Interview: Phil Morle is trying to feed 10 billion people

Phil Morle, general partner at Main Sequence Ventures, is on a mission to feed ten billion people.

Key topic areas:

1. Why is feeding the world such a big deal? 
2. Why do we need to think about food in a different way? 
3. What are V2 and Nourish doing about it?
4. How do we pull more solution out of deep research groups like CSIRO?

Enjoy:

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Phil's Bio

Career Summary

Phil is a producer and a maker, now pointing this obsession at venture building at Main Sequence. His career began as a theatre director teaching him how to build something from nothing with extremely limited resources, how to build tightly unified teams and how to tell a story. When his career transitioned from making teach-heavy art into making tech with a producer mindset, he discovered a unique contribution he can make. This phase of his career culminated in his role as CTO at the massive (and a little infamous) file-sharing company - Kazaa. At its height, this company was the majority of data travelling through the internet and played a material role in the emergence of how media is shared today. After Kazaa, Phil co-founded the first tech incubator in Asia Pacific - Pollenizer. Here he played an instrumental role in developing the startup ecosystem across Asia Pacific and advised some of the world’s biggest organisations on practical ways to deliver new growth and the cultural change that is required to get there. In 2016, when he led and designed the program for ON, CSIRO's national deep tech accelerator program, Phil realised the opportunity that could be unlocked, helping inventors to unlock their discoveries through building a venture to fuel them. The only place he could land after that was Main Sequence.

Focus and Interest

Phil is leading our Feed 10b People challenge and looking for opportunities that deliver healthier people and a healthier planet. The interest in food has led to interest in a number of adjacent areas such as decarbonisation, synthetic biology, new materials and recycling. He is also leading the Main Sequence program for company creation which we call Venture Science. His generalist skill is helping companies find the story that will fuel the strategy and momentum in the market.

Photo by Thomas Gamstaetter on Unsplash