Rainbow Crops: Giacomo Bastianelli shares how to get funded in 2025

Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs 

In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.

Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners; Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.

Episode 33: Rainbow Crops: Giacomo Bastianelli shares how to get funded in 2025

In this episode, I talked with Giacomo Bastianelli, CEO of Rainbow Crops, a VIB spinout focused on engineering complex traits in crops using AI-driven multiplex genome editing. Giacomo shares how Rainbow Crops emerged from a venture studio model at VIB, where deep science is matured before bringing in an entrepreneur-in-residence to shape the business. We explore building trust with investors, the nuances of cap table construction, and how he addressed investor concerns around long development timelines by securing LOIs with major seed companies. Giacomo’s perspective on transparency, empathy, and using net present value to set valuations offers a masterclass in deep-tech fundraising.

Key Facts Rainbow Crops:

• Goal: To develop resilient crops that address climate and food security challenges powered by a comprehensive AI model trained on plant “omics” data.
• Recently received investment from PINC, the venture arm of Paulig.

Alex’s Top Findings:

1. Venture Studio Spin-Out: VIB’s Proven Approach. Rainbow Crops originated from VIB (Flemish Institute of Biotechnology) using a venture studio-style model — building on mature in-house technology and preparing the business case before raising external capital. "They [VIB] put money to mature the technology and keep it under wrap. Then they bring in someone like me as an entrepreneur-in-residence to build the business case and key milestones."
2. Cap Table & Incentives: Founder, VIB, and Investors. VIB holds the majority stake initially (reflecting their tech development and cash investment). The entrepreneur-in-residence receives founding shares or stock options. Investors join after company creation. "The FIB is the founding shareholder, then shares go to the entrepreneur-in-residence, and then investors come in."
3. Strategic Partnerships & Early LOIs. The team secured letters of intent from breeding companies to prove commercial traction and reassure investors about exit timelines. “ We had a letter of intents, several.  We demonstrate that we were in advanced discussions with one player and a scientific plan already being carved. We had already a discussion on business terms . There are some others that would've required a little bit more negotiation. So it was very transparent into sharing that information, of course, under confidentiality agreement. That was, I think, what helped reassured that I was moving in the right direction.”