 or (831) 424-5216 toll free number: 855-815-3833 www.calcoastal.org SEED MONEY Once again American AgCredit is paying cash dividends to our members — $43.5 million for 2015, and more than $300 million since 2005. Because when you succeed, we all succeed. SALINAS Call 831.424.1756 today or visit AgLoan.com A part of the Farm Credit System. Equal Opportunity Lender. By D. Lee Taylor Investment fund vows to get its boots dirty - Firm aims to bring farming expertise to ag-tech investment An agriculture-focused technology fund introduced itself to Salinas in January, promising to match farm- ing expertise with potentially high-return venture investments. Called The AgTech Growers Alliance, the infant investment fund was born out of frustration with the inability of the big Silicon Valley venture capital firms to understand the needs of growers, said Aaron Magenheim, chief executive of AgTech Insight, the Salinas-based parent company of the ATGA fund. "The Silicon Valley tech investment community doesn't understand getting their boots dirty," Ma- genheim told roughly two dozen audience members gathered at the Monterey County Agriculture Center in Salinas last month to hear the ATGA pitch. "It doesn't understand what farmers do every day." The fund's framework follows basic venture invest- ment models, but with a couple of key differences. The ATGA fund is grower advised, meaning that farmers will both invest in and help evaluate startup companies' merits of providing useful technologies along with their ability to generate a return for investors. "To move ag-tech forward we need to get growers involved," Magenheim said. "We know the kinds of technology they are looking for." Large venture-capital firms are constantly invest- ing in what they believe will be "the next big thing," where companies can generate hundreds of millions of dollars of return for investors — the proverbial "home run." Those kinds of paydays are few and far between. Venture capital can be high-risk, high-return invest- ing. "The risk of failure is mitigated through diversifica- tion, and the likelihood for strategic collaboration among companies and with other firms," Magenheim said. Instead, ATGA is targeting far more successful companies that return smaller amounts, in the $20 million to $30 million range. Investors make their money when one of two things happen. Either a company sells shares to the public, called an initial public offering, or the company is sold to a larger company through an acquisition. IPOs tend to be big, with the companies able to scale up to large enterprises, but they are rare. Acquisitions are more common for smaller companies and is the exit strate- gy that ATGA plans to target. ATGA expects to make small investments of be- tween $500,000 and $1 million per company, with first-round injections of capital in the $100,000 to $300,000 range, said Seana Day Hull, the director of business development and strategy for the ATGA fund. She said the average investment timeline between initial infusion of capital to an exit will be between five and seven years, and that investors would see an average return of 4.7 times the original investment. In addition to the investment arm, AgTech Insight is planning parallel service that will provide business help for the startup company, including accounting, technical assistance and finance needs, following the technology "incubator" model. The ATGA fund was the second to be announced in two months. Western Growers opened an invest- ment fund in early December in the Taylor Farms building in downtown Salinas. Both funds confirmed they are talking to each other about the potential to collaborate on future investments. "The future of agriculture is ours to create, and participating in an active investment approach gives growers the power to shape and profit from ag-tech's development," Magenheim said.

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