Wes Selke
Managing Director & Founder @ Better Ventures
Oakland, United States
Wes Selke is a seed investor at Better Ventures in Oakland focused on Biotechnology and Food and Beverage. Wes is Managing Director and Co-Founder of Better Ventures. He's the resident "numbers guy" and enjoys helping startups figure out how they're going to make and raise money. Wes has 15 years of venture capital and financial advisory experience with Good Capital’s Social Enterprise Expansion Fund, William Blair, and Ernst &Young's Mergers & Acquisitions group. He earned an MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and a BBA from the University of Michigan. Wes has volunteered with organizations around the globe, which has fueled his passion for applying his business skills to build a better world. He lives in Oakland, CA with his wife and two young kids and enjoys road cycling in the East Bay hills and Sunday trips to the farmers market.
- Total investments:
- 10
- Last investment:
- Lead investor:
- 40%
Last updated:
For AI agents: llms.txt
Industries Wes Selke invests in
Stages Wes Selke invests in
Countries Wes Selke invests in
Contacts
| Type | Contact | Validation |
|---|---|---|
| Work email | ||
| Personal email | ||
| Work phone | ||
| Personal phone | ||
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Investment Focus
Industry
- Biotechnology 3 (30%)
- Food and Beverage 3 (30%)
- Retail 2 (20%)
- Health Care 2 (20%)
- AgTech 1 (10%)
Stage
- Seed 4 (40%)
- Series A 3 (30%)
- Pre-Seed 1 (10%)
- Funding Round 1 (10%)
- Convertible Note 1 (10%)
Investments
| Company | Description | Round | Links |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pow.bio provides intelligent fermentation services for industrial and synthetic biology, helping turn great ideas into profitable products. We combine continuous fermentation with advanced control methodology to quickly optimize your fermentation process and deliver high yields at low costs. Our scale runs from 1-100 liter capacity for bacteria,yeast, and filamentous fungi. | $9.7M / Series A / Oct 04, 2023 | ||
| Mission Barns is making the juicy, savory meats they all love in a sustainable, more efficient way. At Mission Barns, they are cultivating animal cells to sustainably grow meat without the negative impacts of intensive animal agriculture. They start with a handful of cells from select animals, grow them in a nutrient-rich environment, and harvestdelicious, savory meat. Working at the convergence of biotech and food science, they’re on the path to creating a more sensible food system for the world. | $24M / Series A / Apr 07, 2021 | ||
| Lassogen is a biotechnology company exploring lasso peptides as a way to develop new medicines.Lassogen was founded in 2019 to unlock the full potential of lasso peptides as a new therapeutic modality for diagnosing and treating some of our most intractable health challenges. The company is the result of a convergence of technological advancesthat have opened the door to a vast, new, untapped source of novel medicines. | $4.5M / Seed / Oct 13, 2020 | ||
| SMBX is a FINRA-registered funding portal and public marketplace for issuing and buying U.S. small business bonds. Its focus is on small business debt, specifically the SBA loan market.SMBX helps high-quality businesses raise money by issuing bonds to people instead of taking out a loan. The company also operates the first small business capitalmarketplace where small business bonds are issued and sold to investors for a rate of return.SMBX was founded in 2016 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. | $2.5M / Seed / Aug 11, 2020 | ||
| Chi Botanic creates plant stem cells that we can grow into plant products and ingredients at industrial scale. We generate plant cell cultures representing just the parts or components that we want. Plant cell cultures grow much faster than whole plants. Also, while a fraction of a normal plant makes what we want, our entire cultures can synthesizethe desired product. We can grow without the limitations of climate, weather, geography, or season and without fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides with far less water, energy, or shipping requirements to provide safer, and often enhanced natural productsWe make plant stem cells that we can grow into plant products and ingredients at industrial scale. We generate plant cell cultures representing just the parts or components that we want. Plant cell cultures grow much faster than whole plants. Also, while a fraction of a normal plant makes what we want, our entire cultures can synthesize the desired product. We can grow without the limitations of climate, weather, geography, or season and without fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides with far less water, energy, or shipping requirements to provide safer, and often enhanced natural products | $950K / Convertible Note / Mar 06, 2020 | ||
| Pow.bio provides intelligent fermentation services for industrial and synthetic biology, helping turn great ideas into profitable products. We combine continuous fermentation with advanced control methodology to quickly optimize your fermentation process and deliver high yields at low costs. Our scale runs from 1-100 liter capacity for bacteria,yeast, and filamentous fungi. | $1.5M / Pre-Seed / Nov 01, 2019 | ||
| Mission Barns is making the juicy, savory meats they all love in a sustainable, more efficient way. At Mission Barns, they are cultivating animal cells to sustainably grow meat without the negative impacts of intensive animal agriculture. They start with a handful of cells from select animals, grow them in a nutrient-rich environment, and harvestdelicious, savory meat. Working at the convergence of biotech and food science, they’re on the path to creating a more sensible food system for the world. | $3.5M / Seed / Nov 27, 2018 | ||
| Iris Healthcare is the best-in-class provider of Advance Care Planning (ACP) solutions for tens of thousands of patients across the country. | $750K / Seed / Sep 15, 2016 | ||
| Alter Eco, Inc. imports and distributes a range of fair trade food products through mass retail chains in the United States. It provides coffee, tea, rice, quinoa, sugar, olive oil, and chocolate products. It serves supermarkets, grocery stores, convenience stores, and specialty food stores in the United States, Australia, Belgium, France,Switzerland, and internationally. The company was founded in 2004 and is based in San Francisco, California with office locations in San Francisco, California; Paris, France; Brazil; and Tamarama, Australia. | $3.1M / Jul 01, 2012 | ||
| Alter Eco, Inc. imports and distributes a range of fair trade food products through mass retail chains in the United States. It provides coffee, tea, rice, quinoa, sugar, olive oil, and chocolate products. It serves supermarkets, grocery stores, convenience stores, and specialty food stores in the United States, Australia, Belgium, France,Switzerland, and internationally. The company was founded in 2004 and is based in San Francisco, California with office locations in San Francisco, California; Paris, France; Brazil; and Tamarama, Australia. | Series A / Apr 01, 2010 |
Co-Investors
About Better Ventures
Better Ventures provides funding and support to technology startups building innovative solutions to big and important problems, from work and education to health and sustainability. Given the magnitude of the these problems and the enormous market opportunities they represent, it takes the best and brightest minds armed with the best resources toaddress them. These are the people they seek to back – entrepreneurs committed to using the tools and methodologies of the modern technology startup to build world-changing companies that make money and do good. They're thinking big and expecting big results, and so are the entrepreneurs they back.
Better Ventures Contacts
| Name | Phone | Socials | |
|---|---|---|---|
Lyndsey Boucherle
Partner
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Adam Archer
Mentor
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Jessica Eastling
Associate
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Rick Moss
Founding Partner
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Wes Selke
Managing Director & Founder
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FAQ
What does Wes Selke invest in?
Wes Selke invests primarily in Biotechnology, Food and Beverage and Retail startups, most often at Seed and Series A stage. Most of the 10 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United States. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.
How do I contact Wes Selke?
Public channels for Wes Selke include LinkedIn, X (Twitter) and Facebook. For a verified work email and phone number, create a free Shizune account — contact data is searched across 20+ sources and validated before delivery, so your outreach lands in the right inbox.
When did Wes Selke last invest?
The most recent investment recorded for Wes Selke closed in Oct 2023. Shizune tracks 10 investments in total for this profile, including round sizes, stages and portfolio companies, all sourced from confirmed public funding rounds and refreshed monthly.
Is Shizune's investor data accurate?
Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Sep 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.
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