Maarten Goossens traces his interest in food and farming back to childhood, when he collected acorns in the woods at age six and sold them to farmers for pig feed, and later built a finance background in food-and-agri banking and private equity before moving into venture investing. He has stuck with the same food-and-agriculture thesis through two investment cycles, arguing that what changed isn't the idea but the arrival of AI and new biology tools that finally make it practical, and he sometimes builds companies himself from scratch when the right one doesn't yet exist.