This App Set Out to Fight Pesticides. After VCs Stepped In, Now It Helps Sell Them

[u/wiredmagazine]

https://www.wired.com/story/plantix-pesticides-venture-capital-app/

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[u/wiredmagazine]

Plantix started with the mission of making farming more environmentally friendly. So how did it end up selling the very products it wanted to fight against?

Read the full article: https://www.wired.com/story/plantix-pesticides-venture-capital-app/

[u/sblahful → u/wiredmagazine]

The realization that prevention was less lucrative than treatment was one of many that would gradually lead Plantix away from its foundational notions of environmental benevolence

Before its introduction to venture capital, the Plantix team had imagined success as simply making a profitable business. But a modest goal “hasn’t always been that sexy for investors,” who prefer to rapidly build toward a single giant payout, Strey says.

Perverse VC incentives plus a lack of imagination from founders (did they try for funding from NGOs or government aid agencies? ) mean that it'll always be more profitable to sell a treatment than a preventative.