Pymwymic, a Dutch agrifood-focused venture investor, targets an average 10% return per fund rather than the 10x or 100x payouts that dominate Silicon Valley deal-making, managing partner Rogier Pieterse told AgFunderNews at the World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit in London.

The firm has now operated for 11 years and, in Pieterse's words, has produced a "proper DPI" — distributions to paid-in capital — even in what he called the current tough market. That track record matters because most institutional limited partners demand at least 15%.

"I always challenge them: so in all the other investments that they have done, how many of those funds actually delivered on that promise?" Pieterse said.

What does Pymwymic's model look like in practice?

The firm targets what Pieterse calls "the middle layer" of agrifood startups, deliberately avoiding the winner-take-all approach. Pymwymic's underlying cooperative, the Pymwymic Coöperatief, anchors every raise with a base of families, family foundations and selected individuals.

This structure gives the firm access to patient capital that most venture competitors cannot tap. In 2026, Pymwymic took over the Triodos Food Transition Europe Fund and relaunched it as the Pymwymic Healthy Food Systems Growth Impact Fund III — an evergreen vehicle with no fixed end date.

Successful portfolio companies can roll directly from early-stage vehicles into the growth fund. Pieterse framed the timing bluntly: "The environment we are in nowadays is way more short-term versus long-term focused."

Why must corporate VCs take more early-stage risk?

Pieterse argued the funding chain runs backward today. Venture capital absorbs initial development risk first, then courts corporate money later. He wants corporates to move earlier and let private equity growth capital accelerate companies once they reach scale.

"I believe corporate ventures will need to take that innovation risk a bit more, and then private equity growth capital will come in later to accelerate that growth," Pieterse said. For every Pymwymic venture deal, the firm now requires a strategic on the cap table.

Which agrifood segments is the firm overweight?

Pieterse named precision farming, precision spraying, nutrient management and biologicals as his core bets. He framed the underlying problem with a stark input-output calculation: "You're putting in $100 million of inputs in the ground and getting $80 million out of it, which is economically not sensible."

The soil itself, he argued, contains the signals farmers need to make better decisions. Regenerative practices round out the list. Pieterse compared the transition to renewables: slow at first, then compounding.

He disclosed that Pymwymic made its first alternative protein investment last year, a counter-cyclical move after years of staying clear of the segment. The firm avoided the vertical farming and alt-protein boom of the early 2020s, he said, by entering at low valuations and screening for true farmer adoption rather than theoretical total addressable market.

Is ag robotics and AI now investable?

Robotics is becoming investable as off-the-shelf components cut unit prices and AI improves data use, Pieterse said. But he flagged field-level friction that software demos do not show: irrigation lines lying in a row, or a robot failing to recognize that an implement is heating up because a rock is jammed inside.

AI, meanwhile, is reshaping what counts as a defensible business. About 75-80% of Pymwymic's portfolio sits in hardware-software, data-driven plays. Pieterse argued that the quality and historical annotation of a company's data — recognizing one pest species versus another and translating that into a farmer-ready recommendation — now defines the moat.

Pymwymic will carry that platform approach into the rest of 2026 as it integrates the Triodos vehicle and courts new LPs, betting modest, repeatable agrifood returns can outlast the unicorn chase.