Yield Lab Europe

David Bowles serves as Managing Partner and leads day-to-day investment decisions. The decision-making group also includes Co-Founder and General Partner Brian Clevinger and General Partner Gentiane Gorlier. The firm sources deals through a team of two investment directors, John Carrigan and Daan Wilms Van Kersbergen, who report into the partner group.

The firm sources primarily through its own network in European agriculture and food systems, leaning on its partners’ operational backgrounds rather than a broad inbound funnel. It actively seeks founders working on hardware and deep science — areas where cold introductions are rare and trust-based referrals from research institutions, agribusinesses, and prior founders carry more weight.

Yield Lab Europe invests from seed to early-stage, often as a lead or first institutional investor. The firm’s portfolio companies are typically pre-revenue or in early commercialization, with capital deployed to fund field trials, regulatory approvals, and initial manufacturing scale-up. It does not participate in later-stage growth rounds as a primary strategy.

The firm makes direct equity investments into operating companies. There is no public evidence of it committing capital as a limited partner into other venture funds. Its model is built entirely around holding direct stakes in agri-food-tech startups and providing hands-on operational support to those portfolio companies.

Yield Lab Europe operates from Dublin with a mandate focused on the European region. The broader Yield Lab network includes sister entities in other geographies, but Yield Lab Europe functions with its own partner group, investment team, and portfolio. The firm does not publicly detail inter-fund economics or carry structures across the network.

The firm’s mandate is tightly scoped to agriculture and food systems, and it does not invest in general enterprise software, fintech, or digital health. Even within agri-food-tech, its portfolio indicates a bias toward hardware and deep-science companies over pure software or marketplace models, though this is an observed behavior rather than a stated exclusion.

Yield Lab Europe operates as a private equity firm making direct venture investments, not a venture studio. It does not co-found companies or house entrepreneurs in residence. However, its heavy operational involvement — providing mentorship, manufacturing introductions, and sector expertise — gives it a studio-like intensity that distinguishes it from passive seed-stage funds.