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The Production Board
Dave Friedberg's The Production Board designs and scales tech businesses in biology, agriculture, and computation from San Francisco.
The Production Board
The Production Board was established in 2017 by Dave Friedberg, the serial entrepreneur who previously founded and led The Climate Corporation through its acquisition by Monsanto. Rather than following the traditional venture path of deploying third-party capital into external startups, Friedberg structured TPB as a permanent-capital platform where originated companies are incubated in-house and held for the long term. The firm operates from San Francisco and seeks to reconfigure value chains it considers legacy-laden and inefficient. TPB's mandate spans a deliberate intersection of life sciences, agriculture, and data. Its portfolio exposes it to food systems, synthetic biology, and industrial decarbonization, with confirmed positions including Oobli (precision-fermented sweet proteins), Supergut (clinically tested prebiotic nutrition), and Source Agriculture, a controlled-environment farming system it incubated. The firm's deployment model is distinctive: rather than writing checks into third-party founders, it creates new businesses by combining founder-operators with TPB's in-house engineering and science teams, then funds them through revenue and internal allocation. Its geographic focus is primarily North America, though portfolio companies often target global supply chains. TPB maintains a deliberately lean footprint and does not disclose headcount, though its model allows it to be capital-light per portfolio company relative to conventional venture firms. In June 2024, the firm participated in a $35 million financing round for Umaro Foods, a seaweed-based protein company advancing bacon and alternative meat products — an investment aligned with its core thesis that cost-advantaged bio-manufacturing can displace incumbent animal agriculture. TPB's architecture resists classification as either a pure venture firm or a corporate R&D lab. Its permanent-balance-sheet structure eliminates fund-cycle pressure, enabling multi-decade holding periods for companies addressing slow-moving industrial and biological systems. This design, combined with a genuine operator-first incubation approach — where the firm builds companies it cannot find rather than merely funding what exists — makes it structurally closer to a modern-day, tech-enabled industrial conglomerate than to the limited-partner fund model that dominates Silicon Valley.
General information
Firm type
Private Equity
Year founded
2017
AUM
Undisclosed
Location
Region
North America
Country
United States
City
San Francisco
Corporate office
San Francisco, CA, United States
Principals
Dave Friedberg
Founder & CEO
Sector focus
Frequently asked questions
How is The Production Board different from a typical venture capital firm?
TPB does not raise traditional closed-end funds that must return capital to limited partners within a decade. Instead, it operates as a permanent-capital holding company that conceives, funds, and builds its own companies in-house. This removes the structural pressure to exit positions on a fund-cycle clock and allows the firm to hold businesses for as long as the thesis requires.
What does The Production Board's company-building process look like?
The firm identifies large, inefficient industrial and life-science markets, then develops technology applications it believes can reshape those markets. It matches internal technical resources and engineering talent with recruited operator-founders, incubating the business until it can stand as an independent entity. Portfolio companies like Source Agriculture emerged through this incubation pipeline.
Who founded The Production Board and what is their background?
Dave Friedberg founded TPB in 2017. He previously founded The Climate Corporation, an agricultural data and analytics platform, and served as CEO until its acquisition by Monsanto for approximately $1.1 billion in 2013. Friedberg spent his early career at Google, where he was among the founding team at the company's corporate development and strategy group.
What sectors does The Production Board actively invest in or avoid?
TPB focuses on the intersection of biology, agriculture, and computation, which manifests in sectors like synthetic biology, food technology, agricultural systems, and industrial life sciences. The firm has not publicly excluded any specific sector, but its capital has historically followed a thesis that targets cost-advantaged biological manufacturing and supply-chain reconfiguration — areas outside its thesis, such as pure enterprise SaaS, are not part of its observed activity.
Does The Production Board take outside capital or co-invest with other firms?
The firm was initially backed by Friedberg and has been self-capitalized at the holding-company level, though portfolio companies may raise external rounds. The June 2024 Umaro Foods financing included participation from TPB alongside other institutional investors, indicating the firm engages in syndicated rounds for its portfolio companies even while the parent relies on permanent internal capital.
What is The Production Board's relationship to companies like The Climate Corporation?
There is no formal structural connection. The Climate Corporation operates under Bayer's digital farming division following Bayer's acquisition of Monsanto. Dave Friedberg departed The Climate Corporation before founding TPB. The link is through the founder's intellectual and operational experience, not corporate ownership or ongoing contractual ties.
Where does the capital for The Production Board's investments originate?
As of the most recent public disclosures, TPB is funded by Dave Friedberg's personal capital and internal returns from incubated companies. The firm has not disclosed raising a traditional external fund, though it has not publicly ruled out doing so for specific vehicles or co-investment structures in the future.
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