Today we have part 1 of our first look at the intersection between food, agriculture and venture investing with Carter Williams CEO and Managing Partner of iSelectFund. iSelect connects investors with innovative companies that are fixing our food and health systems while opening up access to investment opportunities that are making a real impact on the future of our world.

Carter has an extensive career spanning engineering, entrepreneurship and venture capital.

In today's show we discuss:

• Deconstructing "Innovation is deflationary", what does it mean?
• The information theory of investing
• Journey from engineering to entrepreneurship and then venture capital
• From Boeing Ventures to the creation of iSelectfund
• Economics of entrepreneurship & the optimistic mindset
• Democtraising venture capital focusing on the 97% of people that can invest in venture but don't
• Why funds with vintage years can be bad for LPs
• Healthcare, food and preventative technology

Carter Williams has spent his entire career working on innovation. First as a young engineer at McDonnell Douglas, next in his leadership roles at Boeing managing R&D and starting Boeing Ventures, and later as a successful entrepreneur and venture investor. Through his career, he has directly managed investments of more than $600 million in early-stage ventures and corporate research, resulting in several billion dollars of new product revenues. As part of Boeing Phantom Works, Carter led Boeing’s technology planning process, involving all aspects of internal and external technology development and manufacturing research. This eventually led to his role in founding and managing Boeing Ventures. After Boeing, he was President of Gridlogix, initially a small struggling 4 person startup that grew over 3 years, selling successfully to Johnson Controls in October 2008. Prior to leading iSelect, Carter served as Senior Managing Director at Progress Partners, an energy and technology investment banking firm, and was a Managing Partner at Open Innovation Ventures and a Director at Clayton Capital Partners. Carter is the past President and Founder of the MIT Corporate Venturing Consortium and Co-founder of the MIT Entrepreneurship Society. He has an M.B.A. from the MIT Sloan School and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

iSelectfund is an early-stage venture firm that invests in companies that are addressing critical global issues, in large markets, and with financially attractive business models. We are based in St. Louis but we take a national view, with a regional focus outside the coasts and in companies making an impact. To date, iSelect has invested in more than 25 portfolio companies across the country, in markets including food & agriculture, healthcare, resource efficiency and B2B software, in partnership with some of the largest and most successful venture investors in the industry.

• iSelectfund: https://www.iselectfund.com/

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carter/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/jcarterwil

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mohammedjalil/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/yo_jalil
• Email: mo@metapair.com